In This IssueAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 54, No. 2 (May, 2000), pp. 129-130Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/531962 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 16:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Royal Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes and Records ofthe Royal Society of London.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:55:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 54 (2), 129-130 (2000)

IN THIS ISSUE

There was in the January issue a report of a meeting held last year to celebrate the life and achievements of John Ray, ER.S., together with an article on one of his successors as a clerical naturalist. Three further papers from the meeting appear in this number, two on Ray's religious and philosophical positions, and one on the famous Historia Piscium (History offishes).

The nature and purpose of Creation were actively discussed in Ray's day. Had God brought the world, its plants and its animals, into being solely for the use and delight of men and women, as the account in Genesis suggests? And if not, for what purpose? When in 1692 Halley described, in Philosophical Transactions, an Earth with a core and mantle that would account in his view for the westerly drift of the Earth's magnetic field, he thought that he had to say something about the purpose of such a structure for humanity. He went further. It was widely held that there were people on the other planets and if so, Halley argued, why not in the space between the core and the mantle? How absurd, we would have thought a few years ago, but with serious and costly efforts now being devoted to the search for extra-terrestrial life, we can hardly scoff. Ray's arguments and Halley's caveats show rather the ferment of ideas that was such a mark of their times. With ideas as with people, history is written by and for the victors and much that was seriously considered 300 years ago is now forgotten. If, however, we are to understand the world from which the successful ideas emerged, we need also to understand the unsuccessful ones and what in their heyday they contributed to views of the world and reasons for pursuing natural philosophy.

Arguably the two most successful scientific ideas of the age were the mathematical way of doing physics set out in Newton's Principia, and the morphological basis of taxonomy developed by John Ray. The article on the Historia Piscium shows how

closely they were linked in time and in their fates in The Royal Society. Ray undertook to bring the work of his patron, Willughby, to completion, but providing the very many illustrations involved the Council and other Fellows of the Society. Many of the

plates were paid for by Fellows, Pepys, then President, being especially munificent, and the Council also spent a great deal of time in making the arrangements for the

publication. In the midst of all that activity Halley brought in Newton's manuscript of the first draft of what would evolve as the Principia. Historia Piscium and Principia alike, though for different reasons, saw the light of day through the efforts, not of the

originators but of their aides. However much the Council realized the importance of Newton's work-and they had to rely on Halley's opinion-they were surely too involved with the Historia Piscium to do much about it. So Halley, single-handed, did for Newton what the whole Council were doing for Ray; editing, organizing the printers, publishing, and taking the financial risk. There were considerable differences. The Principia was much smaller than Historia Piscium, and would have been a straightforward book to assemble and to print and not expensive, all very different from Historia Piscium. Halley undoubtedly spent a lot of time on it, but he was able to do it himself and, well-to-do after his father's death, was able to carry the financial risk. In the end he possibly made a small profit, although he made many presents; Historia

129

© 2000 The Royal Society

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:55:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

In this issue

Piscium made a spectacular loss. Principia was published about a year after Historia Piscium.

Ray's organization of Historia Piscium established morphology as the basis for the classification of animals and plants for the following three centuries. Now, where possible, taxonomy is based on genetics and molecular biology, but that knowledge is not available for very many fossils, and morphology has to remain the principle for taxonomy in palaeontology.

The Accademia del Cimento, the subject of Marco Beretta's article, pursued natural knowledge in a far more organized manner than The Royal Society, much indeed as Francis Bacon had advocated. It did not, it seems, generate any far-reaching new ideas comparable with those of Newton and Ray, but the widespread meteorological observations that it promoted were forerunners of later extensive geophysical observations. Unfortunately, the Cimento did not last long, and although there was correspondence with The Royal Society it does not appear that much was known of its activities in London. Eventually, systematic observations such as, the Cimento promoted became the responsibility of governments or other public bodies. The aims of the Cimento and the independent practice of The Royal Society both had their place in the development of modem science, and still do.

Sir Alan Cook

130

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:55:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions