Fit for print: Developing an institutional model of scientific periodical publishing in England, 1665-CA. 1714

Notes and Records

Volumn 69, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 241-260

  Moxham, N ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Early modern experiment; Henry Oldenburg; Learned societies; Philosophical transactions; Royal Society; Scientific journals

Indexed keywords

ECONOMICS; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; PUBLICATION; PUBLISHING; UNITED KINGDOM;

EDITORIAL POLICIES; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; LONDON; PERIODICALS AS TOPIC; PUBLISHING; SOCIETIES, SCIENTIFIC;

EID: 84939141722     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2015.0035     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Jean-Pierre Vittu, 'La formation d'une institution scientifique: le Journal des Savants de 1664 à 1714', in J. Savants, 179-203 (2002).
2. For an account of Colbert's oversight see Jacob Soll, The information master (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009), pp. 100-103.
3. See, for instance, James E. McClellan III, Science reorganised: scientific societies in the eighteenth century (Columbia University Press, New York, 1985), pp. 52-54
4. Peter Dear, Revolutionising the sciences: European knowledge and its ambitions, 1500-1700 (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 120-122
5. Steven Shapin, 'O Henry', Isis 78, 417-424 (1987)
6. John Henry, 'The origins of modern science: Henry Oldenburg's contribution', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 21, 103-109 (1988)
7. Charles Bazerman, Shaping written knowledge: the genre and activity of the experimental article (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1988)
8. Alan Gross, Joseph Hamron and Mike Reidy, Communicating science: the scientific article from the seventeenth century to the present (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 3-4
9. Adrian Johns, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making (University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 531-532.
10. David Kronick, A history of scientific and technical periodicals: the origins and development of the scientific press, 1665-1790 (Scarecrow, Metuchen, NJ, 1976), pp. 110-112.
11. Johns's arguments on the engagements of natural philosophy with the early modern print trade in general are advanced in The Nature of the Book, and the specific case of Philosophical Transactions in Adrian Johns, 'Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 33, 159-186 (2000).
12. Henry Oldenburg, 'Advertisement', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 1, 213-214 (1667)
13. Richard Waller, 'Preface', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 17, 581-582 (1692)
14. Francis Aston and Robert Plot, 'The Preface', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 13, 2 (1683)
15. Royal Society Council Minutes (Originals) [hereafter RS CMO], vol. 4, 20 Feb. 1751/2.
16. Aileen Fyfe, Julie McDougall-Waters and Noah Moxham, 'Guest editorial: 350 years of scientific periodicals', Notes Rec. 69, 227-239 (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/rsnr.2015.0036).
17. The pamphlet was actually by William King: The Transactioneer: with some of his Philosophical Fancies, in two Dialogues (London, 1700).
18. For a discussion, see Palmira Fontes da Costa, The singular and the making of knowledge at the Royal Society of London in the eighteenth century (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009), pp. 93-98.
19. Harris was a cleric, an author, a lecturer on natural-philosophical subjects and a recent Boyle lecturer. L. Stewart, 'Harris, John (c. 1666-1719)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12397, accessed 4 June 2015).
20. British Library [hereafter BL] Sloane MSS 4026 f. 253.
21. W. H. Quarell and M. Mare (translators), London in 1710: from the travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (Faber & Faber, London, 1934), pp. 97-102.
22. See, for example, RS JBO/13, 7 June 1722, 25 October 1722, 23 November 1722, 6 December 1722 and 17 January 1722/3.
23. From the same period as in note 6, see RS JBO/13: 12 January 1721/2, 17 May 1722 and 18 October 1722.
24. RS JBO/13, 19 January 1721/2; John Lowthorp, The Philosophical Transactions and Collections to the end of the year 1700. Abridg'd and Dispos'd under General Heads (3 volumes) (Thomas Bennet, Robert Knaplock and Richard Wilkin, London, 1705-07)
25. See, for instance, Thomas Birch, History of the Royal Society of London (4 volumes) (A. Millar, London, 1756-57), vol. 3, pp. 104, 142, 155, 163, 169, 176, 179, 213, 225, 299, 372, 434, 451 and 488.
26. Marie Boas Hall, Henry Oldenburg: shaping the Royal Society (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 156.
27. On this, see Moxham, 'Form and genre in early science journals', in News networks in early modern Europe (ed. Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham) (Brill, Leiden, in the press).
28. Oldenburg had hoped that the periodical would yield up to 150 per annum, Although in practice he claimed it had never made him more than 40; see The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (ed. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall) [hereafter Oldenburg Correspondence], vol. 3, p. 69, and vol. 4, pp. 58-59 (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1965-1986).
29. H. W. Robinson and W. Adams (eds), The diary of Robert Hooke 1672-1680 (Taylor & Francis, London, 1935), p. 331
30. Francis Aston to William Musgrave, 18 December 1685; printed in Early science in Oxford (15 volumes) (ed. R. T. Gunther), vol. 12, p. 106 (Oxford University Press, 1923-67).
31. See R. S. Westfall, Never at rest: a biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 444-465
32. Alan Cook, Edmond Halley: charting the heavens and the seas (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 147-164.
33. 'Advertisement', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 16, 297 (1686).
34. BL Sloane MS 4026, ff. 270-271. The burdensome costs of publishing scientific periodicals are analysed in more detail and in longer perspective by Aileen Fyfe, 'Journals, learned societies and money: Philosophical Transactions, ca. 1750-1900', Notes Rec. 69, 277-299 (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/rsnr.2015.0032); the Society published Transactions after 1752 at a continuous loss until the mid-twentieth century.
35. See note 19 above, when the Society began to take a large institutional subscription.
36. RS AB/1/1/1 (1667).
37. See note 30 for the proposed salaries for Halley and Plot; and RS AB/1/1/3 (1719) for the evidence of secretarial salaries in 1719.
38. Royal Society accounts, which survive in reasonable detail for the period immediately after the foundation, record only minute payments to printers in this period, most probably for jobbing printing. RS AB/1/1/1, passim.
39. Contemporary criticisms of the Society include those of Thomas Hobbes, outlined in Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton University Press, 1985)
40. Samuel Sorbière's Relation d'une Voyage en Angleterre (Louis Billaine, Paris, 1664), misinterpreted as a criticism by Thomas Sprat; and Oldenburg's acknowledgement to Boyle of 18 September 1666 that there were murmurings about the Society's productivity: wherein he mentions seeing Christopher Wren's plan for rebuilding London and reflects that if the model had been shown to the King it would have 'given the Society a name, and made them popular, and availed not a little to answer those who continually ask, what have they done?'. Oldenburg Correspondence, vol. 3, p. 231.
41. Lorenzo Magalotti also reports, from a little later, Charles II's habit of referring to the Fellows as 'my fools' (see W. E. K. Middleton, 'What did Charles II call the Fellows of the Royal Society?', Notes. Rec. R. Soc. 31, 13-17 (1977)); and, ironically, the work of the two most notable apologists for the Royal Society, Joseph Glanvill and Sprat himself, provoked a flurry of pamphlets on the other side from Henry Stubbe.
42. Grew's work for the Society had a long history: in 1672-73, the wealthier Fellows had raised a subscription to pay him a 50 salary to give a series of botanical demonstrations in 1672 and 1673. See Michael Hunter, 'Early problems in professionalizing scientific research: Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) and the Royal Society', in Establishing the new science: the experience of the early Royal Society (Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 261-278.
43. See Mario Biagioli, 'Scientific revolution, social bricolage, and etiquette', in The scientific revolution in national context (ed. R. Porter and M. Teich), pp. 11-55 (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
44. See Anita Guerrini, 'The King's animals and the King's books: the illustrations for the Paris Academy's Histoire des Animaux', Ann. Sci. 67, 383-404 (2010)
45. Noah Moxham, 'Edward Tyson's Phocaena: publishing comparative anatomy in seventeenth-century England and France', Notes Rec. R. Soc. 66, 252-271 (2012).
46. Marie Boas Hall, in Promoting experimental learning: experiment and the Royal Society 1660-1727 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), discusses Grew's Transactions in connection with the January Council orders but fails to note that the project had been mooted in December 1676, when Oldenburg was still alive, and does not make the connection between Hooke's Lectures and Collections and the thematic tracts proposed in January (pp. 107-109).
47. Letters from Robert Moray on Hebridean tides published in number 137 are to be found in the Society's register-books dated 1661: by Henry Powle, from 1666, and by Jonathan Goddard, from 1661. RS RBO/1/19, RBO/3/34 and RBO/1/27.
48. '[An Account of a Book Entitled] ANTIDIATPIBH, Sive Animadversiones in Malachiae Thrustoni M.D. Diatribam in Respirationis Usu primario'. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 12, 1072-1074 (1677-78).
49. For a discussion of these observations, the international controversy over an aberrant observation by Johannes Hevelius, and the delicate problem of how to discount it without violating codes of civility, see S. Shapin, A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England (University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 266-291.
50. Hooke had published short tracts before: An attempt to prove the motion of the earth from observations (John Martyn, London, 1673)
51. Animadversions upon the first part of the Machina Coelestis (John Martyn, London, 1674)
52. A description of Helioscopes (John Martyn, London, 1676)
53. Lampas (John Martyn, London, 1676); however, the tracts in Lectures and Collections are unique in the range of authors and materials drawn upon.
54. The attributions to Journal are made explicitly in Hooke's text. Robert Hooke, Lectures and Collections (John Martyn, London, 1678), pp. 73 and 78.
55. Rob Iliffe, '"In the warehouse": privacy, property and priority in the early Royal Society', Hist. Sci. 30, 29-68 (1992).
56. RS AB/1/1/1; see for instance 1667, during which Shortgrave and Hooke between them are paid more than 100 of a total outlay of a little over 200. For Grew's lecture payments, see RS AB/1/1/2, 1677 and 1678.
57. Stephen Pumfrey, 'Ideas above his station: a social study of Robert Hooke's curatorship of experiments', Hist. Sci. 29, 131-156 (1991)
58. Steven Shapin, 'Who was Robert Hooke?', in Robert Hooke: new studies (ed. M. Hunter and S. Schaffer), pp. 253-285 (Boydell, Woodbridge, 1989).
59. For the technologies of collective witnessing, see in particular Steven Shapin, 'The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England', Isis 79, 373-404 (1988).
60. For the gaps left by Hooke as minutes secretary, see Birch, op. cit. (note 15), vol. 3, pp. 375, 381, 426, 430, 453, 464 and 469. The publication of his works after death was undertaken, in a confessedly unsatisfactory and piecemeal fashion, by Richard Waller in Posthumous Works (London, 1705)
61. with some remaining fugitive pieces published by William Derham in Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke, S.R.S (London, 1726).
62. See the prefaces published by Aston and Plot (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 13, 2 (1683))
63. Waller (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 17, 581-582 (1693)) respectively. The quotation is from Waller.
64. For a detailed account of the book's publication history, see S. Kusukawa, 'The Historia Piscium 1686', Notes Rec. R. Soc. 54, 179-197 (2000).
65. See especially BL Sloane MSS 4025 and 4026, passim.
66. A. Rusnock (ed.), The correspondence of James Jurin (1684-1750) (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1996), p. 81. Jurin to Woodward, 15 February 1719.
67. RS CMO/3, 12 July 1742.
68. See in particular Jonathan Topham, 'Anthologizing the book of nature: the circulation of knowledge and the origins of the scientific journal in late Georgian Britain', in The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India and China (ed. B. Lightman, G. McOuat and L. Stewart), pp. 119-152 (Brill, Leiden, 2013)
69. Iain Watts, 'We want no authors: William Nicholson and the contested role of the scientific journal in Britain, 1789-1813', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 47, 397-419 (2014).
70. For a discussion of John Hill's attacks on the Society and Transactions, see George Rousseau, The notorious Sir John Hill: the man destroyed by ambition in the age of celebrity (Lehigh University Press, Bethlehem, PA, 2012), pp. 65-83.
71. RS CMO/4, 19 March 1751/2.