Philosophical threads: Natural philosophy and public experiment among the weavers of spitalfields

The British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 1995, Pages 37-62

  Weindling, Paul ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84971871514     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400032684     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. This proposition has been previously made by J. A. Bennett, ‘The mechanics’ philosophy and the mechanical philosophy’, History of Science (1986), 24, 1–28.
2. For the London audience for science as vulgarized sensationalism see R. D. Altick, The Shows of London, Cambridge, MA, 1978.
3. See L. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750, Cambridge and New York, 1992, 132–3.
4. Quoted in Simon Schaffer, ‘Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century’, History of Science (1989), 21, 9.
5. See A. Q. Morton, ‘ Lectures on natural philosophy in London, 1750-1765:.
6. S. C. T. Demainbray (1710–1782) and the “Inattention” of his countrymen’, BJHS (1990), 23, 411–34, especially 431.
7. Henry H. Cawthorne, ‘The Spitalfields Mathematical Society (1717-1845)’, Journal of Adult Education (1929), 3, 158.
8. On the Commissions for Fifty New Churches see Jez Reeve and Max Adams, The Spitalfields Project. Volume 1 : The Archaeology. Across the Styx, York, 1993, 3–7.
9. The Articles of the Mathematical Society Meeting at the Sign of the Black Swan in Brown's Lane, Spitalfields, 1784 (n. p., M n.d.). Stewards were Abraham Holloway, John Bernard, William Draper and John Beckwith.
10. J. W. S. Cassels, ‘The Spitalfields Mathematical Society’, Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society (1979), 2, 20.
11. Theya Molleson and Margaret Cox with H. A. Waldron and D. K. Whittaker, The Spitalfields Project. Volume 2- The Anthropology. The Middling Sort, York, 1993, 97–9.
12. For a critique of presumed links between marginaliry, radicalism and science see P. J. Weindling, ‘The British Mineralogical Society: a case study in scientific and social improvement’, in Metropolis and Province. Science in British Culture 1780–1850 (ed. I. Inkster and J. B. Morrell), London, 1983, 120–50.
13. D. E. Allen, ‘Joseph Dandridge and the first Aurelian Society’, Entomologists Record and Journal of Variation (1966), 78, 89–94.
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16. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1878), 38, 144–7.
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18. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1857), 17, 95.
19. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1866), 26, 104–9.
20. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1867), 27, 109-10.
21. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1869), 29, 122–3.
22. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1862), 22, 111–13.
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24. On the Noble family patents, see Bennet Woodcroft, Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions, 1617–1852, reprint edn, London, 1969, 412.
25. See Guildhall Library, MS 1.2.8, A Catalogue of Books, Belonging to the Mathematical Society, Crispin Street (1804), MS additions.
26. G. Dodd, ‘Spitalfields’, in London (ed. C. Knight), London, 1822, 397.
27. Articles of the Mathematical Society, Spitalfields, London: Instituted 1717, London, 1793, 11.
28. See the biography of John Williams, in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1875), 35, 180–3.
29. A Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Mathematical Society, Crispin Street, Spitalfields, London, 1804, pp. ii-iii.
30. E. P. Thompson, Witness Against the Beast. William Blake and the Moral Law, Cambridge, 1993, 52–9.
31. See Bryant Lilly white, London Coffee Houses, London, 1963, 87-9;.
32. D. G. C. Allen, ‘The laudable Association of Antigallicans’, Royal Society of Arts Journal (1989), 137, 623–8.
33. From The First Part of a Dictionary of Chemistry,&c, Birmingham, 1789, quoted in Gerard L'E. Turner, ‘The London trade in scientific instrument-making in the eighteenth century’, Scientific Instruments and Experimental Philosophy, 1500–1850, London, 1991, ch. 9, p. 5.
34. See also Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain 1760–1820, Cambridge, 1992, 146–7.
35. Frank A.J.L. James ‘The tales of Benjamin Abbott: a source for the early life of Michael Faraday’, BJHS (1992), 25, 236 ;.
36. see also Lain McCalman, Radical Underworld. Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840, Cambridge, 1988, 8–9.
37. B. B. Cooper, Life of Astley Cooper, 2 vols., London, 1843, ii, 98-9 and 236–51.
38. D. Rockey, Speech Disorder in Nineteenth Century Britain, London, 1980, 46 and 67.
39. F. Knight, University Rebel. The Life of William Frend 1757–1841, London, 1971.
40. Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged. Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1991, 408-9 and 425ff.;.
41. L. Bradshaw (ed.), Life of William Allen, 3 vols., London, 1846–47, i, 33 and 36.
42. P. McCann, ‘Popular education, socialization and social control: Spitalfields 1812-1824’, in Popular Education in the Nineteenth Century (ed. P. McCann), London, 1977, 1—42.
43. Paul Weindling, ‘The Spitalfields Soup Society’, in Christ Church Spitalfields, 1729–1979. 250th Anniversary, London, 1979, 46–7. Spitalfields Soup Society minutes, Greater London Record Office p 98/CTC1/55.
44. Declaration of the Merchants, Bankers, Traders, and Other Inhabitants of London, Made at Grocers’ Hall, December 2nd, 1795, London, 1795; see also True Briton, 21 November 1795 and 3 December 1795.
45. See James Jennings, A Lecture on the History and Utility of Literary Institutions, London, 1822, for a contemporary overview of scientific societies.
46. Augustus de Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, London, 1872, 203.
47. J. Cutler, ‘The London Institution 1805-1933’, University of Leicester, Ph.D. thesis, appendix.
48. I. J. Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth–Century London: John Gast and his Times, London, 1979, 160.
49. Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, ‘ Science, nature and control: interpreting mechanics’ institutes’, Social Studies of Science (1977), 7, 46-8.
50. see I. Inkster, ‘The social context of an educational movement: a revisionist approach to the English mechanics’ institutes, 1820-1850’, Oxford Review of Education (1976), 2, 277–307 On the Spitalfields Mechanics Institution, founded in 1825,.
51. see Proceedings of the Institution, London, n.d.(c. 1825), and Mechanics’ Magazine (1826), 6, 461.