The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton

228 Pages·1992·56.582 MB·English

by  John G. Burke (editor)

THE USES OF SCIENCE IN THE AGE OF NEWTON
PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
Publications from the
CLARK LIBRARY PROFESSORSHIP, UCLA
1.
England in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth
Century: Essays on Culture and Society
Edited by H. T. Swedenberg, Jr.
2.
Illustrious Evidence
Approaches to English Literature of the
Early Seventeenth Century
Edited, with an Introduction, by Earl Miner
3.
The Compleat Plattmaker
Essays on Chart, Map, and Globe Making in England
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Edited by Norman J. W. Thrower
4.
English Literature in the Age of Disguise
Edited by Maximillian E. Novak
5.
Culture and Politics
From Puritanism to the Enlightenment
Edited by Perez Zagorin
6.
The Stage and the Page
London's "Whole Show" in the
Eighteenth-Century Theatre
Edited by Geo. Winchester Stone, Jr.
7.
England's Rise to Greatness, 1660—1763
Edited by Stephen B. Baxter
8.
The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton
Edited by John G. Burke
The Uses of Science in the
Age of Newton
Edited by
JOHN G. BURKE
Clark Library Professor, 1978-1979
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY • LOS ANGELES • LONDON
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
Copyright © 1983 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The Uses of science in the age of Newton.
(Publications from the Clark Library professorship,
UCLA; 8)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Science—Great Britain—History. 2. Science—Philosophy—History.
I. Burke, John G. II. Series.
QI27.G4U83 1983 509.42 83-1223
ISBN 0-520-04970-5
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Contributors ix
Introduction xi
I. The Poets and Science in Seventeenth-
Century England • EARL MINER 1
II. Oldenburg, the Philosophical Transactions,
and Technology • MARIE BOAS HALL 21
III. The Birth of the Modern Scientific Instrument,
1550—1700 • ALBERT VAN HELDEN 49
IV. Robert Hooke, Mechanical Technology, and
Scientific Investigation • RICHARD S. WESTFALL 85
V. Gunnery, Science, and the Royal
Society • A. RUPERT HALL 111
VI. Nautical Astronomy and the Problem of
Longitude • DAVID W. WATERS 143
VII. Tory-High Church Opposition to Science and
Scientism in the Eighteenth Century: The
Works of John Arbuthnot, Jonathan Swift,
and Samuel Johnson • RICHARD OLSON 171
v

FOREWORD
During the academic year 1978—791 had the honor of serving
as Clark Professor at the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library of the University of California, Los Angeles. I wish to
thank Chancellor Charles E. Young for appointing me to this
distinguished position, and Robert Vosper, director of the
Clark Library, and the Clark Library Committee for their
recommendations on my behalf.
The library was established by William Andrews Clark, Jr.,
and bequeathed in 1934 to UCLA as a memorial to his father,
Senator William A. Clark. The handsome Italian Renaissance-
style building housing the collections was designed by Robert
D. Farquhar and completed in 1926. Murals and ceiling paint-
ings by Allyn Cox decorate the interior, to which seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century furniture lends an atmosphere of ele-
gance and comfort. The library collections are principally
representative of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century En-
glish culture, certain aspects of nineteenth-century English
literature, and fine printing of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. When it became the charge of UCLA, the collec-
tions numbered about eighteen thousand books and manu-
scripts; at present there are some seventy thousand volumes
and over five thousand manuscripts.
The Clark Library staff, headed by Librarian Thomas
Wright, could not be more gracious and helpful to scholars
who visit and study on the premises. I am most grateful for the
vii
viii FOREWORD
cheerful welcome and the continuing assistance they gave me
throughout my tenure.
Scholarly lectures presented at the Clark Library during my
term as professor became the essays that comprise this
volume. In retrospect, the most satisfying occasions were the
lively and intellectually stimulating discussions between the
seminar participants and the invited lecturers following their
presentations. It was at these times that issues of fact and
interpretation were raised and thrashed out—sometimes
thoroughly and sometimes not, due to time limitations; so I
also wish to thank those faculty members, students, and
interested lay people, who participated regularly in the
seminars, for much of the pleasure and profit I derived from
this memorable year.
John G. Burke
CONTRIBUTORS
A. Rupert Hall is Emeritus Professor of the History of
Science and Technology at Imperial College, London. He
was a chief editor of the five-volume Oxford History of Tech-
nology (1954—1958). Among his publications are The
Scientific Revolution, 1500—1800 (1954); From Galileo to
Newton (1963); and Philosophers at War (1980). He edited the
Correspondence of Isaac Newton and is a founding editor of the
journal History of Technology.
Marie Boas Hall is Emeritus Reader in the History of Science
and Technology at Imperial College, London. She is the
author of Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry
(1958); The Scientific Renaissance, 1450—1630 (1962); and
Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy (1965). She is coauthor of
the Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (1962) and
coeditor of the thirteen-volume Correspondence of Henry Old-
enburg. Currently, she is writing a history of the Royal Soci-
ety of London in the nineteenth century.
Earl Miner is Professor of English and Comparative Literature
at Princeton University. Among his published works on
English literature are Dryden's Poetry (1967); The Metaphysical
Mode from Donne to Cowley (1969); The Cavalier Mode from
fonson to Cotton (1971); and The Restoration Mode from Milton
to Dryden (1974). His writings on Japanese literature include
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X CONTRIBUTORS
The Japanese Tradition in British and American Literature
(1958); Japanese Poetic Diaries (1969); and Japanese Linked
Poetry (1979).
Richard Olson is Professor of History and Willard J. Keith
Fellow in the Humanities at Harvey Mudd College, Clare-
mont, California. He is the author of Scottish Philosophy and
British Physics, 1750—1880 (1975) and Science Deified and
Science Defied (1982). He edited Science as Metaphor {1971).
Albert Van Helden is Professor of History at Rice University.
He has published numerous articles on the development of
the telescope. He is the author of The Invention of the Tele-
scope (1977) and Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley
(forthcoming) and coauthor of Divini and Campani (1981).
Commander David W. Waters is Emeritus Deputy Director of
the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. His publica-
tions include The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan
and Early Stuart Times (1958); The Rutters of the Sea: The
Sailing Directions of Pierre Garcia (1967); and Science and the
Techniques of Navigation in the Renaissance (1980).
Richard S. Westfall is Distinguished Professor of History at
Indiana University. He has published Science and Religion in
Seventeenth-Century England (1958); Steps in the Scientific Tra-
dition (1968); The Construction of Modern Science (1972); Force
in Newton's Physics (1972); and Never at Rest: A Biography of
Isaac Newton (1980).