The Invention of
Modern Science
p.5
Discovering science
yesterday and today
Alex Halliday and Ken Macdonald QC
p.15
Part I
Happy Curiosities: John Wilkins
Jane Garnett and Cliff Davies
p.27
Part II
p.29
Introduction
Melvyn Bragg
p.33
John Wilkins, The Royal Society,
and a sociology of science
Sir Paul Nurse
p.37
and the new baroque
Marcus du Sautoy
p.40
Questions, curiosity
and the wonder of science
Jo Dunkley
Discovering science
yesterday and today
Alex Halliday and Ken Macdonald QC
This booklet has been produced as part of Wadham’s
and Oxford’s celebration of the 400th anniversary of the
birth of John Wilkins (1614 –1672). Wilkins was a polymath
who amongst other things was an important exponent of
natural theology – an understanding of the natural world
that sat at the interface between science and religion.
In many respects this typified Wilkins; he realised
that breakthroughs would come from the alignment of
different perspectives. He was interested in many things
including manned space flight, but his greatest scientific
legacy was that he recognised the strategic importance
of science for society. He realised that to achieve real
impact, scientists needed to work together, exchange
ideas and collaborate. The meetings that were held at
Wadham College led to the founding of the Royal Society,
the world’s first national academy, in 1660. As such there
is a deep historical link between Wadham and the Royal
Society. More importantly perhaps there are striking
parallels between what Wilkins was trying to achieve
in the 17th century, and what researchers at Oxford and
elsewhere are seeking to develop in interdisciplinarity
today. Working at the interfaces between traditionally
distinct disciplines is likely to lead to major discoveries.
Wilkins and his colleagues also recognised the role that
fundamental science can play in tackling the needs of
society. Then as now, the issues were huge.
5
John Wilkins was around at a particularly important
time in the development of modern science. Many
facets of scientific thinking became firmly established
by the research and researchers in Oxford in the
16th and 17th centuries. Perhaps the first of particular
note was William Harvey (1578 –1657) who defined the
circulation of blood in the human body and the role of
arteries and veins, long before oxygen was discovered.
However, there was a much broader group of scientific
intellectuals who followed, and they were brought
together to share ideas and discuss science and the
scientific rationale by John Wilkins. The ‘Oxford club’ of
experimentalists included many now famous scientists
who collaborated, contributing their diverse skills in
mathematics, deductive reasoning, experimental design
and graphical representation. Robert Boyle (1627–1691)
was the founder of modern chemistry. William Petty
(1623–1687) developed economics and ‘political
arithmetic’. Christopher Wren (1632–1723) was an
astronomer with exceptional ability in geometry,
design, graphical representation, and, as we all know,
architecture. Thomas Willis (1621–1675) is considered
the founder of clinical neuroscience, the one who
realised the functioning of the brain and the nature
of psychological disorders. Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
is sometimes referred to as the UK’s Leonardo because
his contributions were so far reaching and broad. He
was Boyle’s assistant but also developed his own ideas
and theories of mechanics in particular. He discovered
the nature of life under the microscope and was the first
to coin the term ‘cell’. He argued for the role of gravity
in planetary motion leading to a long-lasting dispute
with Isaac Newton (1643–1727) over the source of his
ideas. Hooke was also the first in the UK to recognise
6
the real significance of fossils and the evidence of
enormous geological forces that turned seas into
land and mountains.
Of course 17th-century Oxford scientists cannot claim
sole credit for these and the many other discoveries
they were involved in; just as today, science is built
upon science. For example, Wilkins and Hooke were
hugely influenced by the work of Galileo (1564–1642)
who built a telescope and made the first detailed
drawings of the Moon, demonstrating that it was
mountainous like Earth, rather than a perfect sphere
as had always been assumed. This led directly to
Wilkins and Hooke working on the idea of manned
space flight. Similarly, Hooke’s work in palaeontology
and geology was influenced by the writings of Nicolas
Steno (1638–1686) who also paved the way for the
later work of James Hutton (1726–1797) and Charles
Darwin (1809–1882) on stratigraphy and natural
selection. What was striking about the Oxford group,
however, was the astonishing range of discovery
that happened in one place and at one time. It
was catalysed by interdisciplinary collaboration,
a stimulating environment for the exchange of ideas,
and a strong sense of the discovery and power of
the scientific rationale itself.
Science was not only important in its own right; many
scientific applications were important for society at
large. The 17th century was not an easy time in England.
Civil War was tearing the country apart and Oxford was
both divided and attacked in the process. London and
other areas were decimated by the Great Plague. Then
there was the Great Fire of London, requiring a major
7
Previous page:
An engraving from David Loggan’s Oxonia Illustrata (1675)
The Wind Car from Mathematical Magick (1648)
rebuild of the city. Through all of this difficulty science
thrived because it was seen as so important. Scientists
were key to providing modern solutions. For example,
Wren designed and built dozens of churches and Hooke
laid out the streets of London after the fire.
Of course, science is just as relevant today. Scientific
progress is breathtakingly fast as it was in the days
of Wilkins. However, the scale is vastly bigger, the
collaborations are global and the implications and risks
of not taking scientific advice are enormous. As we face
up to the challenges of climate change, security threats,
the cyberworld, energy provision, dementia, obesity
and food security, science has to be strong and heavily
supported by governments. Young people looking to
the future do understand this and see the opportunities
that science provides for addressing societal issues.
However, they also bring that fresh creative approach
that Wilkins sought to capitalise upon. Today, Wadham,
Oxford more generally, as well as many other academic
institutions the world over, reach out to young people
to encourage them to pursue careers in science. This is
not just because science is deeply relevant to society –
it is also fascinating and we need brilliant young people
to just enjoy discovery.
Edmond Halley (1656–1742) came to Oxford University
at the age of sixteen and by the time he was twenty he
was setting up telescopes in St Helena to observe and
catalogue the stars of the southern hemisphere. While
there he observed the transit of Mercury across the Sun
and went on to plan observations of the transit of Venus.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society when he
11
was 22. Science is for young people. Discovering
something new that the people of this world did not
know before is one of the most amazing thrills one
can have in life. If you want to follow a career creating,
designing and building the devices for the future,
science is for you. If you want to be a leader or policy
maker who makes informed decisions for the benefit
of a secure society, science is for you. If you just want
to have a lot of fun and get paid to do it, science is
for you, just as it was for Galileo, Wilkins, Newton
and Halley.
Alex Halliday is Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences
Division of the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wadham College.
Ken Macdonald QC is Warden of Wadham College.
12
John Wilkins by Mary Beale (1633–99)
13
Part I
Happy Curiosities:
John Wilkins
Jane Garnett and Cliff Davies
“He abounded in happy curiosities: he was
interested in theology, cryptography, music, the
manufacture of transparent beehives, the course
of an invisible planet, the possibility of a trip
to the moon, the possibility and the principles
of a world language.”
So wrote Jorge Luis Borges in an essay of 1942
celebrating ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins’s
(published in his collection Oltras inquisiciones in
1952, and in English translation in 1964). Wilkins’s Essay
towards a real character, and a philosophical language,
setting out the contours of a universal language and
categorisation of existence, was published under
the aegis of the Royal Society in 1668. Commenting
on the necessary arbitrariness of Wilkins’s classificatory
system, as of all such attempts at universality, Borges
observed, however, that ‘the impossibility of penetrating
the divine scheme of the universe cannot dissuade
us from outlining human schemes, even though
we are aware that they are provisional’. One of the
twentieth century’s great philosophical writers,
famously fascinated by the challenges of ordering
complexity, was attracted to Wilkins for his eclectic
15
spirit of curiosity and for his creative hypotheses.
Indeed, Wilkins’s work on language was taken up more
widely in the twentieth century, especially in the context
of internationalist cultural idealism: the women’s rights
activist Sylvia Pankhurst discussed him in 1927 in
an essay on international language (in a series called
‘To-day and To-morrow’), and Umberto Eco, in 1993,
in a book on the search for the perfect language
concurrently published in Munich, Oxford, Barcelona,
Rome and Paris (as part of a series called ‘Making
Europe’). Eco recalled berating a BBC journalist who
had asked him to explain semiotics for not realising
that Wilkins had been a key pioneer in the field.
These contexts in which Wilkins’s linguistic work
was recalled in the twentieth century, whilst very
much of their own times, are helpful ways into
reflecting both on his place in the intellectual history
of the seventeenth century and on its resonances
for our own historical moment.
Wilkins’s breadth of interests and cosmopolitan
outlook, together with a real drive to foster and
to disseminate intellectual engagement, made
him an important figure in the promulgation of
the new philosophical outlook of the seventeenth
century.
That outlook is sometimes thought of as the adoption
of experimental science. Contemporaries would
have preferred the term ‘experimental’ or ‘natural’
philosophy. It was a way of thinking which involved
applying reason and speculative imagination to
fundamental questions about the natural world,
16
partly through experiments in astronomy, chemistry,
optics, microscopy and physiology, partly through
reflection on the moral, cultural and religious
frameworks of human understanding. All these
spheres of intellectual activity were seen as necessarily
intertwined – in exciting and also controversial ways.
As a brilliant organiser and populariser, as well as an
enthusiast for new ideas, Wilkins, working outwards
from his role as Warden of Wadham, was at the heart
of vibrant debates extending across Europe.
John Wilkins (born on 14 February 1614) was ‘intruded’
as Warden of Wadham by the victorious Parliament
in 1648, after its victory over King Charles I in the
Civil War. That victory also represented the victory
of ‘Puritanism’ (however defined) over attempts by
the king and many churchmen to reinstate a sacramentbased and ceremonial church liturgy in the 1630s.
1648 saw the ejection of the then Warden and the
majority of fellows and scholars for rejecting the
authority of the new regime. A dominant influence
on Wilkins was his maternal grandfather, John Dod,
a venerated Puritan preacher and writer. A graduate
and then tutor of Magdalen Hall, Wilkins was ordained
by the Bishop of Oxford in 1638. He soon became
chaplain to, amongst others, Lord Saye and Seal, the
leader of those peers opposed to Charles I’s religious
policy and to innovative and arbitrary taxation (‘ship
money’). During the Civil War he became chaplain
to the exiled Elector Palatine in London. The Elector,
a nephew of Charles I, was financially dependent on
Parliament whilst waiting for the international situation
to allow his return to his German principality; indeed he
was accused by some of hoping that Parliament would
17
depose his uncle and make him king of England.
Wilkins’s clerical and aristocratic connections explain
his appointment, aged only 34, as Warden of Wadham
by the Parliamentary commissioners.
He was, however, already pursuing other interests.
He published in 1638 The Discovery of a World in the
Moone, elaborated in 1640 as A Discourse concerning
the New Planet, both anonymously. These constituted
the first popular exposition in English of the ‘new’
Copernican-Galilean heliocentric model of the planetary
system. It included the proposition that in principle
travel to the moon might be possible using a
spring-driven chariot which could break free of the
(greatly underestimated) magnetic field of the earth.
Other books followed, on mathematics and on
communications, again involving ingenious mechanics.
He was to construct a formal garden in Wadham
full of scientific devices, talking statues, a rainbow
machine and the transparent beehive. But his interests
were not confined to these areas of what we could
call ‘science’. He also produced in 1646 a handbook
for preachers including recommended reading
covering the various schools of Christianity, including
Catholicism, in a sympathetic light; and in 1649
A Discourse concerning the Beauty of Providence,
an argument for Stoic patience in the face of
religious turmoil. His own religious perspective
was latitudinarian, anti-fundamentalist and tolerant,
and in his conception of the interrelationship of
the natural and divine orders he made a significant
contribution to the English tradition of natural
18
theology (his book, Of the Principles and Duties
of Natural Religion was published posthumously
in 1675).
From 1645 Wilkins had attended a weekly meeting
in London to discuss ‘scientific’ ideas and carry out
experiments. This may have been the first organised
group to attempt to put into practice Francis Bacon’s
vision of a systematic approach to the acquisition of
knowledge, based not on an abstract chain of reasoning
(‘deduction’), but on trial by experiment (‘induction’). In
1648 several of this group were, like Wilkins, ‘intruded’
into positions at Oxford. Reinforced by Oxford scholars,
especially from the circle of William Harvey (of the
‘circulation of the blood’), they continued their regular
meetings. At first largely centred on the lodgings of the
natural philosopher William Petty, the meetings were
mostly held at Wadham under Wilkins’s aegis from 1652,
when Petty departed for Ireland. With a set of rules
the ‘Experimental Philosophy Club’ met in the
Warden’s lodgings, conducting experiments on
blood transfusion or human flight in the Warden’s
garden,
or in the ‘Tower Room’ above the gate occupied by Seth
Ward, Professor of Astronomy, giving access to a range
of telescopes on the tower itself. The group included,
at various times, the mathematician John Wallis, the
chemist Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren (a member
of Wadham, who succeeded Ward as professor of
Astronomy in 1661), and Robert Hooke, to name only
the most famous. Wilkins seems to have been the
entrepreneur and facilitator of debate – a type of role
19
which has become increasingly recognised as important
in a contextualised history of science which does not
simply celebrate ‘great’ individuals. After 1667 there was
considerable controversy – revived in the 1960s – about
whether London or Oxford was the true progenitor of
the Royal Society. That controversy – at both periods –
ignored the continued close relations between Oxford
and London, including the appointment of Oxford men
(Wren included) to chairs at Gresham College, the centre
of the London activity, throughout the 1650s.
The meetings in Wadham were private, not officially
part of either the college’s or the university’s activities,
although it is clear that many, including Ward and Wallis,
both lectured and taught privately at the cutting edge of
their own work. At this time undergraduate degrees were
broad, covering the arts and sciences as a whole, and
therefore in many respects introductory. Those who
were interested sought out further instruction, and could
go on to pursue a higher degree. When Wilkins and
Ward, in their Vindiciae Academiarum (1654) defended
the existing undergraduate curriculum against polemical
demands from radicals for more ‘plain scripture’ at
the expense of theology, and for a more practicallyorientated pursuit of knowledge, they were in fact
standing up for philosophical breadth and openness
to new ideas. They wanted to retain an intellectual
pluralism and resist the demand simply to substitute
the new for the old, the modern for the ancient. Wilkins
stressed that ‘there is not to be wished a more general
liberty in points of judgement or debate, than what is
here allowed’. Although many of their contemporaries
at Oxford and elsewhere remained unreceptive to new
scientific ideas,
20
the intellectual freedom which prevailed in
England was striking in a wider European context,
and was commented on enviously by foreign
observers.
It was in this climate that the ‘experimental philosophy’
which Wilkins, Ward and other members of the Club
practised and promoted was able to thrive.
Wilkins was also notable as a college head and
university politician, in ways which bore on his ability
to foster intellectual energy. Wadham and Christ Church
were the only colleges to have larger intakes during
the 1650s than before the Civil War. In spite of Wilkins’s
‘Parliamentarian’ affinities he went out of his way to
recruit talented scholars from a royalist background.
Seth Ward was one of these, expelled from Cambridge
but skillfully manoeuvred into the Oxford astronomy
chair. Christopher Wren was another, son of a
ceremonialist Dean of Windsor and nephew of Bishop
Matthew Wren whose attempts to control Puritanism
in East Anglia earned him imprisonment in the Tower
of London from 1641 to 1660; Christopher Wren’s
surname was a distinct disadvantage in republican
England. Wilkins also recruited a noted maker of
scientific instruments as college manciple, and the
former cook of the Prince of Wales (a skilled botanist)
as college cook.
In his resistance to demands for radical reform of
the university Wilkins stood alongside his colleague
and rival John Owen, Dean of Christ Church and
Vice-Chancellor for much of the 1650s. In 1656 Wilkins
married the widow Robina French, younger sister
21
of Oliver Cromwell. In the different political climate
of the 1660s he had to endure a good deal of chaffing
on this subject, to which he replied that he had been
pressed to marry the Protector’s sister, and had only
done so to better defend the university. That may be an
ex post facto rationalisation, and there is some evidence
that the marriage was a comfortable one. Be that as
it may, Wilkins developed a close relationship with his
nephew Richard Cromwell, Chancellor of the university
from 1657, and briefly Lord Protector in 1658–9; indeed,
there is a fleeting indication that he was one of three
intimate advisers to the ill-fated Protector. Wilkins
and Robina had lodgings in Whitehall, and it may
be that Robina never inhabited the Warden’s lodgings
at Wadham.
In 1659 the fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
petitioned Richard Cromwell for Wilkins to become
their Master. Wilkins was appointed, even after
Cromwell’s removal from power. His new position
had greater prestige and a much higher stipend than
he had received at Wadham, but he may have regretted
his move, since he had to make way in 1660 to the
claims of a royalist Master to whom Charles I had
long before promised the post on the next vacancy.
A petition by the fellows to retain him had no success.
Had he stayed at Wadham he would have been safe,
since his royalist predecessor there had conveniently
died meanwhile.
With the 1660 restoration of the monarchy many of
Wilkins’s old associates found themselves in a similar
situation, and moved to London. Wilkins chaired
a meeting at Gresham College on 28 November 1660,
22
at which, following a lecture by Wren, it was decided
to establish an ‘experimental’ society on a more
formal basis than its predecessors. In 1662 that society
received a royal charter to become the Royal Society,
an indication of how far the ‘new philosophy’ had
become fashionable among some aristocrats. (Royal
and aristocratic patronage was vital, both for prestige
and for subscription; many of the aristocratic fellows
of the Society played no active part in its proceedings.)
The Society employed a salaried full-time ‘curator’ to
manage its experiments – Robert Hooke, who had been
part of the Oxford group. Patri Pugliese has suggested
(in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) that
‘this appointment made Hooke the first professional
scientist’. From 1665 the Society issued its Philosophical
Transactions as a systematic record of its proceedings,
supplemented by reports of similar ventures in Europe.
Wilkins became one of its two secretaries, from 1663
to 1668. His colleague Henry Oldenburg was more
active on a day-to-day basis, and was responsible for
the wide international ‘correspondence’ which was
one of its major strengths. One of Wilkins’s important
achievements was to commission and to work with
a Wadham protégé, Thomas Sprat, to produce a History
of the Royal Society in 1667, a masterpiece of prose and,
in effect, a fighting manifesto for the new philosophy.
Wilkins had meanwhile used connections to the
influential, which resulted from his philosophical
interests, to amass a sheaf of ecclesiastical posts; most
notably as vicar of St Lawrence Jewry in London from
1662. (He lost his library there during the Great Fire
of 1666). In 1668 he was nominated Bishop of Chester,
to the annoyance of the more traditional-minded,
23
not least Gilbert Sheldon, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who did not hesitate to remind him of his Cromwellian
connections. Wilkins played an energetic role in the
House of Lords, serving on at least fifty parliamentary
committees; in line with his consistent religious
openness, in 1668 he was involved in a (failed) scheme
for greater comprehension within the Anglican Church,
and he opposed, equally unsuccessfully, the Conventicle
Act of 1670, which imposed harsher penalties on
religious dissent. He continued to be active in the Royal
Society, some of whose members visited him regularly
in Chester. He died in 1672, at the house of his friend
and fellow-latitudinarian John Tillotson. Wilkins
had encouraged his step-daughter to marry Tillotson
(‘You shall have him, Betty, for he is the best polemical
divine in England’, the story goes), who went on to
be Archbishop of Canterbury (1691–4). On his deathbed Wilkins claimed to be ‘prepared for the great
experiment’.
Wilkins was undoubtedly a man of great personal
charm, adept at conforming to changing
circumstances.
In his Brief Lives John Aubrey described him as
a ‘lusty, strong grown, well set, broad shouldered
person, cheerful and hospitable’. Anthony Wood,
the Oxford antiquary, commented acidly that there
was nothing ‘deficient in him but a constant mind and
settled principles’, an obvious charge to lay at the door
of the Cromwellian turned Stuart monarchist. That his
flexibility was invariably in the service of moderation
may well, however, be counted a virtue. It was also of
a piece with an intellectual suppleness which enabled
24
him to foster and maintain lively intellectual networks.
He represented an influential, if minority outlook
amongst contemporary English intellectuals, cultivated
in the 1640s and 1650s and becoming fashionable
in the 1660s. His particular skills lay in energetically
galvanising debates to which he contributed his own
spirit of experimentation. His universal language was
an attempt to pull his various particular enthusiasms
together into an overarching conceptual scheme.
Incomplete, quixotic, it stimulated further reflection,
and embodied the sheer range of his ambition. As
Borges recognised, that ambition and the recognition
of the impossibility of its fulfilment were and are two
sides of an ongoing intellectual vitality.
Good accounts of Wilkins are to be found in the Dictionary of
Scientific Biography (1970–80), by Hans Aarsleff, and in the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (2004; updated online), by John
Henry. The standard biography is Barbara J. Shapiro, John Wilkins:
an Intellectual Biography (Berkeley, CA, 1969). See also for a more
personal approach, C.S.L. Davies, ‘The Family and Connections
of John Wilkins, 1614–1672’, Oxoniensia 69 (2004), 93–107. For
his Essay, see Rhodri Lewis, Language, Mind and Nature: artificial
languages in England from Bacon to Locke (Cambridge, 2007).
See also Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions 1937–1952, tr.
Ruth L. C. Simms (Austin, 1964), Umberto Eco, The Search for
the Perfect Language, tr. James Fentress (Oxford, 1995). For the
University context, see Mordecai Feingold, ‘The Mathematical
Sciences and New Philosophies’, The History of the University
of Oxford, vol. iv, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford, 1997).
Jane Garnett is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Wadham
College.Cliff Davies is Emeritus Fellow and Keeper of the Archives
for Wadham College.
25
Frontispiece, Wilkins's Discourse concerning new world (1640)
Part II
As the culmination of Wadham’s and Oxford’s
celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the birth
of John Wilkins, a major event was held in the
Sheldonian Theatre on 17th October 2014. ‘The
Invention of Modern Science’ brought together
leading scientists and science communicators
to celebrate the vital contributions of John Wilkins
and his contemporaries to the seventeenth century
scientific revolution. By focusing on the role
of science in society then and now, the panellists
highlighted the striking parallels between the
challenges faced in the seventeenth and the twentyfirst centuries, and how collaborative working
at the interfaces between disciplines can lead to
groundbreaking discoveries. In line with Oxford’s
and Wadham’s efforts to inspire the next generation
of scientists, the event welcomed 120 of secondary
school pupils to a Science Aspiration Day followed
by the debate in the Sheldonian. Our distinguished
speakers were invited to write a short introduction
to themselves and their interest in the themes
under discussion. These form the second part
of the booklet.
27
Introduction
Melvyn Bragg
In this company I am a Goth among the Ovids. My
school education in science was unsatisfactory and
meagre. My current interest in it came from a middleaged crisis. That was a revelation in the 1980s of what
science had brought and was increasingly bringing the
understanding of all aspects of the human condition.
My road to Damascus led to Portland Place in London
where I was invited to chair the BBC talk-programme
‘Start The Week’.
This involved conversations with four people, each one
of whom had a new book/play/film out. A few, a very few
of them, when I started the programme in the late 80s
were scientists. About 2%, I think it was. When ten years
later I was asked by the BBC hierarchy to leave the
programme, the percentage was 37.
It turned out to be a fruitful firing.
The Trollopian manners of the BBC at that time jibbed at
what it had done and instead of being kicked into the long
grass I was offered what was cheerfully called ‘the Death
Slot’. This was the Thursday morning slot at 9.02 which,
people were delighted to tell me, had never worked.
It enabled me with the help of Olivia Seligman, the
producer, to put together ‘In Our Time’. I seized the
29
opportunity to talk about one subject without ever
plugging a book. It gave me a priceless opportunity
to learn more about science and many other subjects
as it turned out, and to get an education from some
of the finest academics in the country.
I was smitten by the vast continent of knowledge which
I had so stupidly and so blithely ignored for so long.
Even now, 16 years into the programme, I still feel that
I’m hurrying to catch up.
It is all the more shameful that this ignorance had
continued when I was lucky enough to go to Wadham
College in 1958. In the gardens in which we lolled (now
and then and rather awkwardly) in a pathetic and failed
attempt to be ‘Brideshead’, there had been the seeding
of what grew into one of the greatest revolutions in
knowledge there has ever been.
Modern Science, emanating from a lineage which
of course included Greece, Islam, the European
Renaissance and much more, had found one of
its fountain heads there.
More than 350 years before our time wonders
had happened in the gardens of Wadham.
I would guess that many of the non-science
undergraduates were, like myself, largely unaware
that they were walking in the footsteps of great
men. These were men to whom curiosity about the
world through experimental science was all in all.
And more often than not, this included the previous
dominating knowledge system, religion.
30
Warden Wilkins, Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren,
Robert Hooke et al played pranks in the College gardens
with speaking statues and transparent beehives, and
discussions on how to get to the moon. Out of this
brilliant play came a radical transformation, not only
of knowledge but of the mind itself.
The sweep into increasing public awareness and
fascination with science is still accelerating.
Every day it seems brings news from laboratories and
specialist departments that we see as affecting our lives
directly. The planet is now seen through science to such
an extent that there are those who fear that it could be
consumed by it.
Not, I think, as long as those who will be speaking today
hold to, as they do, the deep and benevolent curiosity
about knowledge which spurred on their predecessors
in Wadham gardens, a few hundred yards away, a few
centuries ago.
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg, FRS, FBA, FRSA, FRSL, FRTS, (Wadham
1958, History) is an English broadcaster and author, best known for
his work with ITV as editor and presenter of The South Bank Show
(1978–2010). Earlier in his career, Bragg worked for the BBC in various
roles including presenter, a connection which resumed in 1988 when
he began to host Start the Week on Radio 4. After his ennoblement
in 1998, he switched to presenting the new In Our Time, a discussion
radio programme which has run to over 600 editions. He is currently
Chancellor of the University of Leeds.
31
The allegorical foundation of the Royal Society, Wenceslaus Hollar (1667)
John Wilkins, The Royal
Society, and a sociology
of science
Sir Paul Nurse
We have a lot to thank John Wilkins for. A seventeenth
century divine brought up in Oxford with a goldsmith
father, he was Master of both Wadham College Oxford
and briefly, until ejected by the Royalists, of Trinity
College Cambridge. But most importantly he was one
of the founding members of the Royal Society, who
was elected as Chair of the first meeting of the Society
in Gresham College London, 28 November 1660.
The founding of the Royal Society of London was
a significant event of the Enlightenment, and many
would say played a major role in the birth of modern
science. One of the consequences of the founding of
the Royal Society was the promotion of a sociology of
science, which led to the establishment of a community
of scientists who embraced practices that generated
a highly effective scientific research endeavour. These
practices helped encourage a way of working in science
that persists even today, and in a number of ways reflect
aspects of John Wilkins’s character.
So what was John Wilkins like? John Gribbin has
written a thumbnail sketch of his character in his book
‘The Fellowship’. Wilkins lived in troubled, intolerant
and divisive times, with political differences between
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Parliamentarians and Royalists, and religious
differences between Catholics and the various flavours
of Protestantism, ranging from the Church of England
to more radical dissenting sects. Although Wilkins was
a Bishop and a Parliamentarian, indeed was married
to Oliver Cromwell’s sister, he was able to work with all
across the political and religious divides. He was unusually
tolerant of a range of opinions, whether religious, political
or intellectual, and encouraged scientists from all parts
of the Christian church and from different backgrounds
to work together on scientific projects. He was gregarious
and friendly, and acted as a catalyst to connect scientists,
most famously introducing Robert Hooke to Robert Boyle
initiating their famous experiments using the newly invented
air pump to investigate low atmospheric pressure.
He was a defender of the Universities and was
inclusive, encouraging the pursuit of scientific
experiments and bringing scientists together to
discuss those experiments. He was a man of great
curiosity with wide interests from mechanical
investigations, through the possibility of life
on the moon, to the construction of transparent
beehives to study bee behaviour. He was even
a practical joker connecting a pipe to a statue
in his garden to make it speak whilst hiding in
the bushes. Like Francis Bacon he thought science
should work for the good of humankind.
These qualities are important for the pursuit of science,
and the establishment of a framework of sociological
practices reflecting a number of Wilkins’s characteristics
is critical for the scientific endeavour to be effective.
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Sir Paul Nurse
Sir Paul Nurse is the President of the Royal Society. He took up
the post to start his five year term in December 2010. Paul Nurse
is a geneticist who works on what controls the division and shape
of cells. He was Professor of Microbiology at the University of
Oxford, CEO of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Cancer
Research UK and President of Rockefeller University New York.
He is currently Director and Chief Executive of the Francis Crick
Institute. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine in 2001 and the Royal Society Copley Medal in 2005.
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and the new baroque
Marcus du Sautoy
We live in an age when scientific progress is having
a massive impact on society. Increased industrialisation
has led to levels of CO2 in the atmosphere rising which
have the potential to cause huge changes to our climate.
Rising demands for sources of clean energy require
society to make decisions on how we fuel the future.
New developments in genetically modifying crops could
help alleviate the starvation facing millions across the
planet yet there are those who are fearful of the effects
such crops might have on our environment. Medical
progress is extending life and offering hope to many,
but the ethical issues raised by research into stem
cells have led governments across the world to react
in very different ways to regulate research into these
new techniques.
John Wilkins’s belief in the importance of communicating
science in plain English to a society beyond the confines
of the scholarly community is probably more relevant
than it has been since Wilkins expressed his ideas in the
seventeenth century. The ability to engage in the modern
stories of science empower a society to make informed
decisions about the way science will shape their future
rather than being disenfranchised and leaving the
decisions to those in authority. A scientifically literate
society is the only answer to the challenging task of
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navigating the future and it is Wilkins’s belief in the
role of scientists to explain their ideas that will be key
to achieving that goal.
Wilkins I think would have been very excited to visit
the twenty-first century. There is an increasing appetite
today for listening to those scientific narratives that he
was keen to communicate. The shelves of book sellers
are crammed with exciting tales of cosmology, biology,
physics and mathematics. The television and radio buzz
with scientists keen to explain the latest breakthroughs.
There is a dialogue between science and society that
is just what Wilkins hoped to inspire with his writing.
But it is a dialogue in which scientists must continue
to engage as we head into a future full of uncertainty.
His faith in the power of technology to change the world
has certainly been vindicated. It may not be the winged
flying chariot that Wilkins had in mind in his book of
Mathematical Magick that has allowed humans to fly
but he would be delighted that technology has allowed
us to fly to the moon as he dreamt about, although he
might be disappointed that we didn’t meet the moonfolk he believed we’d find there. The perpetual motion
machines that he hoped would be possible might be
a fantasy when it comes to trying to solve the imminent
energy crisis but the importance of the experimental
scientific method that he advocated will be key to
future progress.
Wilkins was born into the age of baroque where
illusion and drama led to experiments with automata
that could talk, magical lanterns that could make
rainbows, architecture that was full of drama and
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surprise. The twenty-first century is a new baroque, full
of spectacles that Wilkins would have been enchanted
by. To encounter the advances in artificial intelligence,
to sit in a cinema and experience imaginary worlds,
to witness the modern cityscape with its extraordinary
buildings twisting and turning in a way that seems
to defy the laws of physics. Mathematics has truly led
to technology that seems no less magical today as it
would have done to Wilkins.
Wilkins’s message that scientific knowledge is
not the preserve of the scientific elite but should
be open to all levels of society is as pertinent in
this 400th anniversary as it was in the seventeenth
century. The scientists that made up Wilkins
scientific club, that became the Royal Society,
changed his world. Today the scientific
community is revolutionising modern life. It is
important that those scientists that are involved
in that revolution step up to the plate and, just
as Wilkins did, tell their stories to a society that
will be transformed by these new ideas.
Marcus du Sautoy
Marcus du Sautoy (Wadham 1983, Mathematics) is Charles Simonyi
Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor
of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He was President of
the Mathematical Association for 2012–13 and is a Fellow of New
College. Du Sautoy has written numerous academic articles and
books on mathematics and is known for his work popularising
mathematics. He wrote and presented The Story of Maths, a four
part landmark series for BBC4 about the history of maths, he writes
for The Times and The Guardian and appears on the TV series
School of Hard Sums with Dara Ó Briain.
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Questions, curiosity and
the wonder of science
Jo Dunkley
To me the wonder of science is the never-ending
learning of something new, something that we didn’t
know yesterday, or last year, or last century. It is being
allowed to ask questions, questions to which no-one
yet knows the answer. It is learning how to answer those
questions, and knowing when to trust what you have
found out. And then it is the giddy excitement when
the answer you find is completely unexpected.
The science we choose to do depends on what we each
think are the best questions, the most interesting or
important things to find out. I am a cosmologist, so
I want to know how the Universe came to be. I want
to know how big it is, how old it is, how it began, and
what will happen to it in the future. I want to know
how the Big Bang happened, how our own Milky Way
galaxy ended up forming years later, and why space
now seems to be expanding faster and faster.
I find it extraordinary that we can sit here on Earth
and answer questions like these. We can probe almost
unimaginable distances and vast complexity. We can’t
do it on our own though – to answer these sorts of big
questions means working collaboratively. That is also
part of the joy, as all over the globe people are asking
the same questions. Each person brings their own
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particular expertise, making it possible to do something
as ambitious as building the Large Hadron Collider, or
launching the Hubble Space Telescope.
This is part of the fun of doing science. I have worked
on two satellite missions, and love the process involved.
A team of scientists and engineers launch a telescope
into space on a rocket. It travels a million miles from
Earth, maps the sky, sends back the data, and after
a number of analysis steps involving huge computers
we can end up finding out when the Universe began.
This is incredible! Other experiments take us to some
of the most extreme places on Earth – high in the
north Chilean desert, deep underground, and down
in Antarctica where the sun doesn’t rise for half a year.
I am often asked if it is worth spending time and money
answering questions that do not always have a practical
benefit. I think so, yes – the knowledge enriches our
lives. That’s why I do it. But solving fundamental
science problems absolutely leads to technological
advance. Sometimes this happens serendipitously,
sometimes intentionally, sometimes through teaching
future innovators. I find that exciting. No challenge is
too big when you are trying to find out something new,
and this often leads to technical problems being solved
in creative ways.
I’m aware that we won’t personally get to answer most
of our questions. But this is part of being a scientist. I like
the example of Edmund Halley, who was at Oxford after
John Wilkins in the late 1600s. He wanted to find out how
far away the Sun was, but knew that he would not live
to make the measurement as it relied on a rare transit
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of Venus. So instead he ‘recommend[ed] it again and
again to those curious astronomers who will have an
opportunity of observing these things’.
As scientists we build on years of knowledge
and effort. This lets us take on hugely ambitious
projects, all the while imagining even bigger
and better ones to hand on to the next curious
generation.
Jo Dunkley
Jo Dunkley is Professor in Astrophysics at the University of
Oxford. Her research in cosmology studies the origins and
evolution of the Universe. Dunkley’s work involves determining
properties of the Universe such as its rate of expansion, the
nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and its behaviour in
the first moments after the Big Bang. She is a particular expert
in the Cosmic Microwave Background, light that gives us the
earliest possible view of the Universe. She was part of the science
team for NASA’s WMAP space satellite, and now works on the
Planck space satellite, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in
Chile, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. She has been
awarded the Maxwell Medal for physics and the Fowler Prize
for astronomy. She teaches undergraduate and graduate physics
students and is a tutorial fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
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