John Wilkins Jane Garnett and Cliff Davies

Home , Gresham College, John Wilkins, Matthew Wren (writer)

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

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)

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 sacrament- based 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 practically- orientated 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 death- bed 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 twenty- ﬁrst 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.

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 middle- aged 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

33 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.

34 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.

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

37 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 moon- folk 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

38 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.

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

41 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

42 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.