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SUMMARY:Reviving the Royal Society in the early eighteenth century - Alice
  Marples (King's College London)
DTSTART:20160222T130000Z
DTEND:20160222T141500Z
UID:TALK63633@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39097
DESCRIPTION:By the end of the seventeenth century\, the Royal Society was 
 buckling under the weight of its own ambition: it was deep in debt and lac
 king in both confidence and members. Most histories cite the presidency of
  Isaac Newton as halting this decline briefly before the Society descended
  into a period of amateurism and antiquarianism. This paper shall posit a 
 different explanation by outlining the range of internal administrative re
 forms undertaken by Hans Sloane (1660–1753) and other officers between 1
 700 and 1740\, and their effects. Of particular importance is the consciou
 s consolidation and expansion of the Society's correspondence networks\, a
 nd the ways in which Sloane blurred the Society's resources with his own i
 n order to re-establish the Society as a necessary node in scientific know
 ledge production. I argue that Sloane's work as a natural history collecto
 r at the centre of many different networks is linked to a deliberate shift
  in the role and purpose of the Society\, from ruling over matters of fact
  to facilitating the work of others and providing a repository of informat
 ion to discuss. Rather than being a symptom of the 'decline' of the Royal 
 Society in the early eighteenth century\, this was a key element of its re
 vival.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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