“Recording Anatomical Experiments in the Royal Society Archives”

Sietske Fransen (University of Cambridge)

Anatomical experiments were a regular part of the meetings of the early Royal Society. And many letters reporting anatomical curiosities and experiments were received by the Royal Society for discussion in their meetings. This paper discusses the way in which these experiments were reported in the administrative books of the Royal Society. What is the balance between textual descriptions and visual material? Who were involved in the recording of these experiments? Could the Fellows rely on their own writing and drawing skills or did they make use of more skilled draughtsmen?

Based on the material in the archives of the Royal Society, I will investigate the use of text and image in recording anatomical experiments. This research will help answering questions about the function of visual records in the recording experiments. Were images drawn to represent the process of the experiments? Or were they used as mnemotechnic tools? And what was the relationship between the textual description and drawing of the same experiment? What would become the primary source in the archive, the text or the image?

Focussing on anatomy—a field with a long visual tradition—this paper will show that the seventeenth-century experiments and new discoveries of the human and animal body were often recorded in traditional ways of textual descriptions and drawings. From the way in which these records were administered and archived we can subsequently understand more about the priorities and practices of the Fellows of the early Royal Society.

“The Frontispiece Tradition and the early Royal Society”

Katherine Reinhart (University of Cambridge)

The early Royal Society had a robust printing programme. From its associated journal the Philosophical Transactions, to now famous monographs like Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, the members of the Society circulated their discoveries and new ideas in publication. In addition, they also published translations into English of several works authored by other European scientific societies, like the French Académie royale des sciences.

Many of these published texts contain elaborate frontispiece engravings. Though the frontispiece to Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society of London is perhaps the most well known, the Royal Society also created new frontispiece images for many of their other publications including their translations of the Accademia del Cimento’s Saggi di naturali esperienze and the Académie royale des sciences’ Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux. Why did the Royal Society re-craft the frontispieces for these translated texts? What were these images meant to communicate to readers? And where do these images fit in relation to both the traditions of early modern frontispieces engravings and the Royal Society’s own graphic programme? By analysing the frontispieces created for their earliest published texts, this paper will consider the role of visual tradition and its relationship to scientific knowledge in the early Royal Society.

“Robert Hooke and the visual world of the early Royal Society”

Felicity Henderson (University of Exeter)

The early Fellows of the Royal Society were almost exclusively drawn from the educated elite of Restoration England. They owned, or visited, townhouses and country estates in which were displayed collections of portraits, engravings, books, sculptures and, perhaps, scientific instruments. Yet what were their relations with the English artists and craftsmen who produced some of these artefacts? And how might these relations have influenced choices about the use of visual resources in the dissemination of scientific ideas? This paper will examine key Fellows' associations with the painters and engravers, map-makers, makers of architectural drawings and models, sculptors, printers, craftsmen and instrument-makers who produced the visual culture of Restoration society. It will sketch out the extent and nature of the Fellows' relationships with these people, in particular noting points at which exchanges of information took place. A useful case-study is Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the Royal Society's Curator of Experiments, and Surveyor to the City of London, whose personal diary illuminates some ways in which Hooke's interactions with image-makers may have influenced, or been influenced by, his work for the Royal Society. This paper will attempt to show how individuals such as Hooke mediated between the world of visual culture and the largely oral and textual setting of the early Royal Society.