270 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Natural Experiments ; with the state of these studies and their cultiva- 

 tion at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the 

 blood, the valves in the veins, the ven.ce lactece, the lymphatic vessels, 

 the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the 

 satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, 

 the spots on the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities 

 and selenography of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mer- 

 cury, the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that 

 purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities 

 and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quick- 

 silver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration 

 therein, with divers other things of like nature, some of which were 

 then but new discoveries, and others not so generally known and em- 

 braced as now they are ; with other things appertaining to what hath 

 been called the New Philosophy, which from the times of Galileo at 

 Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath 

 been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts 

 abroad, as well as with us in England.' 



The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates in these words 

 what happened half a century before, or about 1645. 



Among the first publications of the Royal Society of London 

 were the works of Malpighi, the Italian microscopical anatomist, 

 in 1669, and others by Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch microscopist. 



The French Academy (Academic des sciences) began its meetings 

 in 1666, and the corresponding Berlin Academy in 1700. 



The oldest American association for the promotion of science 

 is the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for 

 Promoting Useful Knowledge, proposed by Benjamin Franklin 

 in 1743 and finally organized in 1769. Franklin himself presided 

 over it from 1769 until his death in 1790. 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY: BACON AND DESCARTES. It has been 

 shown above how the all-inclusive philosophy of their predecessors 

 began with Plato and Aristotle to be divisible into general and 

 " natural " philosophy, - - a differentiation which continued to 

 exist and to increase slowly through the Middle Ages and the 

 Renaissance. 



We have also shown how the mariner's compass, the invention 



