THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 7 



human documents in our tongue ; Robert Hooke, inventor of the micro- 

 scope, brilliant and original, who as Curator of Experiments to the 

 Royal Society displayed an inexhaustible fertility in devising experi- 

 mental proof of scientific laws ; whose discovery of the laws of universal 

 gravitation takes away much of the originality often accredited to 

 Newton; Sir William Petty, the political economist and statistician, 

 who as a side issue was Professor of Anatomy at Oxford and Professor 

 of Music at Gresham College; John Wallis, the prosperous Rector of 

 St. Martin's Parish, Ironmonger Row, London, the author of the best 

 English Grammar and of the most famed text book on Logic of his 

 time, later Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, and second only 

 to Newton as the most important English mathematician of his gen- 

 eration; Christopher Wren, Professor of Astronomy at Gresham Col- 

 lege, later Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, undoubtedly the 

 most widely accomplished man of his time, named by Macaulay ''that 

 rare and early prodigy of universal science," complimented by Newton 

 for his mastery of mathematics, original experimenter in anatomy and 

 in the transfusion of blood from one animal to another, originator of 

 a microscopic study of insects, artist and poet, member of Parliament 

 for twenty years, whose side lines were a complete plan for the rebuild- 

 ing of London after the great fire of 1666, the construction of the mili- 

 tary defenses of the city, the architecture of halls and towers at Oxford 

 and Cambridge, and the building of St. Paul's Cathedral. 



This group, together with about an equal number of less known but 

 equally enthusiastic associates, nearly all under thirty-five years of age, 

 confirmed one of the greatest events in British history, when on July 

 15, 1662, they received the charter of the Royal Society from the King. 

 On that foundation has been built the great structure of British 

 science. The men who constituted these first groups of organized science 

 were not long-faced specialists or academicians in the continental 

 sense; they were convivial Englishmen and men taken from all walks 

 of life. This type of membership was maintained for many generations. 

 The membership lists for the first century of its history include many 

 prominent members of the peerage, numerous members of Parliament, 

 amiable and versatile politicians, a notable band of medical men, artists, 

 critics, civil servants, and pamphleteers. There were bishops, like 

 Samuel Squire, and explorers and travelers like Captain Middleton (an 

 adventurer of Hudson Bay Company) and antiquarians like Martin 

 Folkes, and all-round good fellows like Daniel Wray and Jeremiah 

 Dyson, both of whom have been accused of writing the Junius Letters. 



But a strange destiny awaited Gresham College. In 1645 Samuel 

 Foster was professor of astronomy at Gresham College and lectured 

 Wednesday at 2 o'clock. It was the custom of the group of new phil- 

 osophers, led by Robert Boyle, to attend Foster's lecture, and later to 



