10 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



and Physiology as well, and even contributed to the Philosophical 

 Transactions, February 22, 1675, an essay entitled "Theological 

 Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection ' '. The 

 Philosophers had not yet learned that the whole province of knowl 

 edge was too broad. The scope of their studies was, therefore, 

 practically unbounded. Dr. "Wallis, a charter member of. the 

 Royal Society, wrote in 1696: "Our business was (precluding 

 matters of Theology and State affairs) to discourse and consider of 

 philosophical inquiries, and such as related thereunto; as Physick, 

 Astronomy, Geometry, Anatomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, 

 Chymicks, Mechanics, and Natural Experiments; with the state of 

 these studies, and their cultivation at home and abroad. We then 

 discoursed of the Circulation of the Blood, the valves in the 

 veins, the venae lactae, 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 axis, the inequalities and seleno 

 graphy of the moon, the several phases of Venus, and Mercury, 

 the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that 

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

 vacuities and Nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experi 

 ment in quicksilver, 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 embraced as they now are; with other things apper 

 taining to what hath been called the New Philosophy, which, from 

 the time 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 ", 84 

 Some of the new philosophers, however, had well defined in 

 terests to which they devoted their best energies. Newton, al 

 though interested in theology, was a physicist and mathematician; 

 Ray was a thoroughgoing botanist, as was his intimate friend Wil- 

 lughby; Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch scientist, who was so closely con 

 nected with the Royal Society, did his best work in microscopical 

 physiology; Flamsteed was the Royal Astronomer from 1676 to 

 1719. The day of scientific specialization was dawning, but had 



84 Wallis, John, Account of some passages from his own life. Letter to the Royal 

 Society, 1696. 



