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Reconstructing Restoration Science: Problems and Pitfalls in Institutional History

Lotte and Glenn Mulligan's recent paperl presents a statistical analysis of the Royal Society's membership from 1660 to 1700, with a commentary. It thus adds to an already sizeable literature inspired by the Royal Society's pioneering role in scientific organization, and by the profuse records that survive of its early aspirations and activity. The Mulligans' contribution offers information on some topics which had not previously been systematically scrutinized notably the age, education and scientific interests of all Fellows elected during the late seventeenth century. (Previously, Frank had quantified such information only for active Fellows in sample years.2) The Mulligans' paper also contains a more elaborate analysis than has existed hitherto of data on the status and occupations of the total membership for the period 1660-1685 a subject which I assessed in a paper published in 19763 and for the further years 1686-1700. In addition, the Mulligans attempt to interpret recruitment in terms of successive secretarial regimes which, they argue, defined the pattern of the Society's early history. In an Appendix I offer a few detailed comments on the tables which form the central component of the Mulligans' paper, and on the value of the information that they provide to supplement what is already known about the Society's early membership. Here I wish to deal, not with the Mulligans' statistical data, but with their interpretation of it. This is because there is considerable agreement, on the topics on which they overlap, between the Mulligans' analysis of recruitment and that in my 1976 paper (though it is disguised by a differing periodization and other complications discussed in the Appendix). Moreover, though the period covered by my 1976 paper terminated in 1685, I have since extended my analysis of the membership to 1700.4 I can therefore now collate my later findings with those of the Mulligans. Not only does their analysis bear out my conclusion that the Society's early membership came predominantly from the professional and landed classes and from