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Tag Archives: Royal Society

Book of the Week — Anatomy of Plants with an Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants and Several Other Lectures…

02 Monday Apr 2018

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Carl Linnaeus, Charles II, Christopher Wren, flowers, fruits, leaves, London, Marcello Malpighi, microscope, microscopy, Nehemiah Grew, physiology, plant anatomy, plant morphology, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Royal Society, seeds, vegetables


“At a Meeting of the Council of the Royal Society, Fe. 22. 1681/2 Dr. Grew having read several Lectures of the Anatomy of Plants, some whereof have been already printed at divers times, and some are not printed; with several other Lectures of their Colours, Odours Tasts, and Salts, as also of the Solution of Salts in Water; and of Mixture; all of them to the satisfaction of the said Society; It is therefore Ordered, that He be desired, to casue the to printed [sic] together in one Volume.” — Chr. Wren P.R.S.

Anatomy of Plants: With an Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants and Several Other…
Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712)
London: Printed by W. Rawlins, for the author, 1682
First edition
QK41 G82

Rare Books was recently graced with a visit from a member of the Royal Society and two other guests, all three royalty in the world of science. This visit and the accompanying bright blue spring skies brought to mind flowers, vegetable gardens, herb gardens and this book. The great Sir Christopher Wren, founder and then-president of the Royal Society, “Ordered” Nehemiah Grew to publish the work presented here.

Nehemiah Grew was a physician, but made his reputation in the fields of plant morphology and anatomy. At the Royal Society, he met Robert Hooke, who was progressing in his studies in the field of microscopy. At the same time that Marcello Malpighi presented papers to the Society, Grew presented his The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun (1672). Both men reported on the cellular construction of the woody parts of plants, the beginning of a hypothesis of a cellular theory of plant life. Grew’s work led him to the announcement  that there were two sexes in plants.

This book is based on three earlier publications, “The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun (1672),” “An Idea of Phytological History Propounded (1673),” and “The Comparative Anatomy of Trunks (1675)”, together with a fourth unpublished book, “The Anatomy of Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds,” dedicated to Robert Boyle, and six discourses that had been delivered before the Royal Society.

In Grew’s dedicatory epistle to King Charles II, he wrote, “Your Majesty will here see, That there are those things within a Plant, little less admirable, than within an Animal. That a Plant, as well as an Animal, is composed of several Organical Parts; some whereof may be called its Bowels. That every Plant hath Bowels of divers kinds, conteining divers kinds of Liguors. That even a Plant lives partly upon Aer; for the reception whereof, it hath those Parts which are answerable to Lungs. So that A Plant is, as it were, an Animal in Quires; as an Animal is a Plant, or rather several Plants bound up into Volume.”

Nehemiah Grew’s work turned the anatomy and physiology of plants into a new science. This is the first book in which Robert Hooke’s newly invented microscope is demonstrated for the examination plants.

Grew began his studies with naked-eye observations and then continued with observations seen at the higher magnifications made possible with Hooke’s microscope.

“…all the Observations conteined in the First Book, except one or two, were made with the Naked Eye. The the end, I might first give a proof, How far it was possible for us to go, without the help of Glasses: which many Ingenious Men want; and more, the patience to manage them. For the Truth of these Observations, Seignior Malpighi, having procured my Book to be translated into Latin for his private us, speaks his own sense, in some of his Letters to Mr. Oldenburge, printed at the end of his Anatomy of Plants…Having thus begun with the bare Eye; I next proceeded to the use of the Microscope. And the Observations thereby made, first on Roots, and afterwards on Trunks and Branches, together with the figures…”

Through these observations he was able to describe the structure of stems and roots by the combined use of transverse, radial, and tangential longitudinal sections.

“In the Plates, for the clearer conception of the Part described, I have represented it, generally, as entire, as its being magnified to some good degree, would bear…Yet have I not every where magnify’d the Part to the same degree; but more or less, as was necessary to represent what is spoken of it. And very highly, only in some few Examples, as in Tab. 40. which may suffice to illustrate the rest. Some of the Plates, especially those which I did not draw to the Engravers hand, are a little hard and stiff: but they are all well enough done, to represent what they intend.”

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus dedicated a genus of trees to Grew in appreciation of his work. Few important advances on the ideas of Grew would be made for nearly another one hundred years.

Illustrated with eighty-three engraved plates, some double-page, showing microscopic sections of plant structures.

 

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Book of the Week — Lectures of Experimental Philosophy

12 Monday Feb 2018

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air, B. Creake, barometers, Bible in Jermyn-Street, Cambridge, England, English, France, heat, Herman Boerhaave, hydrometers, Isaac Newton, J. Sackfield, John Keill, John Theophilus Desaguliers, Lamb without Temple-Bar, Latin, Lincolns-Inn-Square, London, mechanics, optics, Paul Dawson, Robert Boyle, Royal Society, s'Gravesande, Sir Richard Steel, St. James's, thermometers, W. Mears


“And that we may not be decieved by false Notions which we have embraced without Examining, or that we have received upon the Authority of others; we ought to call in Question all such things as have an Appearance of Falshood, that by a new Examen we may be led to the Truth.”

Lectures of Experimental Philosophy…
John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683-1744)
London: Printed for W. Mears at the Lamb without Temple-Bar; B. Creake, at the Bible in Jermyn-Street, St. James’s; and J. Sackfield in Lincolns-Inn-Square, MDCCXIX (1719)

J. T. Desaguliers’ writings on mechanics were published as a set of lectures in 1717 in an 80-page tract of brief abstracts. This work, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, edited by Desaguliers’ student, Paul Dawson, is believed to be spurious, published without consent of the author. Dawson, in his dedication, states that he had the author’s acknowledgement.


“I therefore humbly Present to You the following treatise, containing the several Philosophical Experiments in his publick Lectures, which I have carefully collected, and that Gentleman approved of.”

Desaguliers disavowed this, although he wrote in his Preface, or Advertisement to the Reader, that “he looked over the whole book and corrected every error.”


“Mr. Dawson (a young Man whom Sir Richard Steel had put under my Care) took a Copy of the Lectures above-mentioned, that they might be of Service to him when he went thro’ my Courses, and they were afterwards sold and published without my Knowledge. But as the Booksellers have made me Satisfaction, and purchased the Copy of me, I have looked over the whole Book, and corrected every Error therein…”

In any event, in this work Desaguliers tells the reader “How to make a heavy Body seem to rise it self,” “How to Condense the AIR, so that you may put what Quantity you please into a Vessel,” gives a “description of the Air-Pump Mr. Boyle made use of,” describes different types of barometers, thermometers, and hydrometers; and offers an essay on Isaac Newton’s “Colours.”

Desaguliers was born in France and raised in England. He studied at Oxford under John Keill, spending a good deal of his time reading Newton’s Principia. He attended a course of lectures given by s’Gravesande on mechanical consequences of the laws of motion as Newton defined them. In 1720, Desaguliers translated s’Gravesande’s work on Newton from Latin into English. As one of the foremost researchers in the Royal Society, he repeated several of Newton’s experiments on heat, optics and mechanics. Some of his results were made use of by Newton in the third edition of Principia. Desaguliers was an ardent supporter of Newton.

This is a reissue of A System of Experimental Philosophy, London, 1719.

The title-page is new, a preface by the author is added, an errata leaf and an advertisement leaf advertising the English translation of a work of Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) have been prefixed to the original title page.

Rare Books copy bound in contemporary Cambridge binding, rebacked. Text contains a few contemporary annotations and an ownership signature of James (?) Hardy on the paste-down.

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Book of the Week — Mercury: or the Secret and Svvift Messenger

05 Monday Feb 2018

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alphabet, Bishop of Chester, chaplain, cipher, codebook, communication, cryptology, English, Fleetstreet, George, Iohn Maynard, John Wilkins, Lawrence Strangman, London, Oliver Cromwell, Royal Society, Saint Dunstans Church, Timothy Wilkins


“There is no safety but by flight.”

Mercury: or the secret and svvift messenger…
John Wilkins (1614-1672)
London: Printed by I. Norton, for Iohn Maynard, and Timothy Wilkins, and are to be sold at the George in Fleetstreet, neere Saint Dunstans Church, 1641
First edition
Z103 W68 1641

This codebook has charts and figures describing how the reader can master the art of secret communication. It is the first book in English on cryptology, published anonymously in 1641. John Wilkins, a chaplain who married Oliver Cromwell’s sister and became Bishop of Chester and a founder and first secretary of the Royal Society revealed himself to be the author when the second edition was printed that same year.

Mercury introduced the words “cryptographia” (secret writing), and “cryptologia” (secrecy in speech) into English. Wilkins defined “cryptomeneses” as the art of secret communication, in general. Wilkins described three kinds of geometrical cipher, a system in which a message is represented by dots, lines, or triangles.

The letters of the alphabet, in normal or mixed order, were written out at known spatial intervals, serving as the key. This line of letters was held at the top of a sheet of paper, and the message was spelled out by marking a dot for each plaintext letter underneath that letter in the key alphabet, each dot lower than its predecessor. The dots could then be connected by twos to form lines, by threes to form triangles, or all together to form what would look like a graph. Or, they could be left as dots. The receiver, who had an identically proportioned key, noted the positions of the dots, the ends of the lines, or the apexes of the triangles against the alphabetical scale to read the plaintext.

The end papers and flyleafs, front and back, are 17th century printer’s waste from an unidentified French to English dictionary. Ex libris Lawrence Strangman, a collector of 16th to 20th century English literature.

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Book of the Week — An Essay Towards a Real Character…

18 Tuesday Apr 2017

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animals, Bishop of Chester, cryptography, engravings, Gellibrand, grammar, Great Fire of London, John Ray, John Wilkins, Joseph Moxon, language, Latin, letterforms, London, music, Oliver Cromwell, paneled calf, phonetics, plants, printing, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Royal Society, space travel, symbols, theology, Trinity College, typography, University of Utah, vowels, William Harvey, William Lloyd

P101-W4-1668-pg311
“…Letters, the Invention of which was a thing of so great Art and exquisiteness, that…doth from hence inferr the divinity and spirituality of the humane soul, and that it must needs be of a farr more excellent and abstracted Essence that mere Matter or Body…” — John Wilkins

An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language
John Wilkins (1616-1672)
London: Printed for S. Gellibrand, 1668
First edition

John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, was the chief founder of the Royal Society and its first secretary. He was Master of Trinity College. Wilkins was acquainted with many of the great minds of his day: William Harvey, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. He married the younger sister of Oliver Cromwell. In 1662, he lost all of his library and scientific instruments to the Great Fire of London. He was interested in just about everything — from theology to cryptography, music to space travel. He worked on creating an artificial universal language to replace Latin as a means of clearer communication between scholars and philosophers.

In this book Wilkins discussed the origin of language and letterforms, as well as a theory of grammar and phonetics. He classified words by their meanings and assigned each class a set of typographical characters, in an attempt to create a rationally ordered language and system of symbols.

P101-W4-1668-pg186

He divided the universe into forty classes, or categories, and subdivided these, and then subdivided these. To each class he assigned a monosyllable of two letters; to each subdivision he added a consonant; to each further subdivision, or species, he added a vowel. Each letter, or symbol, had meaning.

P101-W4-1668-Faces

John Ray drew up systematic tables of plants and animals for the book. An index was created by Dr. William Lloyd. Joseph Moxon (1627-1691) cut the typographical characters Wilkins proposed for his language. Moxon was the author of Mechanick Exercises, the first comprehensive manual of printing and letter-founding in any language.

The first issue of the first edition appeared without any of the engraved plates. This copy, apparently a second issue, contains all of the plates, although two folded leaves of tables and diagrams that are in other copies are missing. Bound with Wilkins’ An alphabetical dictionary, wherin all English Words According to their various significations, are either referred to their Places in the Philosophical Tables, Or explained by such words as are in those tables. The second work functions as an index to the first.

University of Utah copy bound in contemporary paneled calf with covers ruled in blind.

P101-W4-1668-NoahsArk

“From what hath been said it may appear, that the measure and capacity of the Ark, which some Atheistical irreligious men make use of, as an argument against the Scripture, ought rather to be esteemed a most rational confirmation of the truth and divine authority of it. Especially if it be well considered, that in those first and ruder ages of the World… men were less versed in Arts and Philosophy, and therefore probably more obnoxious to vulgar prejudices than now they are… — John Wilkins

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Book of the Week – Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy…

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

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English, engraved plates, Freemason, Isaac Newton, John Theophilus Desaguliers, Latin, Leiden, London, philosophy, Royal Society, Willem Jacob s'Gravesande


Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy…
Willem Jacob s’Gravesande (1688-1742)
London: Printed for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1720
First English edition
QC19 G73 1720

Written in Latin by Willem Jacob s’Gravesande, Mathematical elements… was first published in Leiden in 1720. Illustrated with thirty-three folded engraved plates, this edition also contains a publisher’s catalog at the end.

Willem Jacob s’Gravesande was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in Leiden in 1715. A friend of Isaac Newton, s’Gravesande gained fame by being the first to teach Newtonian philosophy. Mathematical elements… was dedicated to Newton.

In 1734, s’Gravesande was promoted to chair of Philosophy. The Reverend John Theophilus Desaguliers, a member of the Royal Society, a Copley medal winner, inventor and Freemason, translated s’Gravesande’s book into English the same year it was first published in Leiden, apparently at s’Gravesande’s request. As was the practice in the eighteenth century, s’Gravesande constantly corrected and added to his work, each edition being an amplification of the first. The work went through six editions. s’Gravesande, who relied heavily on Newton’s Principia and Opticks, used a philosophical and well-argued method of justifying scientific truths by self-evidence and experimental verification.

 

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