Samuel Pepys (pronounced "peeps") supplies you with an eye-witness account of what it was like to attend a meeting of the Royal Society. What further understanding do you gain from his description that you wouldn't have from reading the excerpts from the Royal Society's own Transactions? How does Pepys confirm, enrich or complicate your impression of C18 science?
Deadline: Wednesday (9/9), start of class.
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3 comments:
I would have never imagined how inhumane the members of the Royal Society could have been. The Royal Society delude themselves into believing that they are men of pure science and reason when they are in fact self beguiling fools trying to obtain an unobtainable world of trivial facts and measurements. The experiment performed by Dr. Croone was not entertainment, but an act of stupidity.
Of course it is inhumane to kill a dog in the name of scientific inquiry, even if the experiment (rudimentary as it is) provides a foundation for research into blood transfusion and all the medical benefits related therein. It is equally obvious that medical experiments on mice and primates and anything else today are justified because they are performed under the auspices of "pure science". Alonzo is right to suggest that Croone's experiment isn't entertainment. Croone (as understood by Pepys) asserts that the experiment is of potential "use to man's health", and is not meant as an entertaining diversion focusing on the humorous outcome of switching the blood of a Quaker with than of an archbishop. This seems to me to be a serious, albeit primitive, inquiry into the nature of anatomy, and should not be written off as "stupid" merely because it fails to conform to our glorified standards of ethics in modern science.
I must mainly agree with Andrew on this point. In fact, I would say that in many ways my ideas of how science was viewed during the enlightenment were confirmed by the text. Certainly, we as modern readers would view killing the dog as inhumane. However, it is that essential enthusiasm for science, however misguided, that I believe truly characterizes the time. Looking throughout the text we see examples of this enthusiasm everywhere; indeed, the fact that a flea was categorized down to the last joint in the "Observation 53. Of a Flea" (2187) section shows that these scientists were searching for a new way to look at the world around them. Sure, they may have made what we view as a mistake, but you cannot blame their enthusiasm.
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