Science/Spectacle

One place to which we can trace the origins of science and spectacle in the long eighteenth century—the subject of the three recent titles under review—is Gresham College in May of 1664. The newly formed Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge was making "intense" preparations for the reception of its royal founder and patron, Charles II, who was expected to attend its upcoming weekly meeting (Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, The Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985], 31). The newly restored king's enthusiasm for the new science was evident to all, but the company of experimentalists he had licensed just two years before had so far received precious little support, financial or otherwise, and their activities were as likely to serve as an object of jest as they were to encourage the king's hopes for technological benefits. Indeed, only a few months before, the king had "mightily laughed" at the Royal Society within earshot of Samuel Pepys, FRS, "for spending time only in weighing of air and doing nothing else since they sat" (Pepys Diary, 1 Feb. 1664, E. S. de Beer, "King Charles II, Fundator et Patronus (1630–1685)," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 15 [July 1960], 39–45).

The anticipated visit of the king, then, had the texture of a client auditioning for his patron. Christopher Wren, writing to the society's president at this time, was clearly worried that the king might not understand the consequence of their activities, and he urged that the society demonstrate experiments selected not for their philosophic rigor but for the rarity of the spectacle they produced. An experiment that might "open new light into the principles of philosophy" would "beseem the pretensions of the society," he wrote, but the performance of it would likely be too "jejune"; for the king, "there ought to be something of pomp." Of course, the society could not be seen to play the same tricks as "even jugglers abound with," he counseled. Rather, their demonstrations "must be something between both, luciferous in philosophy, and yet whose use and advantage is obvious without a lecture; and besides, that may surprise with some unexpected effect, and be commendable for the ingenuity of the contrivance" (Wren to Brouncker, 30 July/9 August 1663; Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 31).

In 1664 science was grudgingly turned into spectacle for court performance, a performance that, curiously enough, we cannot be certain ever actually took place. In the records and diaries that have come down to us, we have ample evidence that the Royal Society expected and planned for the visit, but no reports of the visit actually happening (Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 31n). As such, we can understand the role of spectacle here as a feature intrinsic not so much to natural philosophy itself but to the networks of patronage within which science and scientists had become enmeshed by the beginning of the long eighteenth century, and which conditioned its growth and progress. According to Wren, the spectacular qualities of the right kind of experiment should derive from the clarity and importance of the matter of fact so performed (that is, from its "luciferousness"), but he acknowledged that the choice of experiment in the end ought to be determined by its capacity to delight and surprise an audience. Haunting Wren's proposal is the nagging sense that in doing so the society may tread too closely on the heels of natural magicians, charlatans, and jugglers, mere entertainers who produce "knacks only" and no solid knowledge. We see here at the beginning of the long eighteenth century a convergence of...