The Royal Society

Bacon’s fable made an institution.¹²

Documented core

Founded in 1660 and chartered by the Crown in 1662, the Royal Society took Bacon’s New Atlantis as a working ideal; its early apologist Thomas Sprat (History of the Royal-Society, 1667) framed the Society as the realisation of Salomon’s House. The elect of philosopher-scientists that Bacon imagined became a standing body — the robes exchanged for instruments, the structure held.

Role in the thesis

The documented step at which the trunk’s scientific idiom stopped being a fable and became an institution. Cited as the ordinary reading-and-adoption of a published ideal, not as a secret order.

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1. The Royal Charter of the Royal Society (1662) — incorporation of 'The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge' ↩︎

2. Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal-Society of London (1667) — the near-contemporary apologia framing the Society on Bacon's model ↩︎

Referenced by. Where this entry is cited in the reading — hover any to read it in place.

• Two Testimonies — “The Royal Society took the fable as an ideal.”
• The Administrators — “The Royal Society took the fable as a working model.”
• The Trunk — “The Royal Society, founded a generation later, took the fable as a working ideal.”