Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
blogs.royalsociety.org
Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#2This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar).
Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone is interested. Hans Sloane is pretty fascinating in his own right and was recently the subject of a biography: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737334
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#3Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#4This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar). Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone i…
Well? Did you find any references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs?
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#5Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.
The handwriting is pretty sloppy on at least the first few pages from what I see. A lot of the letters become so small that they're little more than bumps on a line. Being in cursive certainly doesn't help either. Some of the words use alternate spellings which makes them a little more difficult to recognize.
But really, cursive is optimized for reducing the possibility of failure (inkblots) on primitive quill pens, not for readability. Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent print.
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#6Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.
Even if you can read it, the language of the time can be hard to understand.
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#7This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar). Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone i…
Does any of the meeting minutes contain a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz that you know of ?
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#8This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar). Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone i…
Well? Did you find any references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs?
Tons! Some examples show up in my dissertation, which is available here [1]. Best way to find them is to search "royal society" in the PDF.
One of the more interesting examples is Robert Boyle's list of "desiderata" for future scientific discoveries which includes entries like "Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams" and "Freedom from Necessity of much Sleeping exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and what happens in Mad-Men."
[1] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/46...
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#9Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.
There's a transcription available if you click the page-looking button in the sidebar.
Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711
#10This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar). Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone i…
Does any of the meeting minutes contain a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz that you know of ?
I never looked for it, but Leibniz was a member of the RS so he almost certainly shows up. He's mentioned frequently in the Philosophical Transactions. For example here's
"the Answer of Mr. Leibnitz" in response to a letter from "clarissimis viris Newtono" (the most distinguished Newton):
https://books.google.com/books?id=7uwyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA186&dq=%...