Invisible College

The concept of an invisible college , mentioned by Ziman, is the creation of Derek de Sofia Price, an influential historian of science and herald of scientomet-rics (Yagi et al. 1996), who wrote at length about such colleges and their role in the scientific enterprise (Price 1963, 1986). Price was one of the first to apply quantitative... 

Beeler, Stanley W. The Invisible College a study of three original Rosicrucian texts. New York AMS Press, 1991. 168p. ISBN 0-404-64054-0... 

Willard, Thomas S. Review of The Invisible College a study of the original Rosicrucian texts, by Stanley W. Beeler. In Cauda Pavonis 11, no. 2 (Fall 1992) 11-12.. ... 

Some Essays on Scientific Societies, Invisible College and One by D. W. Singer... 

Webster, Charles. New light on the Invisible College the social relations of science in the mid-seventeenth century. Trans Roy Hist Soc [5] 24 (1974) 19-42. Contains some references to Hartlib Rosicrucians... 

Lomas, Robert. The Invisible College the Royal Society, Freemasonry and the birth of modern science. London Headline, 2002. 

Lomas, Robert. The Invisible College the Royal Society, Freemasonry and the birth of modem science. London Headline, 2003. x, 437p. ISBN 0-7472-3977-0 Backgrounf material. Some references to Newton and alchemy, and to Rosucrucian sympathies of some of the members... 

We could say that in Spain today there is an invisible college uniting Spanish researchers interested in the economics of pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical industry. This can be seen by analysing the cross-references. It is also symptomatic that practically every year a special session dedicated to this topic is held at the Conference on Health Economics. 

Valentine, Basil. The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony. London, 1685. Vallee, Jacques. The Invisible College. New York Dutton, 1975. 

An invisible college is a set of interacting scholars or scientists who share similar research interests concerning a subject specialty, who often produce publications relevant to this subject and who communicate both formally and informally with one another to work towards important goals in the subject, even though they may belong to geographically distant research affiliates. 

In late 1655 or early 1656, Boyle moved to Oxford, where he could enjoy the company of other natural philosophers. In 1645 a number of people interested in the new experimental philosophy had formed a group, called the Invisible College, which met weekly in London. However, the Civil War had interrupted these meetings. Some of the members had migrated to Oxford, which was a royalist stronghold at the time others had left the capital city for a variety of reasons. By 1655 some of the members of the Invisible College had become... 

Boyle and Christopher Wren. Their so-called Invisible College became the Royal Society in 1660, and the seal of Royal patronage meant that from now on, the prominence of alchemy would gradually diminish as research become ever more based in the empiricism championed by Francis Bacon and Descartes. 

An exile from Germany courtesy of the Thirty Years War, Hartlib was the prime mover behind the Invisible College, which... 

Something of a dilettante alchemist, Sir Kenelm apparendy turned to the art after the death of his wife. He promoted the idea of the powder of sympathy, which, when applied to weapons, could cure at a distance the wounds they had caused. He was involved with Hartlib s Invisible College, and at one stage embarked on a life of piracy in the Mediterranean to put himself back in funds. 

Boyle, Robert. (1627-1691). A native of Ireland, Boyle devoted his life to experiments in what was then called natural philosophy, i.e., physical science. He was influenced early by Galileo. His interest aroused by a pump that had just been invented, Boyle studied the properties of air, on which he wrote a treatise (1660). Soon thereafter, he stated the famous law that bears his name (see following entry). Boyle s group of scientific enthusiasts was known as the invisible college , and in 1663 it became the Royal Society of London. Boyle was one of the first to apply the principle that Francis Bacon had described as the new method —namely, inductive experimentation as opposed to the deductive method of Aristotle—and this became and has remained the cornerstone of scientific research. Boyle also investigated hydrostatics, desalination of seawater, crystals, electricity, etc. He approached but never quite stated the atomic theory of matter however, he did distinguish between compounds and mixtures and conceived the idea of particles becoming associated to form molecules. 

By 1625, Rosicrucian scientists had also become victims of the witch-hunt. Even the fledgling Royal Society, established by Charles I on St Andrew s Day, was obliged to go underground where it became the Invisible College in 1649."° The Royal Society eventually emerged in 1662 under Charles IPs sponsorship." He had an alchemy laboratory built under his bedchamber, with access by a private staircase. 

Sir Christopher Wren was a founding member of the Royal Society and frequented the Invisible College. There are scant records of Freemasonry at this time but Anderson s New Book of Constitutions of 1738 notes Wren, the Master of the London Operative Masons Company was a Grand Master of Freemasonry in 1685." Similarly, John Aubrey, an antiquary and fellow of the Royal Society, recorded that an order initiated Wren in 1691 at St Paul s Cathedral." ... 

The Rosicmcian influence then revived once more with Dr John Dee, Shakespearean literature, the cautious writings of Paracelsus and the mystical works of Fludd and Maier in the seventeenth century. This tiny trickle received some impetus with the Invisible College and Royal Society. It became a gentle stream when the English chemists and physicists Robert Boyle, William Cooper, Eireneus Philalethes and Sir Isaac Newton began to bring bona fide chemical and alchemical investigations some respectability. 

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