Abstract
IN the Moravian literary publication, Miscellanea, Dr. R. F. Young recently gave an account of the "Invisible College" which preceded the foundation of the Royal Society in 1662. The term was used to describe the periodical meetings of men of science at either London or Oxford, and Dr. Young points out that the contemporary meaning may have been derived in four possible ways. In the first place, it may be an Italian concetto adopted directly by Boyle from the name of a literary academy at Cremona. It may have been borrowed from the contemporary critics and opponents of the "invisible" Rosicrucians, such as J. V. Andreae (1586-1654). A third view is that it was a reminiscence of an elaborate play on the word 'invisible' contained in Shirley's comedy "The Bird in a Cage" (1633). The last possibility, towards which the author leans, is that it was a title devised by Theodore Haak to contain an implicit allusion to Comenius's plan of an international pan-sophic college for scientific research to be erected in London. This plan was much to the fore during Comenius's visit to England in 1641-42, and the scheme was set out in detail in his manuscript treatise, "Via Lucis" (1642). Haak was a German from the Palatinate who had been one of the principal supporters of the plan to establish a scientific academy in London. He regarded the informal scientific meetings as the nucleus of a future State college of science and is likely to have used the expression "Invisible College" in conversation with Boyle and others. The "Philosophical College" was thus the "Invisible College", until it definitely became the Royal Society.
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The "Invisible College", 1645–1662. Nature 142, 67–68 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142067d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142067d0