Clockwork 2

After reading so much fantasy, I expected that returning to history would be dull, and I almost started a new book to add a little more excitement. But actually, “the Clockwork Universe” was very entertaining. Rather than writing chronologically, the author picks a theme and shares several vignettes about the Royal Society and its members. I learned about Leibniz, who I really only knew from Voltaire’s work of satire Candide. Leibniz was a genius who knew a lot about everything, and constantly flew from one pursuit and place to another. He invented calculus independently of Newton at about the same time, but in the middle of doing so he traveled to see an invention that supposedly allowed people to walk in water (it didn’t really work). I want to read more about Leibniz. While Leibniz was all over the place, Newton stayed in a very small area in England. Even though he explained the tides, he never saw the sea.

There were a lot of gruesome and sensational experiments done in the Royal Society. Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke invented the vacuum pump, the effects of which were demonstrated on various subjects with great enthusiasm. The members were fascinated at how a chicken immediately spasmed and died in a vacuum, but a snake did not. Robert Hooke even volunteered to enter a vacuum himself. The pump malfunctioned before killing the zealous scientist, but Hooke was given dizziness and temporary deafness for his failed attempt. The most gruesome to me was when a madman was given a blood transfusion from a sheep in the attempt to cure him of his madness. Somehow the madman suffered no ill effects, but neither was he cured of his madness.

The society had varying views about the new position of science. While in the past the secrets of science had been closely guarded and perhaps never passed on, the Robert Boyle said that it was a crime not to spread the light of ideas. He even wanted laymen to be able to understand science. Robert Hooke wanted to keep some secrets for the sake of patents, and Newton had no desire to simplify science, but in the end they both furthered Boyle’s cause despite their intentions.

It was also interesting that these scientists were so willing to believe other claims that would be dismissed without consideration today. For example, one presentation in the Royal Society concerned “weapon salve”, made in part from something that grows on a human corpse after a few days, and applied to a weapon so that the wound that the weapon has made would heal. Gruesome stuff indeed.