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John Wilkins

 
Scientist: John Wilkins
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English mathematician and scientist (1614–1672)

Born at Fawsley in Northamptonshire, Wilkins was educated at Oxford University, graduating in 1631. He was a parliamentarian during the English Civil War and became warden of Wadham College, Oxford University. In 1659 he was appointed master of Trinity College, Cambridge University. After the Restoration he lost his post but regained favor to become bishop of Chester.

Wilkins's chief contribution to the development of science was his part in founding the Royal Society. His influence can be traced back to his student days at Oxford when he collected around him a lively group of philosophers and scientists who later became founder members of the society in 1662. His own writings covered a wide range of fields and although he had a certain amount of mathematical knowledge he was more a practical scientist. His Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638) is a fantasy in which he speculated about the structure of the Moon. A later semimathematical work, Mathematical Magick, deals with the principles of machine design and in it Wilkins argued that perpetual motion is a theoretical possibility. One nonscientific interest to which Wilkins devoted much time was his project of devising a universal language.

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British History: John Wilkins
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Wilkins, John (1614-72). One of the most prominent of the remarkable group of amateur scientists in the mid-17th cent. He attended Oxford and took holy orders, becoming chaplain to a number of noblemen. In his first book, Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638), he argued that man could reach the moon and that it could be made habitable. The ‘invisible college’ of scientists which he organized was the forerunner of the Royal Society, established in 1660 with Wilkins as secretary. Joining the parliamentary side in the Civil War, he was appointed warden of Wadham College, Oxford, in 1648 and in 1656 married a sister of Oliver Cromwell, retaining his college headship. In 1659 he transferred to the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and though he lost it at the Restoration, he was made dean of Ripon in 1663 and bishop of Chester in 1668.

History 1450-1789: John Wilkins
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Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > History 1450-1789

Wilkins, John (1614–1672), an important figure in the history of science, religion, literature, and linguistics. As his many publications suggest, Wilkins possessed a wide-ranging intellect. His contributions to natural philosophy include the popularization of science, development of English scientific organization, creation of a universal language, and demonstration of the compatibility of religion and science. The Discovery of a World in the Moone (1638) and A Discourse concerning a New World and Another Planet (1640) introduced lay readers to Copernicanism and the implications of Galileo's telescopic observations, but literary figures satirized his speculations about the possibility of lunar flight and lunar inhabitants. He also proposed solutions to possible conflicts with Scripture, which he suggested God had "accommodated" to the capacity of the common people. Natural knowledge was determined by "Sensible Experiments and Necessary Demonstration"; science was an independent body of knowledge verifiable by its own standards of investigation. Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641) explores the nature of codes and secret communications and proposes a "Universal Character" and language. Mathematical Magick, or the wonders that may be performed by mechanical geometry (1648) explains fundamental principles of mechanics and suggests both practical and fanciful devices utilizing these principles.

While warden of Wadham College, Oxford, Wilkins defended universities against the attacks of Thomas Hobbes and the radical sects, and insisted that the universities were hospitable to recent developments in natural philosophy. He recruited to Wadham a group of naturalists of differing religious and political persuasions to pursue a wide-ranging, cooperative, and experimental program that was the forerunner of the Royal Society, which he helped to found, serving as one of its secretaries and supervising the composition of Thomas Sprat's The History of the Royal Society (1667). His long-standing interest in language and linguistics culminated in An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668), which describes a universal language he designed to facilitate scientific communication and trade and reduce religious misunderstanding.

Wilkins also made important contributions to religion and wrote frequently reprinted works on the organization and presentation of preaching and prayer. In A Discourse concerning the Beauty of Providence and All the Rugged Passages of It (1649) he advised acceptance of recent political changes. During the Restoration he became a key figure in the development of latitudinarian theology and natural religion and a staunch advocate of comprehension, a policy intended to broaden the established church. His adoption of an epistemology that emphasized the probabilistic nature of human knowledge led him to advocate tentativeness and moderation in both religion and natural philosophy, and he expounded these views from the pulpit of St. Laurence Jewry, London, as Dean of Ripon and as Bishop of Chester, and in his Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions before the King at White-Hall (1677) and Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (1675), completed by his son-in-law, John Tillotson.

Wilkins's diverse interests made him a significant figure in the intellectual and cultural life of his time, and his contributions to Interregnum and Restoration natural philosophy and scientific organization remain important. Historians interested in the relationship between religion and science have investigated his religious views, variously identified as Puritan or latitudinarian, while literary scholars and linguists read his work in connection with the development of prose style and linguistics.

Bibliography

Cohen, I. Bernard. Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science: The Merton Thesis. New Brunswick, N.J., 1990.

Moss, Joan Dietz. Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy. Chicago, 1993.

Shapiro, Barbara J. John Wilkins 1614–1672: An Intellectual Biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968.

——. Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature. Princeton, 1983.

Slaughter, M. M. Universal Languages and Scientific Taxonomy in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, U.K., 1982.

Subbiondo, Joseph L., ed. John Wilkins and 17th-Century British Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1992.

—BARBARA SHAPIRO

Wikipedia: John Wilkins
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John Wilkins
Born January 1, 1614(1614-01-01)
Fawsley, Northamptonshire
Died November 19, 1672 (aged 58)
London
Occupation Anglican clergyman, Author, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Secretary of the Royal Society, Bishop of Chester
Religious beliefs Church of England
Spouse(s) Robina Cromwell (sister of Oliver)

John Wilkins (January 1, 1614 – November 19, 1672) was an English clergyman, natural philosopher and author. He was the founder of the metric system and first secretary of the Royal Society in 1660 and Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death.

Wilkins is the only person to have headed a college at both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. He was a polymath, although not a deep innovator in science. His personal qualities were brought out, and obvious to his contemporaries, in reducing political tension in Interregnum Oxford, in founding the Royal Society on non-partisan lines, and in efforts to reach out to religious nonconformists. He was one of the founders of the new natural theology compatible with the science of the time.[1]

As an author, he is particularly known for An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language in which, amongst other things, he proposed a decimal system of measure not unlike the modern metric system. The Ballad of Gresham College (1663), an ode to the Society, describes his efforts:

“

A Doctor counted very able
Designes that all Mankynd converse shall,
Spite o' th' confusion made att Babell,
By Character call'd Universall.
How long this character will be learning,
That truly passeth my discerning.[2]

 ”

Contents

Early life

Wilkins was likely born at Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire. His father was a goldsmith, and died when he was young; his mother remarried, and Walter Pope was half-brother to Wilkins. His maternal grandfather was a Puritan vicar, John Dod. He was educated at Magdalen Hall (which later became Hertford College), Oxford, being tutored by John Tombes and graduating B.A. in 1631 and M.A. in 1634.[3] He studied astronomy with John Bainbridge.[4]

After ordination, Wilkins became vicar of his home town of Fawsley in 1637, but he soon resigned. He became chaplain successively to Lord Saye and Sele and George Berkeley, 8th Baron Berkeley. In 1644 he became chaplain to Prince Charles Louis, nephew of King Charles I, who was in England; from 1648 Charles Louis was able to take up his position as elector palatine on the Rhine, as a consequence of the Peace of Westphalia. Wilkins may have accompanied him on his return to Heidelberg.

Wilkins was one of the group of savants interested in experimental philosophy who gathered round Charles Scarburgh, the royalist physician who arrived in London in summer 1646 after the fall of Oxford to the parliamentarian forces. These included George Ent, Samuel Foster, Francis Glisson, Jonathan Goddard, Christopher Merrett, and John Wallis. Others of Scarburgh's circle were William Harvey and Seth Ward. This London group was described much later by Wallis, who mentions also Theodore Haak, anchoring it also to the Palatine exiles; while there are clear connections to the Wilkins Oxford 'club', it is no longer considered that these were founders of what later became the Royal Society.[5]

In Oxford and Cambridge

In 1648 he became warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Under him the college prospered. Wilkins fostered political and religious tolerance and drew talented minds to the college, including Christopher Wren.[6] Although he was a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, Royalists placed their sons in his charge. From those in Oxford interested in experimental science, he drew together a significant group or 'club', which by 1650 had been constituted with a set of rules. Besides some of the London group (Goddard, Wallis, Ward, Wren who was a young protégé of Scarburgh), it included (in the account of Thomas Sprat) Ralph Bathurst, Robert Boyle, William Petty, Lawrence Rooke, Thomas Willis, and Matthew Wren.[7] Robert Hooke was gradually recruited into the Wilkins group: he arrived at Christ Church, Oxford in 1653, working his way to an education, became assistant to Willis, and became known to Wilkins (possibly via Richard Busby) as a technician. By 1658 he was working with Boyle.[8]

In 1656, he married Robina French née Cromwell, youngest sister of Oliver Cromwell, who had been widowed in 1655 when her husband Peter French, a canon of Christ Church, Oxford, had died. Wilkins thereby joined a high stratum of Parliamentary society, and the couple used rooms in Whitehall Palace. In 1659, shortly before his death, Oliver Cromwell arranged for Wilkins a new appointment as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge,[9][10] an appointment that was confirmed by Richard Cromwell who succeeded him as Lord Protector. He was there long enough to befriend and become a patron of Isaac Barrow.[11]

In London

Upon the Restoration in 1660, the new authorities deprived Wilkins of the position given him by Cromwell; he gained appointment as prebendary of York and rector of Cranford, Middlesex. In 1661 he was reduced to preacher at Gray's Inn, lodging with his friend Seth Ward. In 1662 he became vicar of St Lawrence Jewry, London. He suffered in the Great Fire of London, losing his vicarage, library and scientific instruments.[12]

Possessing strong scientific tastes, Wilkins was a founding member of the Royal Society and was soon elected fellow and one of the Society's two secretaries: he shared the work with Henry Oldenburg, whom he had met in Oxford in 1656.[6][13]

Bishop

He became vicar of Polebrook, Northamptonshire, in 1666; prebendary of Exeter in 1667; and in the following year, prebendary of St Paul's and bishop of Chester.

He owed his position as bishop of Chester to the influence of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham's approach to the religious problem of the day was 'comprehension', something less than religious tolerance but aimed at least at bringing in the Presbyterians among nonconformists to the Church of England by some peaceful form of negotiation and arrangement. Wilkins too thought along these lines.[14] He had been a sympathetic reader of John Humfrey's 1661 justification of his acceptance of re-ordination by William Piers, having already once been ordained in the Presbyterian style by a classis.[15]

As he was ordained he spoke out against the use of penal laws, and immediately tried to gather support from other moderate bishops to see what concessions to the nonconformists could be made.[16] A serious effort was made in 1668 to secure a scheme of comprehension, with William Bates, Richard Baxter and Thomas Manton for the dissenters meeting Wilkins and Hezekiah Burton. Wilkins felt the Presbyterians could be brought within the Church of England, while the Independent separatists were left outside. It fell through by late summer, with Manton blaming John Owen for independent scheming for general toleration with Buckingham, and Baxter pointing the finger at the House of Lords.[17]

Death and legacy

He died in London, most likely from the medicines used to treat his kidney stones and stoppage of urine.[18]

The influence and ambitions of John Wilkins were an important thread in the historical fiction trilogy The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote the short essay The Analytical Language of John Wilkins published in Other Inquisitions 1937-1952.

Works

His numerous written works include:

  • The Discovery of a World in the Moone (1638)[19][20]
  • A Discourse Concerning a New Planet (1640)
  • Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), the first English-language book on cryptography
  • Ecclesiastes (1646)
  • Mathematical Magick (1648)
  • A Discourse Concerning the Beauty of Providence (1649)
  • A discourse concerning the gift of prayer: shewing what it is, wherein it consists and how far it is attainable by industry (1651)
  • Vindiciae academiarum (1654), with Seth Ward
  • An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668), in which he proposes a new universal language for the use of natural philosophers.
  • Of the Principle and Duties of Natural Religion (London, 1675).

The early scientific works were in a popular vein, and have links to the publications of Francis Godwin. The Discovery of a World in the Moone (1638) was followed up by A Discourse Concerning a New Planet (1640). Godwin'sThe Man in the Moone was also published in 1638. In 1641 Wilkins published an anonymous treatise entitled Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger.[21] This was a small work on cryptography; it may well have been influenced by Godwin's Nuncius inanimatus (1629).[22] His Mathematical Magic (1648) was divided into two sections, one on traditional mechanical devices such as the lever, and the other, more speculative, on machines. It drew on many authors, both classical writers and moderns such as Guidobaldo del Monte and Marin Mersenne.[23] It alludes to Godwin's The Man in the Moone, for bird-powered flight.[24] These were light if learned works and admitted both blue-sky thinking, such as the possibility of the Moon being inhabitable, and references to figures on the "occult" side: Trithemius, John Dee, the Rosicrucians, Robert Fludd.[25][26]

Ecclesiastes (1646) is a plea for a plain style in preaching, avoiding rhetoric and scholasticism, for a more direct and emotional appeal.[27][28] It analysed the whole field of available Biblical commentary, for the use of those preparing sermons, and was reprinted many times. It is noted as a transitional work, both in the move away from Ciceronian style in preaching, and in the changing meaning of elocution to the modern sense of vocal production.[29][30]

A Discourse Concerning the Beauty of Providence (1649) took an unfashionable line, namely that divine providence was more inscrutable than current interpreters were saying. It added to the reputation of Wilkins, when the Stuarts returned to the throne, to have warned that the short term reading of events as managed by God was risky.[31]

In 1654, Wilkins joined with Seth Ward in writing Vindiciae academiarum, a reply to John Webster's Academiarum Examen, one of many attacks at the time on the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and their teaching methods. This attack had more clout than most: it was dedicated to John Lambert, a top military figure, and was launched during Barebone's Parliament, when radical change seemed on the cards. Wilkins (as N. S.) provided an open letter to Ward; and Ward (as H. D., also taking the final letters of his name therefore) replied at greater length. Wilkins makes two main points: first, Webster is not addressing the actual state of the universities, which were not as wedded to old scholastic ways, Aristotle, and Galen, as he said; and secondly Webster's mixture of commended authors, without fuller understanding of the topics, really was foolish. In this approach Wilkins had to back away somewhat from his writings of the late 1630s and early 1640s. He made light of this in the way of pointing to Alexander Ross, a very conservative Aristotelian who had attacked his own astronomical works, as a more suitable target for Webster. This exchange was part of the process of the new experimental philosophers throwing off their associations with occultists and radicals.[32]

In 1668 he published his Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. In it he attempted to create a universal language to replace Latin as a completely unambiguous tongue with which scholars and philosophers could communicate.[33] One aspect of this work was the suggestion of a decimal system of measurement, such as the metric system.[34] In his lexicographical work he collaborated with William Lloyd.[35]

References

  1. ^ Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology: Nature (2001), p. 242.
  2. ^ Stimson, Dorothy. "'Ballad of Gresham College'". Isis volume 18, number 1, 1932. pp. 103-117.
  3. ^ Dictionary of National Biography
  4. ^ Mordechai Feingold, Mathematical Sciences and New Philosophies, p. 380 in Nicholas Tyacke (editor) The Histosry of the University of Oxford: Vol. IV Seventeenth-century Oxford (1997).
  5. ^ Adrian Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile: A life of Christopher Wren (2001), pp. 23-4.
  6. ^ a b "Wilkins, John." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press. Sept 2004. Online edition
  7. ^ Margery Purver, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation (1967), p. 205.
  8. ^ Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke (2003), pp. 63-75.
  9. ^ The Master of Trinity at Trinity College, Cambridge
  10. ^ Wilkins, John in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  11. ^ Mordechai Feingold, Before Newton: The Life and Times of Isaac Barrow (1990), pp. 52-3.
  12. ^ http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26674/26674-h/26674-h.htm
  13. ^ Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers (editors), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-century Philosophy (2003) Volume II, p. 1455.
  14. ^ N. H. Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s (2002), p. 123.
  15. ^ Dictionary of National Biography, article Humfrey, John.
  16. ^ John Marshall, Locke and Latitudinarianism, p. 257 in Richard W. F. Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, Perez Zagorin (editors), Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640-1700 (1991).
  17. ^ William M. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium (1979), p. 220.
  18. ^ Inwood, Stephen (2005). The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke 1635-1703. MacAdam/Cage Publishing. ISBN 1596921153. 
  19. ^ Cromwell's moonshot: how one Jacobean scientist tried to kick off the space race from The Independent
  20. ^ The Discovery of a World in the Moon from http://www.positiveatheism.org
  21. ^ M E R C V R Y: The secret and swift Messenger Scan of original book
  22. ^ http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Francis_Godwin
  23. ^ http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/paradigm/fauvel1.html
  24. ^ http://www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/2007proceedings.pdf, p. 25.
  25. ^ Noel E. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe (1999), p. 233.
  26. ^ Francis Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1986), p. 284.
  27. ^ Richard Foster Jones, The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of English Thought and Literature from Bacon to Pope (1951), p. 78.
  28. ^ Paul Goring, Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-century Culture (2005), p. 37.
  29. ^ I. M. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (2000), p. 109.
  30. ^ Theresa Enos (editor), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age (1996), p. 764.
  31. ^ Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876 (2007), p. 43.
  32. ^ Allen G. Debus, Science and Education in the Seventeenth Century: The Webster-Ward Debate (1970).
  33. ^ The Analytical Language of John Wilkins from alamut.com
  34. ^ Metric system 'was British' - from the BBC video news
  35. ^ http://helmer.aksis.uib.no/batmult/Natascia-final-report.htm

Further reading

  • Patrick Arkley Wright Henderson, The Life and Times of John Wilkins; Project Gutenberg text
  • O. Funke (1959), On the Sources of John Wilkins' philosophical language. English Studies XL 208.
  • Barbara J. Shapiro (1968), John Wilkins 1614–1672: An Intellectual Biography
  • Fredric Dolezal (1985), Forgotten But Important Lexicographers: John Wilkins and William Lloyd. a Modern Approach to Lexicography Before Johnson
  • J. L. Subbiondo (editor) (1992), John Wilkins and 17th-Century British Linguistics
  • J. L. Subbiondo, Educational Reform in Seventeenth-Century England and John Wilkins' Philosophical Language, anguage & Communication, v21 n3 p273-84 Jul 2001

External links

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Academic offices
Preceded by
John Pitt		 Warden of Wadham College, Oxford
1648–1659		 Succeeded by
Walter Blandford
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John Arrowsmith		 Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
1659–1660		 Succeeded by
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Church of England titles
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1668–1672		 Succeeded by
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