We will jump over Dear's discussion of Descartes, with whom we will spend several weeks after midsemester, to look at what the real world had to offer along the lines of Bacon's utopian vision.

Dear's account of the support for and institutionalization of scientific research in the 17th century is the closest we will come to true external history of science. You should think about the chapter in those terms since the growth of institutions like the Royal Society is an important and characteristic component of the Scientific Revolution. But think also about connections with the most internal aspect of internal history, the conception of scientific knowledge that people held at the time.

Dear mentions Robert Hooke's report of mainly microscopic observations in Micrographia as an example of publications supported by the Royal Society. But it is of interest also as one of the first accounts of the use of that instrument. An html version of the book is on the course Blackboard site, and part of your assignment is to look it over and be ready to draw our attention to one of the observations he reports.

At the left of the text, you will see links including two groups of numbers. The first group are links to the observations by number. Hooke calls the accompanying illustrations "schemes," and the group of numbers at the bottom are links to them. There is a table of thumbnail images of the schemes at the very end (the link "schemes" will take you to it) and, just before it, a table of summary descriptions of the observations (the link "observations" will take you there). If you'd like to see how this looked in the original, here's a link to page images of the book:

http://posner.library.cmu.edu/Posner/books/book.cgi?call=576.09_H78M_1665

(Click on "Full Text.")