Reflections on the Decline of Science in England

Of the transactions of the royal society.

The Transactions of the Royal Society, unlike those of most foreign academies, contain nothing relating to the history of the Society.  The volumes contain merely those papers communicated to the Society in the preceding year which the Council have selected for printing, a meteorological register, and a notice of the award of the annual medals, without any list of the Council and officers of the Society, by whom that selection and that award have been made.

Before I proceed to criticise this state of things, I will mention one point on which I am glad to he able to bestow on the Royal Society the highest praise.  I refer to the extreme regularity with which the volumes of the Transactions are published.  The appearance of the half-volumes at intervals of six months, insures for any communication almost immediate publicity; whilst the shortness of the time between its reception and publication, is a guarantee to the public that the whole of the paper was really communicated at the time it bears date.  To this may also be added, the rarity of any alterations made previously to the printing, a circumstance which ought to be imitated, as well as admired, by other societies.  There may, indeed, be some, perhaps the Geological, in which the task is more difficult, from the nature of the subject.  The sooner, however, all societies can reduce themselves to this rule, of rarely allowing any thing but a few verbal corrections to papers that are placed in their hands, the better it will be for their own reputation, and for the interests of science.

It has been, and continues to be, a subject of deep regret, that the first scientific academy in Europe, the Institute of France, should be thus negligent in the regularity of its publications; and it is the more to be regretted, that it should be years in arrear, from the circumstance, that the memoirs admitted into their collection are usually of the highest merit.  I know some of their most active members have wished it were otherwise; I would urge them to put a stop to a practice, which, whilst it has no advantages to recommend it, is unjust to those who contribute, and is only calculated to produce conflicting claims, equally injurious to science, and to the reputation of that body, whose negligence may have given rise to them. [Mr. Herschel, speaking of a paper of Fresnel’s, observes—­“This memoir was read to the Institute, 7th of October, 1816; a supplement was received, 19th of January, 1818; M. Arago’s report on it was read, 4th of June, 1821:  and while every optical philosopher in Europe has been impatiently expecting its appearance for seven years, it lies as yet unpublished, and is only known to us by meagre notices in a periodical journal.”Mr HERSCHEL’S treatise on light, p. 533.  —­Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.]

One of the inconveniences arising from having no historical portion in the volumes of the Royal Society is, that not only the public, but our own members are almost entirely ignorant of all its affairs.  With a means of giving considerable publicity (by the circulation of above 800 copies of the Transactions) to whatever we wish to have made known to our members or to the world, will it be credited, that no notice was taken in our volume for 1826, of the foundation of two Royal medals, nor of the conditions under which they were to be distributed. [That the Council refrained from having their first award of those medals thus communicated, is rather creditable to them, and proves that they had a becoming feeling respecting their former errors.] That in 1828, when a new fund, called the donation fund, was established, and through the liberality of Dr. Wollaston and Mr. Davies Gilbert, it was endowed by them with the respective sums of 2,000L. and 1,000L. 3 per cents; no notice of such fact appears in our Transactions for 1829.  Other gentlemen have contributed; and if it is desirable to possess such a fund, it is surely of importance to inform the non-attending, which is by far the largest part of the Society, that it exists; and that we are grateful to those by whom it has been founded and augmented.  Neither did the Philosophical Transactions inform our absent members, that they could purchase the President’s Discourses at the trade-price.

The list of the Officers, Council, and Members of the Royal Society is printed annually; yet, who ever saw it bound up with the Philosophical Transactions, to which it is intended to be attached?  I never met with a single copy of that work so completed, not even the one in our own library.  It is extremely desirable that the Society should know the names of their Council; and whilst it would in some measure contribute to prevent the President from placing incompetent persons upon it, it would also afford some check, although perhaps but a slight one, on the distribution of the medals.  When I have urged the expediency of the practice, I have been answered by excuses, that the list could not be made up in time for the volume.  If this is true of the first part, they might appear with the second; and even if this were impracticable, the plan of prefixing them to the volume of the succeeding year, would be preferable to that of omitting them altogether.  The true reason, however, appeared at last.  It was objected to the plan, that by the present arrangement, the porter of the Royal Society took round the list to those members resident in London, and got from some of them a remuneration, in the shape of a Christmas-box; and this would be lost, if the time of printing were changed. [During the printing of this chapter, a friend, on whom I had called, complained that the porter of the Royal Society had demanded half-a-crown for leaving the list.] Such are the paltry interests to which those of the Royal Society are made to bow.

Another point on which information ought to be given in each volume, is the conditions on which the distribution of the Society’s medals are made.  It is true that these are, or ought to be, printed with the Statutes of the Society; but that volume is only in the hands of members, and it is for the credit of the medals themselves, that the laws which regulate their award should be widely known, in order that persons, not members of the Society, might enter into competition for them.

Information relative to the admissions and deaths amongst the Society would also be interesting; a list of the names of those whom the Society had lost, and of those members who had been added to its ranks each year, would find a proper place in the historical pages which ought to be given with each volume of our Transactions.

The want of a distinction between the working members of the Society, and those who merely honour it with their patronage, renders many arrangements, which would be advantageous to science, in some cases, injudicious, and in other instances, almost impossible.

Collections of Observations which are from time to time given to the Society, may be of such a nature, that but few of the members are interested in them.  In such cases, the expense of printing above 800 copies may reasonably induce the Council to decline printing them altogether; whereas, if they had any means of discrimination for distributing them, they might be quite willing to incur the expense of printing 250.  Other cases may occur, in which great advantage would accrue, if the principle were once admitted.  Government, the Universities, public bodies, and even individuals might, in some cases, be disposed to present to the Royal Society a limited number of copies of their works, if they knew that they were likely to be placed in the hands of persons who would use them.  Fifty or a hundred additional copies might, in some cases, not be objected to on the ground of expense, when seven or eight hundred would be quite out of the question.

Let us suppose twenty copies of a description of some new chemical process to be placed at the disposal of the Royal Society by any public body; it will not surely be contended that they ought all to remain on the Society’s shelves.  Yet, with our present rules, that would be the case.  If, however, the list of the Members of the Society were read over to the Council, and the names of those gentlemen known to be conversant with chemical science were written down; then, if nineteen copies of the work were given to those nineteen persons on this list, who had contributed most to the Transactions of the Society, they would in all probability be placed in the fittest hands.

Complete sets of the Philosophical Transactions have now become extremely bulky; it might be well worth our consideration, whether the knowledge of the many valuable papers they contain would not be much spread, by publishing the abstracts of them which have been read at the ordinary meetings of the Society.  Perhaps two or three volumes octavo, would contain all that has been done in this way during the last century.

Another circumstance, which would contribute much to the order of the proceedings of the Council, would be to have a distinct list made out of all the statutes and orders of the Council relating to each particular subject.

Thus the President, by having at one view before him all that had ever been decreed on the question under consideration, would be much better able to prevent inconsistent resolutions, and to save the time of the Council from being wasted by unnecessary discussions.