The spirit of inquiry : how one extraordinary society shaped modern science / Susannah Gibson ; with a foreword by Simon Conway Morris FRS.

• The Fenland Philosophers -- The house on All Saints' Passage -- Letters from the south -- 'A new prosperity' -- The misdeeds of Mr Crouch -- A workbench of one's own -- The laboratory in the library -- 'May it never be of any use to anybody' -- Following the footsteps.

• Cambridge is now world-famous as a centre of science, but it wasn't always so. Before the nineteenth century, the sciences were of little importance in the University of Cambridge. But that began to change in 1819 when two young Cambridge fellows took a geological fieldtrip to the Isle of Wight. Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow spent their days there exploring, unearthing dazzling fossils, dreaming up elaborate theories about the formation of the earth, and bemoaning the lack of serious science in their ancient university. As they threw themselves into the exciting new science of geology - conjuring millions of years of history from the evidence they found in the island's rocks - they also began to dream of a new scientific society for Cambridge. This society would bring together like-minded young men who wished to learn of the latest science from overseas, and would encourage original research in Cambridge. It would be, they wrote, a society "to keep alive the spirit of inquiry".0. 

Ämnesord

Vetenskapliga sällskap  -- historia (sao)

Storbritannien  (sao)

Institutionsnamn

Cambridge Philosophical Society -- History.

The Cambridge philosophical society, Cambridge

Klassifikation

Q124.6-127.2 (LCC)

506.942659 (DDC)

U:bf (kssb/8 (machine generated))