The Philosophical Breakfast Club

by Laura J. Snyder

  Herschel and Whewell shared Babbage’s worry about the state of science in England. But neither of them wished to be associated with Babbage’s public attack on the Royal Society, or with his politically risky admiration of all things French. Herschel had predicted in a letter to Thomas Young, “Our day is fast going by, and … we are rapidly dropping behind in the race.”25 To Whewell he lamented, “This is not a land where science of a high order is held in honor.”26 Herschel had let slip such sentiments in his article on “Sound” for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, just then going to press. Babbage saw the proof sheets ten days before his own book was published—enough time to quote from the piece in the book’s preface to show that even the most esteemed men of science, like Herschel, agreed with his diagnosis.27 Herschel was annoyed at being personally associated with Babbage’s ill-tempered work—he told Whewell that his “unlucky note … served as a text for Babbage to preach upon,” which unfairly identified him with “all the groveling and degrading views … which have lately made such a hubbub.”28

  Whewell was glad he had avoided the same fate; he told Jones that although he too had complaints against the Royal Society, he did not want to be “coupled with the Babbagian sect of spewers or railers.”29 Jones predicted that Babbage “will commit more slaughter very likely—but when a man runs amuck he will always get slain at last.”30

  Although they did not wish to be linked to Babbage’s emphatically expressed views on the “decline of science” in England, Babbage’s friends shared his anger at the Royal Society. Indeed, the problems of the society were ones that they had diagnosed over fifteen years before, during their philosophical breakfasts at Cambridge. And, much to the surprise of Herschel, Jones, and Whewell, Babbage’s bitter attack against the Royal Society would succeed in bringing down the current leadership.

  THE ROYAL SOCIETY of London had begun, in the 1640s, much like the Philosophical Breakfast Club itself: as an informal group of natural philosophers coming together to discuss the writings of Francis Bacon. The group became an official association on November 28, 1660, when twelve of its members assembled after a lecture by Christopher Wren, professor of astronomy at Gresham College in London, who would later become famous as the architect of the new St. Paul’s Cathedral, as well as the Trinity College Library in Cambridge and many other noteworthy buildings. At this meeting the men decided to form a society inspired by Bacon’s descriptions of Solomon’s House in New Atlantis. They began to meet weekly to observe and discuss experiments, many of which were designed by Robert Hooke, a polymath who coined the word cell to describe the basic unit of living organisms, argued for the wave theory of light, and anticipated Newton’s discovery of the law of universal gravitation (and then, like Leibniz, became embroiled in a very public argument with Newton over who had thought of it first).

  Two years later, in 1662, King Charles II granted a formal charter of incorporation to the “Royal Society of London,” as it was now to be called. But the king ignored the new society’s requests for funds to create a physical space where “we might meet, prepare and make our Experiments and Observations, lodge our Curators and Operators, have our Laboratory, Observatory and Operatory all together”—a true Solomon’s House. The society was forced to find accommodation in cramped quarters at Gresham College.

  The Royal Society was eventually given offices in Somerset House on the Strand, overlooking the Thames. Somerset House was a magnificent palace built in the mid-sixteenth century by the first Duke of Somerset, uncle and Lord Protector to Edward VI. In recent years the palace had fallen into disrepair, and had been completely rebuilt, its vast rooms being used to house institutions such as the Royal Academy of the Arts and the Society of Antiquaries. One of the first discoveries announced at the Royal Society’s Somerset House headquarters was William Herschel’s observation of the planet Uranus.

  Besides the Somerset House accommodations, the Royal Society received no support from the crown. It was dependent on the membership fees paid by fellows, many of whom were not men of science but wealthy noblemen, who amused themselves watching the demonstrated experiments, with the sparks and smells and explosions and surprising results, and enjoyed having the occasional natural philosopher as a guest at social soirées held during the London season. Indeed, the early presidents of the society went out of their way to find such wealthy fellows, whose riches could be put to use in buying the costly equipment required by Hooke and his team of experimenters. It soon became clear to some fellows that the Royal Society had grown further and further apart from its original Baconian intentions. By the time of the philosophical breakfasts of Babbage, Herschel, Jones, and Whewell, the Royal Society no longer looked anything like Bacon’s vision of a research institution. By a decade or so later, things had gotten even worse.31

  Much of the problem could be traced to the long reign of Sir Joseph Banks as president, a position he held for forty-two years, from 1778 until 1820. As a young and promising botanist, Banks had taken part in Captain James Cook’s famous first voyage, in which he piloted the HMS Endeavour to South America, Tahiti, New Zealand, and the east coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay—named after Banks’s extensive botanical activities there (Banks later helpfully advised the government that the area would make an excellent location for the transport of convicts). Banks and his fellow botanists on the voyage conducted the first major study of Australian flora, which was eventually published in thirty-five well-illustrated volumes as Banks’ Florilegium.

  Banks’s sexual exploits while in Tahiti became the fodder for much good-natured ribbing in the London periodicals, which gleefully reported that his trousers had been stolen while he was romping naked in the tent of “Queen Oberea.” But Banks also established his scientific credentials on that trip, returning to acclaim as one of the foremost botanists of his day.32

  During his forty-two years as president of the Royal Society, Banks ruled with an iron fist. He was autocratic in the extreme, imposing his will over the rest of the fellows. Any nominations for new fellows were doomed if Sir Joseph did not approve. He looked with a particularly jaundiced eye at nominations of men who were not of high social station. This prejudice extended even to laboratory assistants: when the young and socially unconnected bookbinder Michael Faraday wrote him a letter begging for some employment, Banks did not even bother to respond.33

  His reach extended beyond the Royal Society to all of London’s scientific community. Banks strongly and loudly opposed the formation of any “rival” societies, threatening to have any fellows involved with such scurrilous actions thrown out of the Royal Society. Only two new scientific societies managed to come into being in London during that time: the Geological Society and the Astronomical Society, the latter founded by a group that included Babbage and Herschel in 1820. When the Astronomical Society was formed, Banks’s wrath was so feared that the men had a difficult time finding someone to agree to serve as the first president. Finally the aged William Herschel agreed, on the condition that the position be merely ceremonial, with no actual duties.34

  Banks even complained bitterly when Whewell, John Henslow, Adam Sedgwick, and others created the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1819 (Babbage was put down by the founders as one of the original members).35 As Banks recognized, the formation of the Cambridge Philosophical Society was the first attempt by a group of young men of science to wrest control of the scientific establishment from their elders, to require their members to conduct research in the sciences, and to displace London as the center for scientific activity.36 The experience gained in forming these groups would serve Babbage and Whewell well later on, when they joined the effort to found a larger, nationwide scientific society.

  Banks’s death in 1820 was followed by a sigh of relief breathed by men of science throughout England. Babbage wrote to Whewell that “all sorts of plans, speculations, and schemes are afloat and all sorts of people, proper and improper, are penetrated with the desire of wielding the scepter of
science.”37 His friend Edward Bromhead wrote to Babbage that “the Royal Society wants revolutionizing.”38 To many, it seemed that now was finally the time to introduce some much-needed reform into the Royal Society.

  Attempts at reform by Herschel, Babbage, Whewell, and other younger fellows of the Royal Society went nowhere, however. Banks was followed by a series of short-term presidents who disappointed the reformers. Things finally came to a head when Babbage published his Decline of Science. The current president, Davies Gilbert, felt unable to continue in that position after Babbage’s vitriolic attack on his leadership. At the same time, the Duke of Sussex (sixth son of King George III) was showing interest in the position. In October 1830, Gilbert wrote a letter to the ruling council of the Royal Society informing them that he would resign in favor of Sussex. Many of the council members were enraged at his supposition that the president could appoint his own successor. Herschel wrote disdainfully to a friend that Gilbert was treating the Royal Society like a “rotten borough,” an election district whose parliamentary representative was chosen by a local aristocrat who would essentially bribe voters to elect his choice.39 Prior to the passage of the Reform Act in 1832, ninety peers controlled the election of more than one third of Britain’s members of Parliament.40 The dissolution of these rotten boroughs was one of the goals of the Reform Act. Although most of the fellows agreed that the duke was a good man and open to political reform, he was not himself a man of science, and represented the old-time appeal to blue-bloodedness that the reformers abhorred. The reformers were, to a man, convinced that this was the time to strike.

  They agreed on the necessity of finding the right candidate, someone who expressed their vision of a society of men of science headed by a man of science of the first class. That man was Herschel. As Whewell put it, no one else could equal his “unparalleled universality of scientific accomplishment.” It did not hurt, either, that “his hereditary recommendations, etc. will of course be obvious.”41 Babbage and others pressed Herschel to run for president. Whewell told Jones that he hoped Herschel would be elected “because I really do care for the poor old society which I suppose you do not.”42 Jones, however, the one member of the Philosophical Breakfast Club who was not a fellow of the Royal Society, cared more for Herschel’s happiness than for the society’s salvation. He told Whewell, “I hope that Herschel will be beaten and the Royal Society go to the de—l. I have excellent reasons to give you why this would be better for Herschel.”43

  Herschel was reluctant to put himself forth as a candidate. He told Babbage, “I love science too well to be easily induced to throw away the small part of one lifetime I have to bestow on it on the affairs of a public body which has proved to me ever since I became connected with it a continued source of disgust and annoyance.”44 Eighty members of the society signed a petition imploring Herschel to run. Herschel grudgingly told Babbage, “I do not desire the Presidency. I am not a candidate. If placed in the chair I will sit there one year.”45

  Not everyone believed Herschel to be suited for the position. Sir Alexander Crichton, a physician of international renown, thought that Herschel lacked the social skills necessary to be president of the Royal Society, and others agreed with him.46 They were right that Herschel was unlikely to give up time at the telescope or in the optical laboratory to entertain men of science at weekly evening soirees or breakfasts, as Banks and his successors had done.

  The reformers were swept up with excitement in their plan to take over the Royal Society. But they made several tactical errors. Chief among these was drafting an unwilling leader. Additionally, their newspaper advertisement alerting fellows of his candidacy did not appear until three days before the election, which was scheduled for November 30—not enough time to allow all fellows disposed to vote for Herschel to make the trip to London to cast their ballots. What really did them in, however, was overconfidence in the final stages of the campaign. At the last moment Babbage sent letters to some reform-minded fellows that they need not bother to make the trip at all, as Herschel was sure to win by a wide margin. One of these, George Harvey, lamented to Babbage after the fact that his letter had reached him just as he was about to leave for the trip, and it caused him to stay home when he easily could have come.47 He told Babbage, “My place on the Mail [Carriage] was actually taken when your letter arrived!” Without such ill-judged intervention from Babbage, Herschel would have won. (One cannot help but wonder whether Babbage was intentionally sabotaging the election.) In the end, Herschel lost by only eight votes, 119 to 111.

  Herschel claimed to be relieved by the loss. He told his aunt Caroline that had he won he “should have felt it a grievous evil.”48 But Herschel was upset enough that he withdrew from activity in the Royal Society, even refusing to sign certificates of admission for friends such as William Henry Fox Talbot. Herschel petulantly told Dionysius Lardner to omit the “F.R.S” honorific (for “Fellow of the Royal Society”) from his name on the title page of the Preliminary Discourse.49 And it is no coincidence that he began, only now, to think of leaving England—to travel to the southern hemisphere to map the stars there.

  Whewell dejectedly reported to Jones, “So far I as I can make out all Herschel’s friends are disposed to give the old lady [the Royal Society] over.… What will come of this I do not exactly see nor much care.”50 But Babbage was ready with some ideas of what could come of the loss. He moved to put into play a plan he had been contemplating on and off for several years: to establish a society that would rival the Royal Society in size and influence, and which would transform science—and not only in England.

  THE ROOTS OF this effort reached back to September of 1828, during Babbage’s despair-driven tour of Europe. Babbage had arrived in Berlin to find that the natural philosophers of Europe would soon be holding a huge meeting there. On the eighteenth of that month the brilliant German mathematician Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, and the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted joined numerous other esteemed men of science who were converging on the Prussian capital for a gathering of a size and scope greater than any other scientific meeting ever held in Europe. Masses of people from all ranks of Prussian society—including royalty—crowded into the theater, eager to hear the opening address by the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, recently returned to his native city after years spent living in Paris.51

  Babbage was impressed by the eminence of the natural philosophers at the meeting—and even more by the high social rank of those who had come to hear them. He could not help comparing the situation in Prussia to that in England, where (he felt bitterly) savants were hardly accorded the time of day by royalty. On his return home, Babbage wrote a letter about the meeting to his friend David Brewster.

  Brewster, a well-known man of science who had already won the Copley medal of the Royal Society for his work on optics, and who had invented the kaleidoscope (originally intended as a scientific instrument, not a children’s toy), was a generally pleasant, amiable man with sandy-colored hair and blue eyes, who could be cheerful and friendly when at ease—but he was also extremely intolerant of anyone who slighted his work or took credit for his discoveries, and at those times his anger could be cutting.52 He and Babbage shared a prickly nature and a sense of being underappreciated by their compatriots. Brewster had written to Babbage a few years earlier that he felt “melancholy” to “look around us in society and to see the charlatans and empirics of science, flourishing and succeeding in life while men of sterling talent [like the two of them], of indefatigable industry and of the finest moral attainments are languishing in obscurity and neglect.”53

  After Babbage wrote him with news of the Berlin conference, Brewster encouraged him to draw up a brief article on it, which he then published in the journal he edited, the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Writing this article gave Babbage an idea: Why not initiate a grand European academy of science, which would transcend geographic and political barriers? Approving of this su
ggestion, Brewster wrote to his friend the Whig politician Sir Henry Brougham, trying to enlist his support in the project. “Mr. Babbage and I would take the oar if you would touch the helm,” Brewster offered.54 Nothing came of this, and the idea was dropped, while Babbage exerted his energies to reform the Royal Society.

  After Herschel was defeated in his race for the presidency, Babbage wrote again to Brewster, urging the notion of a new scientific association to displace the Royal Society. Brewster agreed that the Royal Society “seems to be gone.”55 He decided that they should plan a grand meeting of natural philosophers in York—the most central city for the “three kingdoms” of England, Ireland, and Scotland. He asked Babbage to write to Herschel, “who should be President.”

  York had attractions other than mere geographic convenience. It was the home of the thriving Yorkshire Philosophical Society, which had existed for almost a decade. Societies such as this one had been sprouting up in the provinces since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Early mill owners, merchants, capitalists, and engineers married their financial interests in new technology with an intellectual basis in the natural sciences.56