Invisible College

Science is a social activity that grows through free and open communications among its practitioners. The links among scientists—ones that that extend beyond particular institutions, nations, and disciplines—have been known as the invisible[Page 427]college at least since 1645. The term describes the underlying structure of science, which operates as a communications system with formal and informal functions.

The first use of the term invisible college is often attributed to the Irish scientist Robert Boyle (sometimes called the “father of chemistry”). He used the term in a letter to his tutor to describe the interactions of a small group of like-minded natural philosophers, also known as the “virtuosi.” He pointed out that a group of natural philosophers had begun a series of communications about the natural world (mostly conducted through letters) in a way that constituted an invisible college.

Boyle was writing from his estate in Ireland where he spent a great deal of time conducting research. He shared many of his findings with other amateur investigators. These early communications had begun through letters and in meetings held in London during an era of intellectual and social ferment. In the mid-17th century, new discoveries had upended much of the academic world. The improved telescopes of Galileo Galilei and other early astronomers had yielded more precise measurements of the movement of heavenly bodies. These movements were shown to follow predictable patterns that could be uncovered through scientific observation and study. These discoveries challenged the Aristotelian tenets that the heavens were not only divine and immutable, but beyond human understanding.

As the Aristotelian worldview began to give way to the measures and predictions of early astronomers and chemists, interest in the empirical exploration of nature spread across Europe. Scientific societies and academies were established almost simultaneously in five European cities. These societies were intended to facilitate the communication of ideas, the formulation of experiments, and the sharing of results, increasingly through the printed word. Between 1630 and 1830, at least 300 scientific journals were launched. Scholar Derek de Solla Price found that the growth rate of scientific literature was exponential, with the number of scientific journals growing by a factor of 10 about every 50 years since.

Boyle's invisible college of the mid-17th century included such notables as biologist Robert Hooke; mathematician William Viscount Brouncker; the Reverend John Wilkins, a future head of colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge; and Christopher Wren, the accomplished astronomer and architect of St. Paul's Cathedral. This invisible college emerged at a time of great political strife in England. The civil wars, which began in 1642 and raged for much of the following decade, split Britain into two camps: the parliamentarians, who sought to defend Parliament's traditional role in matters such as taxation, and the royalists, who favored a stronger monarchy. But the early experimentalists (who as individuals held divergent political views) set aside these differences to pursue their shared interest in studying the “sensible realm” through experimentation. Eventually their discussions gave rise to the Royal Society of London, now the oldest scientific society in continuous existence.

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