Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England

Historians of science have long acknowledged the important role that journa ls play in the scientific enterprise. They both secure the shared values of a scientific community and certify what that community takes to be license d knowledge. The advent of the first learned periodicals in the mid-sevente enth century was therefore a major event. But why did this event happen whe n it did, and how was the permanence of the learned journal secured, This p aper reveals some of the answers. It examines the shifting fortunes of one of the earliest of natural-philosophical periodicals, the Philosophical Tra nsactions, launched in London in 1665 by Henry Oldenburg. The paper shows h ow fraught the enterprise of journal publishing was in the Europe of that p eriod, and, not least, it draws attention to a number of publications that arose out of the commercial realm of the Restoration to rival (or parody) O ldenburg's now famous creation. By doing so it helps restore to view the ha rd work that underpinned the republic of letters. And as for natural philosophy, is it not removed from Oxford and Cambridge to Gresham College in London, and to be learned out of their gazettes?.