Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/86

Rh 70 ACADEMY necessarily in, perfect, inasmuch as several of those we&quot; shall mention were at once literary and scientific, and many associations for similar objects were known by some other na-:ne. Thus, with the doubtful exception of the Royal Academy of Arts, England has no academies in the proper sense of the word. For those institutions in England which answer to Italian academies, we must refer the reader to the article SOCIETY. I. SCIENTIFIC ACADEMIES. Italy. The first society for the prosecution of physical science was that established at Naples, 1560, under the presidency of Baptista Porta. It was called Academia Secretorum Natures or de Secreti. It arose from a meeting of some scientific friends, who assembled at Porta s house, and called themselves the Otiosi. No member was admitted who had not made some useful discovery in medicine or natural philosophy. The name suggested to an ignorant public the prosecution of magic and the black arts. Porta went to Rome to justify himself before Paul III. He was acquitted by the Pope, but the academy was dissolved, and he was ordered to abstain for the future from the practice of all illicit arts. At Rome he was admitted to the Lincei, an academy founded by Federigo Cesi, the Marcese di Monticelli. The device of the Lincei was a lynx with its eyes turned towards heaven tearing a Cerberus with its claws, intimating that they were prepared to do battle with error and falsehood. Their motto was the verse of Lucretius describing rain dropping from a cloud &quot; Redit agmine dulci.&quot; Besides Porta, Galileo and Colonna were enrolled among its mem bers. The society devoted itself exclusively to physical science. Porta, under its auspices, published his great work, Magice Naturalis libri xx., 1589, in fol. ; his Phytogno- monica, or, the occult virtue of plants; his De Humana Phy- siognomia, from which Lavater largely borrowed; also various works on optics and pneumatics, in which he approached the true theory of vision. He is even said by some to have anticipated Galileo in the invention of the telescope. But the principal monument still remaining of the zeal and industry of Cesi and his academy is the Phytobasanos, a compendium of the natural history of Mexico, written by a Spaniard, Hernendez. During fifty years the MS. had been neglected, when Cesi discovered it, and employed Terentio, Fabro, and Colonna, all Lynceans, to edit it and enrich it with notes and emendations. Cesi s own great work, Tlieatrum Naturae., was never published. The MS. still exists in the Albani Library at Rome. After Cesi s death, 1630, the academy languished for some years under the patronage of Urban VIII. An academy of the same name was inaugurated at Rome 1784, and still flourishes. It numbers among its members some of our English philo sophers. But the fame of the Lincei was far outstripped by that of the Accademia del Cimento, established in Florence 1657, under the patronage of the Grand Duke Ferdinand II., at the instigation of his brother Leopold, acting under the advice of Viviani, one of the greatest geometers of Europe. The object of this academy was (as the name implies) to make experiments and relate them, abjuring all preconceived notions. Unfortunately for science, it flourished for only ten years. Leopold in 1667 was made a cardinal, and the society languished without its head. It has, however, left a record of its labours in a volume containing an account of the experiments, pub lished by the secretary in 1667. It is in the form of a beautifully printed folio, with numerous full print pages of illustrations. It contains, among others, those on the supposed incompressibility of water, on the pressure of the air, and on the universal gravity of bodies. Torricelli, the inventor of the barometer, was one of its members. Passing by numerous other Italian Academies of Science, we come to those of modern times. The Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin originated in. 1757 as a private society; in 1759 it published a volume of Miscellanea Philosophico-Mathematica Societatis privates Taurinensis ; shortly after it was constituted a Royal Society by Charles Emanuel III., and in 1783 Vic/tor Amadous III. made it a Royal Academy of Sciences. It consists of 40 members, residents of Turin, 20 non resident, and 20 foreign members. It publishes each year a quarto volume of proceedings, and has crowned and awarded prizes to many learned works. France. The Old Academy of Sciences originated in much the same way as the French Academy. A private society of scientific men had for some thirty years been accustomed to meet first at the house of Montmort, the maitre dcs requetes, afterwards at that of Thevenot, a great traveller and man of universal genius, in order to converse on their studies, and communicate their discoveries. To this society belonged, among others, Descartes, Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, and his father. Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury, was presented to it during his visit to Paris in 1640. Colbert, just as Richelieu in the case- of the French Academy, conceived the idea of giving an official status to this body of learned men. Seven eminent mathematicians, among whom were Huyghens and De Bessy, the author of a famous treatise on magic squares, were chosen to form the nucleus of the new society. A certain number of chemists, physicians, and anatomists were subseqxiently added. Pensions were granted by Louis XIV. to each of the members, and a fund for instruments and experimentations placed at their disposal. They commenced their session the 22d December 1666 in the Royal Library. They met twice a week the mathematicians on the Wednesdays, the physicists (as the naturalists and physiologists were then called) on the Saturdays. Duhamel was appointed secretary by the king. This post he OAved more to his polished Latinity than to his scientific attainments, all the proceedings of the society being recorded in Latin. A treasurer was also nominated, who, notwithstanding his pretentious title, was nothing more than conservator of the scientific instruments, &c. At first the academy was rather a laboratory and observatory than an academy proper. Experiments were undertaken in common and results discussed. Several foreign savants, in particular the Danish astronomer Roemer, joined the society, attracted by the liberality of the Grand Monarque ; and the German physician and geometer Tschirnhausen and Sir Isaac Newton were made foreign associates. The death of Colbert, who was succeeded by Louvois, exercised a disas trous effect on the fortunes of the academy. The labours of the academicians were diverted from the pursuit of pure science to such works as the construction of fountains and cascades at Versailles, and the mathematicians were employed to calculate the odds of the games of lansquenet and bassett. In 1699 the academy was reconstituted by M. de Pontchartrain, under whose department as secretary of state the academies came. By its new con stitution it consisted of ten honorary members, men of high rank, who interested themselves in science, fifteen pensionaries, who were the working members, viz., three geometricians, and the same number of astronomers, mechanicians, anatomists, and chemists. Each section of three had two associates attached to it, and besides, each pensionary had the power of naming a pupil. There were eight foreign and four free associates. The officers were, a president and a vice-president, named by the king from among the honorary members, and a secretary and treasurer chosen from the pensionaries, who held their offices for life. Fontenelle, a man of wit, and rather a populariser of sciences than an original investigator, succeeded Duhamel as