Seeking Natural Knowledge in Later 17th Century England: Robert Plot, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Oxford Philosophical Society

Anthony Turner offers a view of the social and cultural context of the collecting of natural history in late 17th century England, constructed around the biography of Robert Plot. Seeking Natural Knowledge in Later 17th Century England seeks in particular to show the continuing intrinsic connection between chorography, antiquarianism, natural history and even, though to a lesser degree, applied mathematics, and the interest of such matters for the University of Oxford.

An introductory chapter places chorography in its European cosmological context before looking at details of its study -- in both its antiquarian and practical aspects -- in Early Modern England, and the methods by which it was pursued there. Parallels are drawn with similar activity in France and Germany.

In the following chapters, through an account of the work of Robert Plot, the way in which his writings established a new form of chorographical natural history investigation and writing is described, and how this work fed into, and in part provoked, the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum as a non-collegiate university institution in Oxford. Activity in the Museum during its early years is described, as is the work of the Philosophical Society that met within it and was closely associated. A final chapter describes the influence of Robert Plot and his successors up to the very early 18th century.

Seven appendices supply an essential documentary underpinning for the work, offering new material on the burial of Plot, a detailed bibliography of his works, and an account of his portraits, before completing Gunther’s documentation of the Oxford Society and its activities by the publication of several documents concerning it that have hitherto remained in manuscript.

Anthony Turner

Anthony Turner is an Oxford trained historian and independent scholar with an interest in the social history of ideas during the Ancien Régime and on the history of scientific instruments, clocks, watches, and sundials. Consultant to Sotheby’s, Bonhams, and Artcurial for scientific instruments, he also acts as expert for horology and science sales in Paris. A major research project of the past three decades has been the conception and development of a bio-bibliographical data base of French and Swiss scientific instrument makers.