Invisible College
precursor group to the Royal Society of London, consisting of a number of natural philosophers around Robert Boyle From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Invisible College was the name given to themselves by a group of like-minded scientists and natural philosophers in England in the mid-17th century.[1] The informal association is considered to have been one of the origins of the Royal Society.[2]
The purpose of the invisible college was to encourage each other to develop scientific knowledge through experiments and other kinds of investigation.[3]
Some of the members of the Invisible College were among the founders of the Royal Society in 1660,[4] including Robert Boyle, John Wilkins and Samuel Hartlib.[2]
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Modern use
The concept of invisible college was developed in the sociology of science by Diane Crane,[5] building on de Solla Price's work on citation networks. It is related to, but significantly different from, other concepts of expert communities, such as "Epistemic communities",[6] or "Communities of Practice".[7] Recently, the concept was applied to the global network of communications among scientists by Caroline S. Wagner.[8]
In fiction it is mentioned in the novel The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, and was the inspiration for the Unseen University in the works of Terry Pratchett.
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Related pages
References
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