Robert Yeo
Biographic Data
| ID | 267303 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Yeo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Yeo |
| SIGNATURE | YEO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1066-9547 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 112 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
Towards a history of the questionnaire
This introduction to the following five articles discusses concepts, practices and debates before and after the adoption of the term “questionnaire” in the late nineteenth century. Information gathering by way of itemized questions was established in the early modern period (c. 1500–1700). Developments associated with questionnaires in the modern period (such as mass standardized items) began in the late 1800s; but there was significant scrutiny …
Queries in early-modern English science
The notion of a “query” occurred in legal, medical, theological and scientific writings during the early modern period. Whereas the “questionary” (from c. 1400s) sought replies from within a doctrine (such as Galenic medicine), in the 1600s the query posed open-ended inquiries, seeking empirical information from travellers, explorers and others. During the 1660s in Britain, three versions of the query (and lists of queries) emerged. Distinctions …
The European Encyclopedia: From 1650 to the Twenty-First Century, by Jeff Loveland
In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), John Locke insisted that the example of good behaviour imparted by a polite tutor to a young gentleman was more important ‘than all the hard Words, or real Knowledge he has got from the Liberal Arts, or his Tutor’s learned Encyclopaidia’. Despite the existence of Johann Heinrich Alsted’s Latin Encyclopaedia (1630), it is unlikely that Locke was referring to a printed book. In the late 1600s, the term …
Thinking with Excerpts: John Locke (1632–1704) and his Notebooks
In his “Méthode nouvelle,” an anonymous article in the Bibliothèque universelle of 1686, John Locke described his way of collecting excerpts in notebooks and retrieving relevant entries. The well‐known practice of entering textual passages in commonplace books sits uneasily with Locke's criticism of received opinion and authority. Is it possible that he used any of these notes to think with? I suggest that the conditions for this were provided by…
Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725
In this intriguing and impressive book, Vera Keller presents a history of the desiderata that appeared in early modern Europe. These wish lists responded to public interest by pursuing projects likely to advance the common good. Among the favorite desired things, recurring across two centuries, were perpetual lamps, flexible glass, diving bells, the philosopher’s stone, the Alkahest (or universal solvent), and perpetual motion. During the same pe…
Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle (1627–91)
For almost three decades, Michael Hunter’s work has been a necessary starting point for students and scholars of Robert Boyle and other founding fellows of the Royal Society of London. His many publications, and his editions (with collaborators) of Boyle’s printed works and correspondence, have provided an intellectual framework and an invaluable set of resources. Boyle Studies brings together material published since 2004, plus two new chapters …
Capacious Memory and Copious Notebooks
Taking Notes in Samuel Hartlib's Circle
John Locke, Master Note-taker
This chapter considers John Locke's lifetime of assiduous note-taking, with illustrations from his personal notebooks, and a discussion of his ‘New Method’ of entering and indexing information. One of the key features of this account, published in 1686, was a method of indexing a commonplace book that relied on the combinations of first letter and vowels in the words selected as Heads. This method separated cognate topics and hence flouted some o…
Collective Note-taking and Robert Hooke's Dynamic Archive
This chapter examines the challenge of collective note-taking in the service of collaborative projects, such as those of John Ray and Martin Lister on the description and classification of plants and animals. It considers the influence of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum as a model for the preliminary collection of data under tentative topics, and one that might guide additional collection. It underlines Henry Oldenburg's role as the Royal Society'…
Conclusion
In making notes about the empirical world, the English virtuosi were able to draw on a legacy of ideas formed by Renaissance humanists, Jesuits, and Francis Bacon. Early-modern figures recognized a complex relationship between individual memory and external records of information. The demand of Baconian natural histories for empirical details did put pressure on memory and focussed attention on better ways of arranging and storing information for…
Information and Empirical Sensibility
This chapter argues that thinking about notes clarified some of the challenges and opportunities of the ‘new philosophy,’ or empirical science, in early modern Europe. Francis Bacon called for the making of natural histories?that is, huge collections of empirical information on topics ranging from celestial phenomena to technology, thus yielding histories of the air, of heat and cold, of sounds, blood, of life and death. This programme, embraced …
Rival Memories
This chapter considers Robert Boyle's views on memory and note-taking in the light of his relationship with Samuel Hartlib, and especially as revealed in his correspondence in the 1660s with John Beale. The young Boyle thought and wrote about the mental and moral cultivation of the mind, independent of the use of notes. He was therefore potentially receptive to Beale's emphasis on memory training, and on abbreviation, reduction and systematic dis…
Robert Boyle's Loose Notes
Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science
Loose Notes and Capacious Memory: Robert Boyle’s Note‐Taking and its Rationale
Whereas his contemporaries were explicitly aware that the limits of memory called for scrupulous arrangement of one’s papers, Boyle’s papers remained chaotic throughout his life, necessitating a habitual recourse to memory. This invites consideration of Boyle’s views on the use of memory and notes, taking account of the precepts and options of his day. Like many other early modern virtuosi, Boyle made copious notes comprising both textual extract…
Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory
Argument In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a machine that acted as a “supplement” to memory and met the particular information needs of its user. Because this “memex” recorded “trails” of selected documents, it has been seen as a precursor to hypertext. However, this paper considers Bush in relation to earlier concerns about memory and information, via the ideas of Robert Hooke and John Locke. Whereas Bush modeled the memex on the associative proces…
Notebooks as memory aids: Precepts and practices in early modern England
The theory and practice of note-taking were matters of concern for Renaissance humanists. They recommended commonplace books as stores of copious literary material for use in speeches and writing; but these notebooks were regarded as tools for training and improving recall from memory, not as substitutes for it. This article examines the operation of this assumption and the challenges to it that appeared, especially during the 17th century. There…
Lost Encyclopedias: Before and After the Enlightenment
Lost Encyclopedias:Before and After the Enlightenment Richard Yeo (bio) As ways of collecting, ordering, and preserving knowledge, both libraries and encyclopedias are complex concepts with nuanced histories. The two categories have classical roots, and both have affinities with another ancient notion, the "Musaeum." All three are places of repository or display.1 But encyclopedias, roughly as we know them today, are recent occupants on library s…
Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England
This organization consists, in the first place, of a mechanical arrangement of materials, such as is to be found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, digests, scientific and literary annuals, systems of natural history, and the like. By these appliances, thus much at least is gained, that such knowledge as cannot be carried about in the memory is immediately accessible to anyone who wants it
Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind
A Solution to the Multitude of Books: "Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) as "the Best Book in the Universe
This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge-in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an…
A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's "Cyclopaedia" (1728) as "The Best Book in the Universe
This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge—in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an…
Author's response
Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science
An Idol of the Market-Place: Baconianism in Nineteenth Century Britain
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the name of Francis Bacon was closely associated with the idea of experimental philosophy or natural science. For the leading members of the early Royal Society, he was the guiding moral and intellectual spirit of the scientific endeavour, or, as Abraham Cowley's Ode would have it, a prophetic Moses who led natural philosophers towards the promised land.1 Similarly, within a European context, one wr…
Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850
William Whewell, natural theology and the philosophy of science in mid nineteenth century Britain
This article aims to reveal the moral and theological dimensions of William Whewell's philosophy of science. It suggests that, in addition to an internalist account of Whewell's method and epistemology, there is a need to view his philosophy of science (and knowledge) within the intellectual context constituted by the assumptions of natural theology. It argues that writers of natural theology saw man's ability to know the world as an indication o…
Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760-1860
The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rule…
Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces
Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces Richard Yeo In the fifth volume (1755) of the Encyclopédie in his entry on “En-cyclopædia,” Denis Diderot forecast a time in which the sheer number of books would require a division of intellectual labor. Some people, he said, will not do much rea ding but rather “devote themselves to investigation which will be new, or which they will believe to be new.” The majority, unable …
Lost Encyclopedias: Before and After the Enlightenment
Lost Encyclopedias:Before and After the Enlightenment Richard Yeo (bio) As ways of collecting, ordering, and preserving knowledge, both libraries and encyclopedias are complex concepts with nuanced histories. The two categories have classical roots, and both have affinities with another ancient notion, the "Musaeum." All three are places of repository or display.1 But encyclopedias, roughly as we know them today, are recent occupants on library s…
Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England
This organization consists, in the first place, of a mechanical arrangement of materials, such as is to be found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, digests, scientific and literary annuals, systems of natural history, and the like. By these appliances, thus much at least is gained, that such knowledge as cannot be carried about in the memory is immediately accessible to anyone who wants it
The Principle of Plenitude and Natural Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain
In his classic study, The Great Chain of Being , Arthur Lovejoy delineated a complex set of concepts and assumptions which referred to the perfection of God and the fullness of creation. In attempting to distil the basic or 'unit idea' which constituted this pattern of thought, he focused on the assumption that 'the universe is a plenum formarum in which the range of conceivable diversity of kinds of living things is exhaustively exemplified'. He…
Notebooks as memory aids: Precepts and practices in early modern England
The theory and practice of note-taking were matters of concern for Renaissance humanists. They recommended commonplace books as stores of copious literary material for use in speeches and writing; but these notebooks were regarded as tools for training and improving recall from memory, not as substitutes for it. This article examines the operation of this assumption and the challenges to it that appeared, especially during the 17th century. There…
Loose Notes and Capacious Memory: Robert Boyle’s Note‐Taking and its Rationale
Whereas his contemporaries were explicitly aware that the limits of memory called for scrupulous arrangement of one’s papers, Boyle’s papers remained chaotic throughout his life, necessitating a habitual recourse to memory. This invites consideration of Boyle’s views on the use of memory and notes, taking account of the precepts and options of his day. Like many other early modern virtuosi, Boyle made copious notes comprising both textual extract…
Towards a history of the questionnaire
This introduction to the following five articles discusses concepts, practices and debates before and after the adoption of the term “questionnaire” in the late nineteenth century. Information gathering by way of itemized questions was established in the early modern period (c. 1500–1700). Developments associated with questionnaires in the modern period (such as mass standardized items) began in the late 1800s; but there was significant scrutiny …
William Whewell, natural theology and the philosophy of science in mid nineteenth century Britain
This article aims to reveal the moral and theological dimensions of William Whewell's philosophy of science. It suggests that, in addition to an internalist account of Whewell's method and epistemology, there is a need to view his philosophy of science (and knowledge) within the intellectual context constituted by the assumptions of natural theology. It argues that writers of natural theology saw man's ability to know the world as an indication o…
Darwin to Einstein: Historical studies on science and belief
An Idol of the Market-Place: Baconianism in Nineteenth Century Britain
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the name of Francis Bacon was closely associated with the idea of experimental philosophy or natural science. For the leading members of the early Royal Society, he was the guiding moral and intellectual spirit of the scientific endeavour, or, as Abraham Cowley's Ode would have it, a prophetic Moses who led natural philosophers towards the promised land.1 Similarly, within a European context, one wr…
Scientific Method And The Rhetoric of Science In Britain, 1830–1917
The Principle of Plenitude and Natural Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain
In his classic study, The Great Chain of Being , Arthur Lovejoy delineated a complex set of concepts and assumptions which referred to the perfection of God and the fullness of creation. In attempting to distil the basic or 'unit idea' which constituted this pattern of thought, he focused on the assumption that 'the universe is a plenum formarum in which the range of conceivable diversity of kinds of living things is exhaustively exemplified'. He…
The correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 1, 1821–1836
The correspondence of Charles Darwin
Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760-1860
The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rule…
Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850
Paradise Revealed: Natural History in Nineteenth-Century Australia . Colin Finney
Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces
Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces Richard Yeo In the fifth volume (1755) of the Encyclopédie in his entry on “En-cyclopædia,” Denis Diderot forecast a time in which the sheer number of books would require a division of intellectual labor. Some people, he said, will not do much rea ding but rather “devote themselves to investigation which will be new, or which they will believe to be new.” The majority, unable …
Author's response
Managing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind
A Solution to the Multitude of Books: "Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) as "the Best Book in the Universe
This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge-in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an…
A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's "Cyclopaedia" (1728) as "The Best Book in the Universe
This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge—in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an…
Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory
Argument In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a machine that acted as a “supplement” to memory and met the particular information needs of its user. Because this “memex” recorded “trails” of selected documents, it has been seen as a precursor to hypertext. However, this paper considers Bush in relation to earlier concerns about memory and information, via the ideas of Robert Hooke and John Locke. Whereas Bush modeled the memex on the associative proces…
Notebooks as memory aids: Precepts and practices in early modern England
The theory and practice of note-taking were matters of concern for Renaissance humanists. They recommended commonplace books as stores of copious literary material for use in speeches and writing; but these notebooks were regarded as tools for training and improving recall from memory, not as substitutes for it. This article examines the operation of this assumption and the challenges to it that appeared, especially during the 17th century. There…
Lost Encyclopedias: Before and After the Enlightenment
Lost Encyclopedias:Before and After the Enlightenment Richard Yeo (bio) As ways of collecting, ordering, and preserving knowledge, both libraries and encyclopedias are complex concepts with nuanced histories. The two categories have classical roots, and both have affinities with another ancient notion, the "Musaeum." All three are places of repository or display.1 But encyclopedias, roughly as we know them today, are recent occupants on library s…
Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England
This organization consists, in the first place, of a mechanical arrangement of materials, such as is to be found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, digests, scientific and literary annuals, systems of natural history, and the like. By these appliances, thus much at least is gained, that such knowledge as cannot be carried about in the memory is immediately accessible to anyone who wants it
Loose Notes and Capacious Memory: Robert Boyle’s Note‐Taking and its Rationale
Whereas his contemporaries were explicitly aware that the limits of memory called for scrupulous arrangement of one’s papers, Boyle’s papers remained chaotic throughout his life, necessitating a habitual recourse to memory. This invites consideration of Boyle’s views on the use of memory and notes, taking account of the precepts and options of his day. Like many other early modern virtuosi, Boyle made copious notes comprising both textual extract…
Capacious Memory and Copious Notebooks
Taking Notes in Samuel Hartlib's Circle
John Locke, Master Note-taker
This chapter considers John Locke's lifetime of assiduous note-taking, with illustrations from his personal notebooks, and a discussion of his ‘New Method’ of entering and indexing information. One of the key features of this account, published in 1686, was a method of indexing a commonplace book that relied on the combinations of first letter and vowels in the words selected as Heads. This method separated cognate topics and hence flouted some o…
Collective Note-taking and Robert Hooke's Dynamic Archive
This chapter examines the challenge of collective note-taking in the service of collaborative projects, such as those of John Ray and Martin Lister on the description and classification of plants and animals. It considers the influence of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum as a model for the preliminary collection of data under tentative topics, and one that might guide additional collection. It underlines Henry Oldenburg's role as the Royal Society'…
Philosophy (25 works) · History (21 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Art (12 works) · History (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · History of Science and Medicine (11 works) · Art history (10 works) · Sociology (10 works)