Epilogue

The pages of this volume bear eloquent testimony to the impetus which the early Fellows gave to experimental science both by their individual work and by the warm spirit of fellowship that bound them together from the days of their earliest meetings. These usually ended in a convivial meal, a tradition that has been perpetuated in the Royal Society Club. Looking back over the three centuries it is pertinent to survey in this Epilogue the contributions the Fellowship has made to ‘the Improving of Natural Knowledge’ and to ask how far it has attained the objectives of the founders. Those centuries have seen a continuous growth of the stream of scientific knowledge, towards which every country is now contributing. They have witnessed the gradual emergence of individual sciences, each with its own disciplines and techniques, as all that knowledge became organized in systematic form. With that went hand in hand the inception of scientific faculties in the universities as centres of teaching and research. Most important of all have been those major episodes in the advance when some new conception has revolutionized men’s way of thinking. And lastly there has been the gradual realization of Bacon’s vision ‘the achieving of all things possible’, in the application of new knowledge and ideas to the improving of men’s way of living. What contributions has the Society made to all of this

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