Michael R.G. Spiller

Concerning Natural Experimental Philosophie: Meric Casaubon and the Royal Society - International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Idees Michael R.G. Spiller Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1980 edition

The copy of A Letter to Peter du Moulin from which this facsimile is taken is in the National Library of Scotland, pressmark NG.1341. c.1(8). The first and only issue, it runs to 36 pages with a title page and blank preliminary leaf, and cost sixpence; it is coarsely and probably hurriedly printed, with an error on the title page: to make sense of 'Prebendarie of the same Church,' the &c. after Casaubon's name should have been expanded to read 'and Prebendarie of Christ-Church, Canterbury.' An obliging contemporary has annotated the copy with the names of those whom Casaubon alludes to indirectly. There is no date in the pamphlet other than on the title page, and the only evidence for a more precise dating, in the absence of any ms. or notes for it, is in a letter written by Casaubon to J. G. Graevius on July 19th, 1668, from Cambridge. Casaubon and Graevius (1632-1703), Professor of Politics, History and Eloquence in the University of Utrecht, were accustomed to bewail the contemporary state of the republic of letters in their correspondence, and on this occasion Casaubon wrote: Prima mali labes a Philosophia Cartesiana, quae stultae iuventuti et novitatis avidae bonos lade ad Experimenta ventum est, in quibus nunc omnis eruditio, tibros excussit e manibus.