Who was Then the Gentleman?: Samuel Sorbière,Thomas Hobbes,and the Royal Society

Sorbière Samuel , A Voyage to England containing many things relating to the state of learning, religion, and other curiosities of that Kingdom. As also Observations on the same voyage, by Dr. Thomas Sprat, Fellow of the Royal Society, and now Lord Bishop of Rochester with A letter of Monsieur Sorbiere's, concerning the war between England and Holland in 1652: To all which is prefix'd his Life, writ by M. Graveral (London, 1709), n.p. This is an English translation of Samuel Sorbière, Relation d'un voyage en Angleterre, où sont touchées plusieurs choses, qui regardent l'estat des sciences, et de la religion, & autres matières curieuses (Paris, 1664).

Sorbière's career is described in Morize André , “Thomas Hobbes et Samuel Sorbière: Notes sur l'introduction de Hobbes en France”, Revue germanique: Allemagne, Angleterre, États-Unis, Pays-Bas, Scandanavie, iv (1908), 195–204. Sorbière also translated More's Utopia into French and facilitated the publishing of the duc de Rohan's Memoires, Pierre Gassendi's Disquisition metaphysica and the Syntagma philosophicum Epicuri, and the 1658 edition of Gassendi's Opera omnia. Several of his own reflections on natural philosophy were published in Lettres et discours de M. de Sorbière (Paris, 1659) and Relations, lettres, et discours de Mr. de Sorbière (Paris, 1666). See also the “Biographical Register” in Malcolm Noel (ed.), The correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (2 vols, Oxford, 1994), ii, 893–9.

Sorbière referred to Gassendi, Descartes and Hobbes as the three “Triumvirs” of philosophy, Sorbière to Hobbes, [2/] 12 May 1661, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 519.

Quoted in “Biographical Register” in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 896.

On the role of self-fashioning in science, see Biagioli Mario , Galileo courtier: The practice of science in the culture of absolutism (Chicago, 1993).

Peck Linda Levy , Court patronage and corruption in early modern England (Boston, 1990), 3, 57. On patronage in the seventeenth century, see Biagioli , Galileo courtier (ref. 5) and “Galileo's system of patronage”, History of science, xxviii (1990), 1–62; Burke Peter , Venice and Amsterdam: A study of seventeenth-century elites (London, 1974); Evans Robert C. , Ben Jonson and the poetics of patronage (Lewisburg, 1989); Feingold Mordechai , The mathematicians' apprenticeship: Science, universities and society in England, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, 1984); Gundersheimer Werner L. , “Patronage in the Renaissance: An exploratory approach”, in Lytle G. F. Orgel S. (eds), Patronage in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1981), 3–23; Kettering Sharon , Patrons, brokers and clients in seventeenth-century France (Oxford, 1986); Lux David S. , Patronage and royal science in seventeenth-century France: The Académie de Physique in Caen (Ithaca, 1989); and Sarasohn Lisa T. , “Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and the patronage of the new science in the seventeenth century”, Isis, lxxxiv (1993), 70–90.

Whigham Frank , Ambition and privilege (Berkeley, 1984), 130–1, and Watson Curtis Brown , Shakespeare and the concept of Renaissance honor (Princeton, 1960), 63.

On the different attitudes of the crown towards science and scientific institutions, see Hunter Michael , Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1988), 129–35; and Biagioli Mario . “Scientific Revolution, social bricolage, and etiquette”, in The Scientific Revolution in national context , in Porter Roy Teich Mikuláš (eds) (Cambridge, 1992), 11–54, and “Etiquette, interdependence, and sociability in seventeenth-century France”, Critical inquiry, xxii (1996), 193–238. Lux David , op. cit. (ref. 6), 1–9, argues that it was not a crisis in private patronage that precipitated the founding of the Académie des Sciences. It is indeed true that the private patronage of science continued in both France and England in the later half of the seventeenth century. Many natural philosophers did not join the Royal Society and others did not share its experimentalist agenda; Fellows of the Royal Society continued to seek the support of private patrons (see Hunter , Science and society , 72–73, and idem, Establishing the new science: The experience of the early Royal Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1898), 30–35, 167–71; and Sarasohn Lisa T. , “Thomas Hobbes and the Duke of Newcastle: A study in the mutuality of patronage before the establishment of the Royal Society”, Isis, xc (1999), 715–37). Nevertheless, the legitimization of scientific activity was increasingly a royal prerogative in France and a corporate concern in England.

Graveral , “Life”, in Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), p. viii; Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), n.p.

Feingold , op. cit. (ref. 6), 209–13, and Shapin Steven , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, 1994), 45–52.

Harding Robert , “Corruption and the moral boundaries of patronage in the Renaissance”, in Lytle Orgel (eds), op. cit. (ref. 6), 47–64, p. 47.

“Discours de l'Amitie”, in Sorbière , Relations (ref. 2) 422.

Shapin , op. cit. (ref. 10), 42–52. On the growing concern about corruption and venality and how it affected patronage, see Peck , op. cit. (ref. 6), 30–46, and Harding , op. cit. (ref. 11).

Sorbière to Hobbes, [1/] 11 July 1645, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 122–3.

Howard Warrender traces the history of the publishing of De cive in his introduction to Hobbes Thomas , De cive: The Latin version (Oxford, 1983), 1–16.

Mersenne to Sorbière, 28 April 1646, in Hobbes , De cive: The Latin version (ref. 15), 297–8.

Hobbes to Sorbière, [22 May/] 1 June 1646, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 133. Sorbière repeatedly requested Hobbes to finish his natural philosophy and to send it to him. See ibid., i, 137, 164, 391. He also wanted Hobbes to get Gassendi to send his Physics to him (i, 137), once again showing how influence operated on many levels in the society of the learned.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [late September] 1646, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 137.

Hobbes to Sorbière, [24 September/] 4 October 1646, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 140–1.

Hobbes , De cive: The Latin version (ref. 15), p. xiv.

Warrender in the introduction to De cive: The Latin version (ref. 15), 11, 11 n. 2. The Latin inscription reads: “Thom. Hobbes Nobilis Anglus Ser. Principi Walliae à studiis praep.”.

Hobbes to Sorbière, [12/] 22 March 1647, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 157–8.

Hobbes to Sorbière, [6/] 16 May 1646, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 122–3. Martinich A. P. , Hobbes: A biography (Cambridge, 1999), 206, raises the issue of whether Hobbes's claim of ignorance was merely self-serving.

I discuss this episode in detail in “Was Leviathan a patronage artifact?”, History of political thought, xxi (2000), 606–31.

Hobbes to Sorbière, 22 March 1647, in Hobbes , De cive: The Latin version (ref. 15), 312.

Sorbière to Mersenne, 15 April 1647, in Hobbes , De cive: The Latin version (ref. 15), 312.

Warrender discusses this affair in his introduction, in Hobbes , De cive: The Latin version (ref. 15), 11–12. The whole text of Mersenne's original letter and Gassendi's letter can be found on pp. 297–8.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [9/] 19 August 1647, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 161.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [17/] 27 November 1647, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 160.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [9/] 19 August and [24 September/] 4 October 1647, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 162–3.

Hobbes to Sorbière, 29 December 1656/ 8 January 1657, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 429.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [23 January/] 2 February 1659, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 514.

Hobbes to Sorbière, 10 [/20] February 1657, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 447–8.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [2/] 12 May 1661, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 519.

Hobbes to Sorbière, 3 [/13] March 1662, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 526.

Malcolm , “Biographical Register”, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 896.

On the Montmor Academy, see Brown Harcourt , Scientific organizations in seventeenth century France (1620–1680) (New York, 1934), 64–134, and Hahn Roger , The anatomy of a scientific organization: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, 1971), 6–15.

Sorbière to Hobbes , [22 January/] 1 February 1658, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 494–6. On Sorbière and the Montmor Academy, and particularly its Baconian objectives, see Perkins Wendy , “The uses of science: The Montmor Academy, Samuel Sorbière and Francis Bacon”, The seventeenth century, i (1985), 155–62.

Quoted in Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37), 78–79.

Quoted in Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37) 87.

Sorbière to Hobbes, early 1663, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 551–3.

Quoted in Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37) 130.

Sourdis is described in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 543 n.2.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [23 December 1662/] 2 January 1663, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 542.

Nicolaus Claude Fabri de Peiresc was Consilleur du Roi in the Parlement of Aix, and was a noted humanist and naturalist himself, as well as the patron of Gassendi and Mersenne. For a discussion of Peiresc's role in early modern science see my article “Peiresc and the patronage of the new science in the seventeenth century” (ref. 6).

Sorbière to Hobbes, [23 December 1662/] 2 January 1663, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 542–3.

Sorbière to Hobbes, early 1663, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 547.

Quoted in Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37) 128.

Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37), 9–10.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 26–27. Sorbière had declared his eagerness to see the Royal Society as early as 1661. See Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37) 116.

Sorbière to Colonel Samuel Tuke, 26 August 1661, in Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37) 116.

The claim that the Royal Society was inspired by the Montmor Academy, which Oldenburg attended, has been definitively refuted by Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37) 117.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 38, 47–48.

The ambivalent nature of the Royal Society's private and public roles is discussed by Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992). On the crown's negligent support of the Royal Society, see Hunter Michael Wood Paul B. , “Towards Solomon's House: Rival strategies for reforming the early Royal Society”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 49–103.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 39–40. Skinner Quentin , “Thomas Hobbes and the nature of the early Royal Society”, Historical journal, xii (1969), 213–19, p. 238, argues that it was Hobbes's dogmatism that kept him out of the Royal Society.

On Hobbes's dispute with Boyle, see Shapin Steven Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985). For an account of the dispute with Wallis, see Jesseph Douglas M. , Squaring the circle: The war between Hobbes and Wallis (Chicago, 1999); Jacob James R. , Henry Stubbe, radical Protestantism and the early Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), 17–24; and Rogow Arnold A. , Thomas Hobbes: Radical in the service of reaction (New York, 1986), 196–200. Skinner , op. cit. (ref. 55), 217–39, argues that the personal animosity between Hobbes and Boyle and between Hobbes and Wallis was one of the primary reasons for his exclusion from the Royal Society, and that this exclusion was not based on his heterodoxy or his attitude towards the new science and experimentation. Shapin Schaffer , Leviathan, 131–9, on the other hand, argue that Hobbes was excluded from the Royal Society both for his personal arrogance and for his philosophical dogmatism, which offended the social and philosophic moderation of the Society.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 39.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 41.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 41.

Shapin Steven , “‘A scholar and a gentleman’: The problematic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England”, History of science, xxix (1991), 279–327. John Evelyn, who as we will see later prompted Thomas Sprat's refutation of Sorbière, was very sensitive to the charge of pedantry, and very scrupulous in defending the Royal Society's honour. The Society, he had informed Clarendon in 1661, “does not consist of a Company of Pedants and superficial persons; but of Gentlemen, and Refined Spirits that are universally Learn'd, that are Read, Travell'd, Experienc'd and Stout” (in the dedication to Gabriel Naudé, Instructions concerning erecting a library, translated by Evelyn John (London, 1661), n.p.).

Sorbière to Hobbes, [21 June/] 1 July 1664, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 619.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [13] 23 December 1656, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), i, 390.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [24 November/], 4 December 1663, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 557.

Sorbière to Hobbes, [13/] 23 August 1664, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 630–1.

Hyde Edward , Earl of Clarendon, A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes Book Entitled Leviathan (London, 1676), 7–8.

Quoted in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), 631–2 n.4.

Malcolm , “Biographical Register”, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2) 898.

Guillotin Vincent , “Autour de la Relation du voyage de Samuel Sorbière en Angleterre 1663–1664”, in Smith College studies in modern languages, xi (1929–30), 3–29, argues that Sprat was urged to write his attack by Evelyn and others who felt that Sorbière had misrepresented himself and betrayed their institution at the very time it was being attacked on all sides.

Sprat Thomas , Observations on Monsieur de Sorbiere's Voyage in England, written to Dr. Wren, professor of astronomy in Oxford (London, 1668), 202–7.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 205–7. Since the Society was attempting to establish the priority of experiment over authority in science, the claim that they had a large library was particularly offensive (see Stewart , op. cit. (ref. 54), p. xxi).

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 166.

Hunter , Science and society (ref. 8), 34–38.

Hunter , “Toward Solomon's house” (ref. 54), 51–55, 70–71.

Sprat Thomas , History of the Royal Society of London, ed. by Cope Jackson I. Jones Harold Whitmore (St Louis, 1959), 77–79.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 152–3.

Birch Thomas , The history of the Royal Society for the improving on natural knowledge from its first rise, ed. by Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas (facs. of 1756–57 edn, 2 vols, New York and London, 1968), i, 107–8.

Naudé , op. cit. (ref. 60), n.p.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 39. While Sorbière had only referred in this passage to Clarendon's rhetorical style, the implication is that Hobbes is Bacon's heir in other ways as well.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 199.

Quoted in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), ii, 631 n.2.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 113.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 161.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 198.

Sorbière , Voyage (ref. 1), 50.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 60–61.

Shapin Schaffer , Leviathan (ref. 56), 134, mention that “As several historians have suggested, the closeness of the King's association with the great dogmatist must have constituted a considerable threat to the experimentalists of the Royal Society. The King, on whom rested the Society's hopes of material support, was a patron of the new science, but there is little evidence that he discriminated markedly between the rationalist and the experimentalist programmes”. If that was the case, it is possible that Sprat's attack on Sorbière was part of a patronage strategy to woo the King away from Hobbes and towards the Royal Society.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 5, 10.

Guillotin , op. cit. (ref. 61), 19, emphasizes this point. On the early opponents to the Royal Society, see Stimson Dorothy , Scientists and amateurs: A history of the Royal Society (New York, 1948), 70–96. It may be significant that two of the most vehement critics of the Society were Margaret Cavendish, who attacked experimentalism in Observations upon experimental philosophy (London, 1666), and Thomas Shadwell, the dramatist who satirized the Royal Society in The virtuoso (London, 1676). Cavendish and Shadwell were respectively the wife and client of William Cavendish, the Duke of Newcastle, who was also Hobbes's patron. See my “Thomas Hobbes and the Duke of Newcastle” (ref. 8), 715–37, and “Margaret Cavendish and patronage”, Endeavour, xxiii (1999), 130–2.

Guillotin , op. cit. (ref. 61), 8–9, and Malcolm , “Biographical Register”, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), 898. Malcolm gives a detailed account of Sorbière's disaster.

Henry Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, 20 October 1664, in Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas (eds), The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ii (Madison, 1966), 127–9.

Malcolm , “Biographical Register”, in Malcolm (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2) 898.

Henry Oldenburg to Pierre Petit, 30 October, in Hall Hall (eds), op. cit. (ref. 90), 127–9. Oldenburg wrote to Sorbière to tell him that he had explained to Petit that Sorbière had not misrepresented himself (Oldenburg to Sorbière, 3 January 1663/4, ii, 141–3).

Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37), 131–2.

Only a handful of members of the Montmor Academy became members of the Académie des Sciences, including Roberval, Montmor's enemy. Perhaps local politics would have been enough to keep Sorbière out (see Brown Brown , op. cit. (ref. 37), 117.) As we have seen above, Sorbière also disagreed with the medical establishment on blood-letting, which might have been enough to make his inclusion problematic.

Sprat , Observations (ref. 69), 240–1.