In two recent articles by Russell and Whiteside, the reception of those particular conclusions of Kepler that have come to be called his laws of planetary motion has been subjected to the first research beyond the pioneering efforts of Delambre at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Independently conceived, and directed towards quite different ends, these two investigations overlapped in only one substantial area—their survey of citations of Kepler's second law by English astronomers between 1650 and 1670. Not surprisingly, they reached essentially identical conclusions about the situation in 1670. Finding ‘equant’ theories instead of the law of areas, wherever he looked, Russell qualified his general claim ‘that the importance of Kepler's ideas during the period [up to 1666] has been greatly underestimated’, to the extent of describing the history of the second law as ‘chequered’ and ‘complicated’. And Whiteside simply reported that Kepler's scheme for reckoning motion in the elliptical orbit ‘was seemingly firmly accepted by no one, and even its formal enunciation but rarely stated in the period’.

Early in 1826, at the age of 28, Charles Lyell began writing the first of a series of articles for J. G. Lockhart, the new editor of the Quarterly review. These articles gave him his first opportunity to express to the educated public his views on the state of science in general, and of geology in particular, in English society. According to the convention of the Quarterly, each article was nominally a review of one or more recently published works, but like other reviewers Lyell clearly chose them as ‘pegs’ on which to hang his own arguments. In content, the articles form a kind of ‘gradualistic’ series, rather like his own later interpretations of geological phenomena. At one end of the series (though published third) was an essay on the place of science in general in English university education. Another article (the first to appear in print) focused on some of the English institutions specifically devoted to science. Here there was a hint that the need for reform in the place of science in English society was not unrelated to a similar need for reform in Lyell's chosen branch of science. The next article enlarged on this hint by examining the publications of the Geological Society of London, on which Lyell had recently served as Secretary. This essay expressed for the first time in a general context Lyell's characteristic emphasis on the need for actualistic comparison between present and past. Finally, what he needed to complete the series was an article in which he could show in detail the positive explanatory advantages of following this method in geology. The ‘peg’ which he chose for this purpose was a single work, George Poulett Scrope's Memoir on the geology of central France.

There can be little doubt that 1973 will remain notable as a year in which knowledge of Galileo's mechanics increased dramatically. Professor Stillman Drake's publication, in May, of some of Galileo's early work on the law of free fall was followed in the autumn by the publication of a number of important manuscripts clearly indicating Galileo's use of precise measurement. From a discussion of these manuscripts and Thomas Settle's performance of Galileo's inclined plane experiment, Drake implies that a clear view of Galileo's use of experiment is now emerging. Added emphasis was given to Drake's thesis that doubts concerning Galileo's use of experiment were largely unfounded, by James MacLachlan's realization of a Galilean experiment which was previously described as ‘imaginary’ by Koyré. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that, while it cannot be doubted that Galileo used experiment and precise measurement, his attitude to observation may well have been far more complex than Drake has supposed. My point of departure is James MacLachlan's remark that continuing disagreement over Galileo's use of experiment should lead to further examination of Galileo's experimental claims. I shall indicate that more than one view of Galileo's use of experiment may prove capable of explaining our present knowledge—a corollary of this being that alternative explanations may be proposed for the manuscripts recently published by Drake.

In the first half of the nineteenth century the largest and wealthiest ‘popular’ scientific establishment in London was the London Institution, founded by a group of prominent City men in 1805. During most of its early years this Institution had over 900 members; within a year of its foundation it had accumulated funds of £76,000, which dwarfed those possessed by any similar body in this period; by 1819 it had erected an imposing building in Finsbury Circus, a structure with a splendid library, a lecture theatre, and provision for laboratories, as well as meeting rooms. In that theatre eminent men of science and literature delivered lectures; by the 1840s William Robert Grove, then in the midst of his scientific career, was installed as ‘Professor of Experimental Philosophy in the London Institution’.