O Rei Carlos II e a Royal Society

E, no mesmo suplemento de livros do "New York Times", MEGAN MARSHAL, no artigo "Return of the King" recenseia o livro:

- Jenny Uglow, "A GAMBLING MAN. Charles II’s Restoration Game", (580 pp., Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35),

sobre o rei Carlos II de Inglaterra (marido da portuguesa Catarina de Bragança; Marshal escreve a propósito: "poor barren Queen Catherine had to put up with Charles’s bankrolling of one mistress after another, as well as the welcoming to court of his illegitimate children").

Excerto do artigo, a respeito da fundação da Royal Society, que este ano faz 350 anos, pois foi em 166o patrocinada por Carlos II:

"In an entertaining set piece, she traces the establishment of the Royal Society, whose fellows were inspired by the recent inventions of the telescope (or “tube”) and microscope to “collect knowledge in all spheres.” “The whole universe, their secretary, Henry Oldenburg, claimed, would be ‘taken to taske.’ ” Royal Society fellows “discussed barnacles and snowflakes, the reproduction of vipers and the nature of gravity. . . . They puzzled over poisons, watched plants flash like gunpowder in a fire and tried to capture a spider within a circle of ‘ground unicorn’s horn.’ ” Quirky as some of the society’s initiatives seemed, the fellows were trying out the new principle of experimental verification of natural phenomena — a method vigorously opposed both by religious proponents of divine mystery and by adherents of the precepts of alchemy, with its “philosophy of transformation, regeneration and purification.”

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