This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar).
Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone is interested. Hans Sloane is pretty fascinating in his own right and was recently the subject of a biography: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737334
I never looked for it, but Leibniz was a member of the RS so he almost certainly shows up. He's mentioned frequently in the Philosophical Transactions. For example here's
"the Answer of Mr. Leibnitz" in response to a letter from "clarissimis viris Newtono" (the most distinguished Newton):
https://books.google.com/books?id=7uwyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA186&dq=%...
Some context around Papin and his boat from wikipedia[1] for those interested:
In 1705 he developed a second steam engine with the help of Gottfried Leibniz, based on an invention by Thomas Savery, but this used steam pressure rather than atmospheric pressure. Details of the engine were published in 1707.
Papin returned to London in 1707, leaving his wife in Germany. Several of his papers were put before the Royal Society between 1707 and 1712 without acknowledging or paying him, about which he complained bitterly. Papin's ideas included a description of his 1690 atmospheric steam engine, similar to that built and put into use by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, thought to be the year of Papin's death.
Tons! Some examples show up in my dissertation, which is available here [1]. Best way to find them is to search "royal society" in the PDF.
One of the more interesting examples is Robert Boyle's list of "desiderata" for future scientific discoveries which includes entries like "Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams" and "Freedom from Necessity of much Sleeping exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and what happens in Mad-Men."
I find it interesting, the reference to tea, rather than coffee as a stimulant.
It looks like coffee houses became a thing around this time. [1]
I also like that that is basically a list of what we want from drugs today, other than curing disease. (would the concept of taking a pill to cure something have existed then???)
Coffee houses existed at that time but coffee itself was not thought of in quite the same way as today. It wasn’t taken for granted that it was a harmless stimulant, or even a stimulant at all.
The idea of taking a pill to cure a disease did exist; it would’ve been called a “specific.” Pills were handmade but were fairly common based on what I’ve seen, although cordials, electuaries, and other drinkables predominated.
Its strange that tea was thought of as a stimulant but not coffee?! I could drink 10 cups of tea, and only feel the urge to wee. That much coffee and I'd be up the wall!
But then the Victorians were shooting up opiates whilst warning of the dangers of alcohol so I suppose there is a lot of 'cultural conditioning' going on there (and here).
I could drink 10 cups of tea, and only feel the urge to wee. That much coffee and I'd be up the wall!
This just looks like evidence that you don't drink tea and don't know what's in it, or that you've confused herbal tea with tea from the tea plant. Tea seems to have about half the amount of caffeine coffee does. For example, here are figures from the Mayo Clinic:
Coffee is more of a stimulant than tea, but tea is still very strong, so it's unsurprising that the British were aware of its effects. If you're trying to stay awake, tea will do the job.
It depends on the quality of leaves and style of preparation. The mental stimulation you get from black tea in a modern UK cafe is mild and very different from what you'd experience from Chinese Gong Fu Cha [0], or from Russian chifir [1]. Herbal infusions, which are still referred to as tea by many Americans and Europeans, will have almost no stimulant effect. It's quite likely that Boyle first drank tea in coffeehouses, where [2]:
The whole of the day's tea would be brewed in the morning, taxed by a visiting excise officer, and then kept in barrels and reheated as necessary throughout the rest of the day.
If I was a coffeehouse owner, I would brew that tea for a long time to get as concentrated a drink out of it as possible.
Impressive knowledge displayed in the document linked. I wonder what your opinion is from a historic perspective on drug legislation. Is the war on drugs a phase we experienced like the alcohol prohibition in the 1920-1930 era or are we just getting started?
Short answer is that, on a very long time horizon, I think drug laws probably are just a phase that will go away. But socially- or religiously-enforced policing of conduct is as old as human culture itself, so even if drugs become decriminalized, the tendency to proclaim some substances or actions "taboo" is unlikely to ever disappear. The specific actions/substances in question can change fairly quickly, however.
Maybe criminalizing religions would be an answer. It is fascinating how perception of drugs changes over time. Even the Dutch royal family had a cocaine manufacturing site last century.
Even if you destroy religion, the underlying drives that created religion in the first place will persist. The religions will just be less recognizable as religion, taking on a more secular flavour. Instead you'll end up with stuff like conspiracy theories, political ideology and pseudo-science taking over.
One of the nice things about science is that its members keep their religion and their scientific work separate. It's particularly noticeable when you look through the history of science. There's a long tradition of secularism that has benefited the religious and the non-religious alike.
Issac Newton, for example, had very unorthodox opinions about God and the Trinity. To become the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, he needed a get a special exemption from King Charles II, as traditionally the chair had required that you be an ordained Anglican priest. It's that very same exemption that Newton got for his unusual religious views that allowed Stephan Hawking to hold the chair as an atheist.
There are different practices on which different organized religions depend to keep the "count of the believers" steady and their influence strong which could actually be criminalized when there were enough consciousness and willingness (without disallowing individuals believers to believe). But there surely isn't enough willingness, especially not in the US where publicly "non-believing" more or less excludes you from the politics (shouldn't that be changed for the start?) and the religion organizations have the status of the... sacred cows.
Looking back, there were many very good reasons why the religions were not put in the constitution.
Criminalizing religion would be like criminalizing sex. It's a behavioral pattern based on instincts of the majority of the population, furthered by social proof and the political necessity of controlling the populace.
I supposed you could try to create a better religion. Do what thou whilst as the basic creed basically - which, incidentally, is what the church of satan preaches :)
Comments
This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar).
Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone is interested. Hans Sloane is pretty fascinating in his own right and was recently the subject of a biography: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737334
Does any of the meeting minutes contain a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz that you know of ?
I never looked for it, but Leibniz was a member of the RS so he almost certainly shows up. He's mentioned frequently in the Philosophical Transactions. For example here's "the Answer of Mr. Leibnitz" in response to a letter from "clarissimis viris Newtono" (the most distinguished Newton): https://books.google.com/books?id=7uwyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA186&dq=%...
First page of the 1707-1711 editions, I found this sentence, sure there's likely more ...
"A proposall was read by Dr. Papin concerning
a new invented [deleted] to be row'd with oars mov'd
by heat. The farther consideration of It was also referred to ye. next meeting.
A letter was read from Mr. Leibnitz concerning
Mr. Papin & this new boat."
Some context around Papin and his boat from wikipedia[1] for those interested:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Papin
Well? Did you find any references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs?
Tons! Some examples show up in my dissertation, which is available here [1]. Best way to find them is to search "royal society" in the PDF.
One of the more interesting examples is Robert Boyle's list of "desiderata" for future scientific discoveries which includes entries like "Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams" and "Freedom from Necessity of much Sleeping exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and what happens in Mad-Men."
[1] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/46...
I find it interesting, the reference to tea, rather than coffee as a stimulant.
It looks like coffee houses became a thing around this time. [1]
I also like that that is basically a list of what we want from drugs today, other than curing disease. (would the concept of taking a pill to cure something have existed then???)
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/unite...
Coffee houses existed at that time but coffee itself was not thought of in quite the same way as today. It wasn’t taken for granted that it was a harmless stimulant, or even a stimulant at all.
The idea of taking a pill to cure a disease did exist; it would’ve been called a “specific.” Pills were handmade but were fairly common based on what I’ve seen, although cordials, electuaries, and other drinkables predominated.
Interesting, thanks.
"or even a stimulant at all"
Its strange that tea was thought of as a stimulant but not coffee?! I could drink 10 cups of tea, and only feel the urge to wee. That much coffee and I'd be up the wall!
But then the Victorians were shooting up opiates whilst warning of the dangers of alcohol so I suppose there is a lot of 'cultural conditioning' going on there (and here).
This just looks like evidence that you don't drink tea and don't know what's in it, or that you've confused herbal tea with tea from the tea plant. Tea seems to have about half the amount of caffeine coffee does. For example, here are figures from the Mayo Clinic:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...
Coffee is more of a stimulant than tea, but tea is still very strong, so it's unsurprising that the British were aware of its effects. If you're trying to stay awake, tea will do the job.
It depends on the quality of leaves and style of preparation. The mental stimulation you get from black tea in a modern UK cafe is mild and very different from what you'd experience from Chinese Gong Fu Cha [0], or from Russian chifir [1]. Herbal infusions, which are still referred to as tea by many Americans and Europeans, will have almost no stimulant effect. It's quite likely that Boyle first drank tea in coffeehouses, where [2]:
If I was a coffeehouse owner, I would brew that tea for a long time to get as concentrated a drink out of it as possible.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongfu_tea_ceremony
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifir
[2] https://www.tea.co.uk/a-social-history
Boyle's list in full: https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/08/27...
Impressive knowledge displayed in the document linked. I wonder what your opinion is from a historic perspective on drug legislation. Is the war on drugs a phase we experienced like the alcohol prohibition in the 1920-1930 era or are we just getting started?
Short answer is that, on a very long time horizon, I think drug laws probably are just a phase that will go away. But socially- or religiously-enforced policing of conduct is as old as human culture itself, so even if drugs become decriminalized, the tendency to proclaim some substances or actions "taboo" is unlikely to ever disappear. The specific actions/substances in question can change fairly quickly, however.
Maybe criminalizing religions would be an answer. It is fascinating how perception of drugs changes over time. Even the Dutch royal family had a cocaine manufacturing site last century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandsche_Coca%C3%AFnefabr...
Even if you destroy religion, the underlying drives that created religion in the first place will persist. The religions will just be less recognizable as religion, taking on a more secular flavour. Instead you'll end up with stuff like conspiracy theories, political ideology and pseudo-science taking over.
One of the nice things about science is that its members keep their religion and their scientific work separate. It's particularly noticeable when you look through the history of science. There's a long tradition of secularism that has benefited the religious and the non-religious alike.
Issac Newton, for example, had very unorthodox opinions about God and the Trinity. To become the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, he needed a get a special exemption from King Charles II, as traditionally the chair had required that you be an ordained Anglican priest. It's that very same exemption that Newton got for his unusual religious views that allowed Stephan Hawking to hold the chair as an atheist.
... because restricting peoples freedom of association would be great revenge for restricting drug use?
There are different practices on which different organized religions depend to keep the "count of the believers" steady and their influence strong which could actually be criminalized when there were enough consciousness and willingness (without disallowing individuals believers to believe). But there surely isn't enough willingness, especially not in the US where publicly "non-believing" more or less excludes you from the politics (shouldn't that be changed for the start?) and the religion organizations have the status of the... sacred cows.
Looking back, there were many very good reasons why the religions were not put in the constitution.
Criminalizing religion would be like criminalizing sex. It's a behavioral pattern based on instincts of the majority of the population, furthered by social proof and the political necessity of controlling the populace.
I supposed you could try to create a better religion. Do what thou whilst as the basic creed basically - which, incidentally, is what the church of satan preaches :)