Classical authors and “scientific” research in the early years of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 1781-1800

While a clear distinction was drawn between “classical learning” and “modern science” at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this article argues that no such contrast was made in other spaces of knowledge making such as the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Drawing on Bacon’s insistence that his inductive method should apply across all fields of knowledge, early members of the Society interpreted “science” as referring to any systematic inquiry utilising an empirical approach. A detailed consideration of the ways in which classical authors were used within the researches of early members of the Manchester Lit and Phil raises important questions about how we should think about empirical method and scientific research in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain. Frequently understood as primarily engaged in researching natural knowledge, the members of the Manchester Lit and Phil concerned themselves with a wide range of subjects across all branches of knowledge. Crucially, classical authors were drawn upon with due consideration for their historical context, as sources of empirical evidence, facts and examples across all types of inquiry, from investigations into the colours of opaque bodies and human life expectancy to the characteristics of poetry and the origins of party feeling. It is possible to identify a common approach - “history as empirical method” - used in a wide range of papers, which, this article suggests, was developed from Bacon’s call for a “scientific” “history of learning” in his On the Advancement of Learning and Novum Organum.