WHY EUROPE? WHY THEN? 205tionalized, first in the person of such self-appointed human switch
boards as Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), then in the form of learned
societies with their corresponding secretaries, frequent meetings, and
periodical journals. The earliest societies appeared in Italy—the Ac-
cadémia dei Lincei (the Academy of Lynxes) in Rome in 1603, the
short-lived Accadémia del Cimento in Florence in 1653. More impor
tant in the long run, however, were the northern academies: the Royal
Society in London in 1660, the Academia Parisiensis in 1635, and the
successor Académie des Sciences in 1666. Even before, informal but
regular encounters in coffeehouses and salons brought people and
questions together. As Mersenne put it in 1634, "the sciences have
sworn inviolable friendship to one another."^13
Cooperation, then, but enormously enhanced by fierce rivalry in the
race for prestige and honor. In the pre-academy environment of the six
teenth century, this often took the form of concealment, of partial di-
vulgence, of refusal to publish, of saving the good parts for debate and
confutation.^14 Even in the late seventeenth century, one has the ec
centric figure of Robert Hooke, active member of the Royal Society,
whose motto might have been, "I thought of that first." If we can be
lieve him, he put all manner of valuable creations in his cabinet draw
ers, only to bring them out when someone else had come up with a
comparable device. In this way, he challenged Christian Huygens on
the invention of the watch balance spring (1675), a major advance in
the accuracy of portable timepieces. History has given the palm to
Huygens, not only because his spiral spring was tried in a watch and
worked, but also because he announced his invention when he made
it. One cannot have these unprovable claims ex post, not even from so
gifted a mechanical genius as Hooke.^15
In general, fame was the spur, and even in those early days, science
was a contest for priority. That was why it became so important to
show-and-tell to aficionados, often in elegant salons; these ladies and
gendemen were witnesses to achievement. And that was why scientists,
amateur and professional, were so keen to found journals and get dated
articles published. Also to replicate experiments, verify results, correct,
improve, go beyond. Here again the role of the printing press and
movable type was crucial; also the shift from Latin, an invaluable means
of international communication among savants of different countries,
to the vernacular, the language of the larger public. Again, nothing like
these arrangements and facilities for propagation was to be found out
side Europe.