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From Felicity Henderson, The Royal Society
Have you ever wished you could swim underwater for extended periods without scuba-gear? Wanted to be taller? Wished you could put a halt to the ageing process? As it happens, you’re not alone. Over three hundred years ago, Robert Boyle FRS wrote a list of things that he hoped could be achieved through science. Beginning with ‘The Prolongation of Life’, the list includes items such as ‘emulating fish … by custom and education only’, ‘attaining gigantick dimensions’, and ‘recovery of youth, or at least the signs of it’.
For me, the fascinating thing about the list is its eclectic mixture of topics for research. Today most of us would consider the prolongation of life as a worthy cause (although this may not necessarily have been so in the deeply religious culture of Boyle’s time); we would perhaps be more dubious about the usefulness of teaching people how to swim underwater like fish. I’d definitely like to see ‘A perpetuall light’ discovered in my lifetime, but ‘Varnishes perfumable by rubbing’? Um, not something I’d ever really thought about. But that’s the other thing I love about this list – the way it shows the curiosity of the early Fellows of the Royal Society about every aspect of life. They were just beginning to realise that it was possible to know more about how the world works, and Boyle’s list shows how eager they were to make discoveries that would change the lives of ordinary people for the better.
