had before. Europe’s ancient institutions of learning, colleges and universities, had been founded not to discover the new but to transmit a heritage. By contrast, the Royal Society and other parliaments of scientists, with their academies in London, Paris, Florence, Rome, Berlin, and elsewhere, aimed to increase knowledge. They were a witness not so much to the wealth of the past as to what Bishop Sprat called “the present Inquiring Temper of this Age.”
