Abstract

Martin Folkes (1690-1754) was Newton's disciple and President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Astronomer, mathematician, art connoisseur, Voltaire's friend and Hogarth's patron, his was an intellectually vibrant world. Folkes’s travel diary, manuscripts, correspondence with fellow antiquarians such as William Stukeley, and
numismatic works permit my reconstruction through Folkes’s eyes of what it was like to be a collector and
patron, a Masonic freethinker, and antiquarian and virtuoso in the days before 'science' became subspecialised.
Folkes’s virtuosic sensibility and attempt to unify the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society
also tells against the current historiographical assumption that this was the age in which the ‘two cultures’ of
the humanities and sciences split apart, never to be reunited. In Georgian England, antiquarianism (early
archaeology) and 'science' were considered part of the same endeavour.

Available Versions of this Item

• Martin Folkes (1690-1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur. (deposited 30 Jun 2020 16:03)
  • Martin Folkes (1690-1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur. (deposited 14 Dec 2020 14:38) [Currently Displayed]
    • Martin Folkes (1690-1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur. (deposited 14 Dec 2020 14:35)