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Abstract

This paper focuses upon two keepers of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, oft forgotten, that were important to promoting natural philosophy, and promoting it well in Oxford in the unloved eighteenth century: John Whiteside (1679-1729) and William Huddesford (1732-1772). Whiteside, elected keeper on 14 December 1714, was a member of Christchurch and clergyman, a keen and talented astronomer, an FRS, and Edmond Halley communicated two of his astronomical observations to the Royal Society. Huddesford was also not only a significant natural historian, but an antiquarian who we have to thank for preserving the early modern archives in the natural sciences, and for shaping our own views of the history of science. An analysis of the work of Whiteside and Huddesford demonstrates that we need to think more about Georgian keepers of the Ashmolean as proper natural philosophers and antiquaries beyond the usual narratives of the ‘Scientific Revolution’, which premise an eighteenth-century decline.

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• Keeping natural philosophy alive in eighteenth-Century Oxford: John Whiteside (1679-1729) and William Huddesford (1732-1772). (deposited 24 Jul 2020 10:13)
  • Keeping natural philosophy alive in eighteenth-Century Oxford: John Whiteside (1679-1729) and William Huddesford (1732-1772). (deposited 29 Mar 2022 09:35) [Currently Displayed]