Creating a specialized discourse: the case of the Philosophical Transactions

Abstract

En ligne à l'adresse suivante : http://asp.revues.org/98International audienceThe Royal Society was founded in 1660 and was made up largely of virtuosi. The Royal Society depended on their subscriptions for survival. Although the Philosophical Transactions had the imprimatur of the Royal Society, it was a private venture of Henry Oldenburg, one of the Royal Society's secretaries. The venture was conceived of as a way of making money. The Philosophical Transactions first appeared in 1665, and by the end of the first year most entries were verbatim extracts of letters, with introductions by Oldenburg; he intervened more extensively only when necessary, such as when translation was needed, or to summarize longer items such as books. Ten years later, he seemed to be using the same strategies that he had established by the end of 1665. An analysis of the thematic structure of these documents shows that they are moving towards the experimental style of the eighteenth century.La Royal Society a été créée en 1660 ; elle était constituée principalement de virtuosi. L'existence même de la Royal Society dépendait de leurs cotisations. Bien que les Philosophical Transactions eussent l'agrément de la Royal Society, elles résultaient de l'initiative privée de Henry Oldenburg, l'un des secrétaires de la Royal Society ; son entreprise était conçue comme une source de revenus. Les Philosophical Transactions ont été publiées pour la première fois en 1665 et, avant la fin de la même année, la majorité des contributions était composée d'extraits de lettres accompagnés d'introduction par H. Oldenburg. Il n'intervenait davantage que quand cela était nécessaire, par exemple quand il fallait traduire ou quand il fallait résumer des textes plus longs, tels les livres. Il semblerait que dix ans plus tard il utilisait toujours les stratégies qu'il avait établies avant la fin de 1665. Une analyse de la structure thématique de ces documents démontre qu'ils évoluaient vers le style scientifique du dix-huitième siècle

Transitivity and thematic structure in some early issues of the Philosophical Transactions

“…An obligatory element of the theme is that part which functions as a major constituent of the clause (subject, circumstantial adjunct, predicator, or complement); this is called the topical theme. In previous work (Banks 2008a(Banks , 2009b) I distinguished 15 semantic categories for topical themes. Eight of these are relevant to the present study.…”

How Modality May Function in Some Early Issues of the Philosophical Transactions

“…Since this was carried out on a small sample, the main part of the article will be devoted to an analysis of a further small sample, whose modest objective is to see to what extent it corroborates or contradicts the results of the first study. Both of these fit into my current research programme which includes Banks 2008Banks , 2009aBanks , b, c, 2010a …”

Domains of study and genres in late seventeenth-century science: evidence from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1675)

“…The fact that there is only one news item is interesting, since the very first issue of the Philosophical Transactions was almost totally made up of news items, the only other genre being an obituary notice. However, Oldenburg quickly abandoned this strategy, probably as being too onerous, in favor of printing as much verbatim material as possible (Banks 2009). …”