Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Not too long ago, we talked about John
Speaker 1: Wilkins and his efforts to devise a standard system of
Speaker 1: measurement so in early version of the metric system, and
Speaker 1: we mentioned that we had done a previous episode on
Speaker 1: a completely different project of his, which involved plans for
Speaker 1: a seventeenth century exploration of the Moon. So here that
Speaker 1: other episode is as Today's Saturday Classic. This one originally
Speaker 1: came out on August twenty sixth, twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Friday and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy B. Wilson. As you may have noticed, particularly lately,
Speaker 1: I get on a kick. I get obsessed with one
Speaker 1: topic and explore it from multiple angles. That's happening again today.
Speaker 1: We talked about this very recently, but just to recap.
Speaker 1: On July twentieth, nineteen sixty nine, Neil Armstrong took his
Speaker 1: place in history as the first man to step on
Speaker 1: the lunar surface. He was joined by Buzz Aldrin. The
Speaker 1: two of them spent several hours walking around on the
Speaker 1: Moon's surface, collecting samples and planting that famous flag, but
Speaker 1: pertinent to today's podcast. More than three hundred years earlier,
Speaker 1: a man named John Wilkins was planning out what he
Speaker 1: thought it would take for humans to travel to the Moon.
Speaker 1: Wilkins is interesting because he managed to ride out a
Speaker 1: pretty rocky time in England's history quite well, and he
Speaker 1: was very well known in his day. He for example,
Speaker 1: appears in the Diaries of Samuel Peeps. And of course
Speaker 1: mankind was dreaming about the Moon and other space travel
Speaker 1: well before the sixteen hundreds, but the work that Wilkins
Speaker 1: did is the first documented effort at actually kind of
Speaker 1: making that dream a reality. He's not really ready to
Speaker 1: make it into reality, and we'll talk about why. But
Speaker 1: if you listen to our episode on Thomas Harriet that
Speaker 1: we did recently, you know that the early years of
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century were really exciting time when it came
Speaker 1: to looking at the Moon. Sixteen oh nine was the
Speaker 1: first time that Harriet and Galileo turned their telescopes to
Speaker 1: Earth's natural satellite, and the scientific community was really excited
Speaker 1: about all of the new information that was revealed as
Speaker 1: a consequence, and Wilkins kind of came in in that
Speaker 1: wave of excitement and became part of it. John Wilkins
Speaker 1: was born in sixteen fourteen in Northamptonshire in the East
Speaker 1: Midlands of England, so that was just after that huge
Speaker 1: first push of discoveries with the moon through telescopes had
Speaker 1: been made. He was born into a family of relative means.
Speaker 1: His father, Walter Wilkins, was a goldsmith with a successful business,
Speaker 1: and was a man described as ingenious, with a knack
Speaker 1: for understanding anything mechanical, and also ceaselessly curious. His mother's
Speaker 1: side of the family was of the gentry, a number
Speaker 1: of clergymen were in it, and her name was Jane Dodd.
Speaker 1: John attended grammar school at Edward Sylvester's in Oxford, and
Speaker 1: when he was still just a boy of eleven, his father,
Speaker 1: Walter died. That was sixteen twenty five, and not long
Speaker 1: after John's mother, Jane remarried, this time to a man
Speaker 1: named Francis Pope. Soon John had a little brother, Walter Pope,
Speaker 1: who would go on to be a poet and astronomer
Speaker 1: of renowned on his own. After a grammar school, John
Speaker 1: started attending Maudlin Hall in Oxford, and from there he
Speaker 1: became an ordained priest at the Church of England. In
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty eight, he moved to the hamlet of Fallsley
Speaker 1: in Northamptonshire and was provided a living by his mother's family.
Speaker 1: During his years of school, in which he had learned
Speaker 1: an advanced degree, he had been particularly interested in astronomy,
Speaker 1: and that interest continued as one of his pursuits beyond
Speaker 1: his formal education years. But even so he wasn't really
Speaker 1: discovering anything new. At this point. The available telescopic technology
Speaker 1: had been used to see everything possible with regards to
Speaker 1: the Moon, and it wouldn't be until the middle of
Speaker 1: the century the telescopes would get another boost in their capabilities.
Speaker 1: Besides this, Wilkins was also occupy with his duties as
Speaker 1: a vicar and working in his other areas of interest
Speaker 1: and responsibility. He certainly ran in very intellectual circles, and
Speaker 1: he and his friends and colleagues certainly discussed issues of
Speaker 1: space and science. So while he did love astronomy, it
Speaker 1: wasn't really his life's work by any means. In sixteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight, at the age of twenty four, Wilkins published
Speaker 1: The Discovery of a World. Its subtitle was a discourse
Speaker 1: tending to prove that 'tis probable that there may be
Speaker 1: another habitable world in the Moon, with a discourse concerning
Speaker 1: the possibility of a passage thither. Eventually he wrote a
Speaker 1: second edition with a second supplemental book to the Discovery
Speaker 1: of a New World, and that was titled A Discourse
Speaker 1: concerning a New Planet, and this two volume version was
Speaker 1: published in sixteen forty, so two years after the original.
Speaker 1: The title page of this second volume features Copernicus and
Speaker 1: Galileo facing one another in the foreground, with an illustration
Speaker 1: of the heliocentric planetary system in the background. Wilkins's name
Speaker 1: was not initially included as the author of the book.
Speaker 1: No writer was listed in the print, but I was
Speaker 1: not terribly uncommon at the time, and it was widely
Speaker 1: known as his work. It wasn't as though he was
Speaker 1: trying to publish anonymously. And the introduction to this book
Speaker 1: he offers the following mornings. Two cautions there are which
Speaker 1: I would willingly admonish thee of in the beginning. One
Speaker 1: that thou shouldst not here look to find any exact,
Speaker 1: accurate treatise, since this discourse was but the fruit of
Speaker 1: some lighter studies, and those two huddled up in a
Speaker 1: short time, being first thought of and finished in the
Speaker 1: space of some few weeks. And therefore you cannot, in
Speaker 1: reason expect that it should be so polished as perhaps
Speaker 1: the subject would require, or the leisure of the author
Speaker 1: might have done it. Two. To remember that I promise
Speaker 1: only probable arguments for the proof of this opinion, and
Speaker 1: therefore you must not look that every consequence should be
Speaker 1: of an undeniable dependence, or that the truth of each
Speaker 1: argument should be measured by its necessity. I grant that
Speaker 1: some astronomy appearances may possibly be solved otherwise than here
Speaker 1: they are. But the thing I aim at is this
Speaker 1: that probably they may so be solved as I have
Speaker 1: here set them down, which if it be granted as
Speaker 1: I think it must, then I doubt not. But the
Speaker 1: indifferent reader will find some satisfaction, and the main thing
Speaker 1: that is to be proved. So he was making it
Speaker 1: really clear right out of the gate. He's just theorizon. Look, people,
Speaker 1: I'm spitballing here. Don't get too hung up on those details.
Speaker 1: I think this is the opposite of the level of
Speaker 1: confidence from that voyage manuscript decoding that we talked about
Speaker 1: on Unearth recently that was like similarly done in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks as part of a different thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Wilkins is very Look, I'm a minister, I know
Speaker 1: a lot about science, but I'm just I'm thinking through
Speaker 1: my thoughts and I'm bringing you along. But this kind
Speaker 1: of like slightly more casual approach was also probably why
Speaker 1: this actually ended up becoming a really influential publication. He
Speaker 1: was kind of kicking around ideas and working through the
Speaker 1: logistics of them, and he was basically showing his work
Speaker 1: for the reader to come along with. Wilkins' text helped
Speaker 1: further promote some of Galileo's ideas about the Moon, specifically
Speaker 1: that it was a solid, compacted, opacious body and that
Speaker 1: humans could potentially visit and maybe even live on it.
Speaker 1: Wilkins covered a number of other topics and the two
Speaker 1: volume work, though they weren't exactly groundbreaking, he bolstered the
Speaker 1: idea fairly commonly held in scientific community at the time
Speaker 1: that the Earth wasn't particularly special as a planet in
Speaker 1: the Solar System, but it was one of many. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a time when there was a big shift.
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about it. In how
Speaker 1: science and theology, which were closely mixed, saw the Earth
Speaker 1: and what it was in relation to the cosmos, and
Speaker 1: that was all changing really rapidly. And while these ideas
Speaker 1: were already pretty commonly accepted in the science community everything
Speaker 1: he was talking about, it was the way that Wilkins
Speaker 1: wrote about them that really made his work important. He
Speaker 1: wrote in a style, as you can tell, that was
Speaker 1: relatively casual compared to most scientific work of the day,
Speaker 1: meaning that the average person could read and understand it,
Speaker 1: and especially because it was illustrated in a way that
Speaker 1: was also aimed at readers who were not immersed in science.
Speaker 1: We have talked in previous episodes about how a lot
Speaker 1: of scientists in this era were polyglots, and that was
Speaker 1: in part just so they could read the work of
Speaker 1: other scientists who spoke and wrote in languages other than
Speaker 1: their own. But here was a book that translated everything
Speaker 1: for the reader. There was no knowledge of Latin or
Speaker 1: Italian required. We'll talk about another important aspect of Wilkins's
Speaker 1: writing in just a moment, but first we will pause
Speaker 1: or a sponsor break. We talked before the break about
Speaker 1: how part of the appeal of Wilkins's work at this
Speaker 1: point was that it was written for the average person
Speaker 1: to understand. And another tenant of Wilkins's work in this
Speaker 1: writing is change, as in, he was keenly aware of
Speaker 1: just how much our knowledge of the world had changed
Speaker 1: in just a few decades leading up to this writing,
Speaker 1: and he foresaw that the same kind of change in
Speaker 1: what was commonly known to entirely new ideas was going
Speaker 1: to continue. Wilkins is pretty self reflective, and he understands
Speaker 1: that even though the seventeenth century was seeing entire new
Speaker 1: vistas of science and understanding open up, that they were
Speaker 1: going to seem childish to later generations. On this revelation
Speaker 1: of new truths, he wrote one that a new truth
Speaker 1: may seem absurd and impossible, not only to the vulgar,
Speaker 1: but to those also who are otherwise wise men and
Speaker 1: excellent scholars. And hence it will follow that every new
Speaker 1: thing which seems to oppose common principles is not presently
Speaker 1: to be rejected, but rather to be pride into with
Speaker 1: a diligent inquiry, since there are many things which are
Speaker 1: yet hid from us and reserve for future discovery. Two,
Speaker 1: that it is not the commonness of an opinion that
Speaker 1: can privilege it for a truth. The wrong way is
Speaker 1: sometime a well beaten path, whereas the right way, especially
Speaker 1: to hidden truths, may be less trodden and more obscure.
Speaker 1: I sort of love that. Hey, you too, I also
Speaker 1: love listeners don't get to hear it, but like the
Speaker 1: slightly atypical spelling of many of these words is delightful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course it fell to portracy to read the the
Speaker 1: uncorrected writing of John Wilkins. I didn't do that on purpose.
Speaker 1: So he definitely wanted his readers to look at science
Speaker 1: and particularly what humanity is a collective new about the
Speaker 1: universe with a new eye and an open mind. He
Speaker 1: pointed out the ways that the work of Aristotle, which
Speaker 1: had been groundbreaking in its own time, had become outdated
Speaker 1: and led the reader to the idea that knowledge and
Speaker 1: discovery was an ongoing, living thing that was not statf
Speaker 1: and in a way, the people in the seventeenth century
Speaker 1: kind of needed to hear this. So much of the
Speaker 1: world's scientific knowledge had been upended, as we said, in
Speaker 1: those three decades preceding it, particularly not just in astronomy,
Speaker 1: but in geography and physiology, In other fields and in
Speaker 1: this very short period of time. So Wilkins was to
Speaker 1: some degree preparing his readers for the fact that they
Speaker 1: were not going to get all the information and settle down,
Speaker 1: but in fact that change was the new normal of
Speaker 1: the Moon as a habital place. He wrote, quote, I
Speaker 1: must needs confess. Though I had often thought with myself
Speaker 1: that it was possible there might be a world in
Speaker 1: the Moon, yet it seemed such an uncouth opinion that
Speaker 1: I never durst discover it for fear of being counted
Speaker 1: singular and ridiculous. But afterward, having read Plutarch, Galileis, Kepler,
Speaker 1: and some others, and finding many of mine own thoughts
Speaker 1: confirmed by such strong authority, I then concluded that it
Speaker 1: was not only possible there might be, but probably that
Speaker 1: there was another habitable world in that planet. So at
Speaker 1: this point the details of the Moon's surface, the craters,
Speaker 1: and the mountains were things that had really only been
Speaker 1: part of our understanding since Galileo and Harriet started looking
Speaker 1: at the Moon about thirty years prior. Prior to that,
Speaker 1: most people thought that it was a pretty smooth body
Speaker 1: because they saw it with the naked eye all the time,
Speaker 1: and while it had some color variation. It wasn't perceived
Speaker 1: as being particularly textured, and some of that was tied
Speaker 1: up in thinking that today would be seen as very unscientific.
Speaker 1: British historian Alan Chapman wrote in a twenty fourteen paper
Speaker 1: about Wilkins and his work, quote, to understand the contemporary
Speaker 1: power of Wilkins's arguments, like those of Galileo before him,
Speaker 1: one must remember that the classical universe was not just
Speaker 1: a physical but also a moral place, seen most obviously
Speaker 1: in the juxtaposition between the corrupt, chaotic Earth and the
Speaker 1: perfect heavens. There were theories, for example, that the dark
Speaker 1: areas of the Moon were spots that had been tarnished
Speaker 1: by light reflected up from the Earth. Yeah, Earth was
Speaker 1: a yucky mass and the heavens were beautiful and celestial.
Speaker 1: But Wilkins saw Earth and the heavens as part of
Speaker 1: one large entity, which he considered in its totality to
Speaker 1: be a divine creation. And this was in contrast to
Speaker 1: the ideology of Aristotle and some of his followers, who
Speaker 1: thought that there was a boundary between Earth and the
Speaker 1: heavens and that the same scientific rules did not apply
Speaker 1: to those two things. In cosmology, it was essentially two
Speaker 1: different systems in their thinking. Wilkins's vision of a more
Speaker 1: holistic view of the universe was a departure from what
Speaker 1: had been believed and taught for centuries at that point.
Speaker 1: All the same matter and that quote the heavens do
Speaker 1: not consist of any such pure matter which can privilege
Speaker 1: them from the like change in corruption as these inferior
Speaker 1: bodies are liable unto was a thing that he was
Speaker 1: a big proponent of. It's all the same stuff, it's
Speaker 1: just arranged differently, and he wanted all of it to
Speaker 1: be subject to scientific exploration and analysis. Wilkins was also
Speaker 1: a proponent of the idea known as a plurality of worlds,
Speaker 1: and that's that our world was not the only world
Speaker 1: out in the vastness of space, and he believed quote
Speaker 1: that a plurality of worlds doth not contradict any principle
Speaker 1: of reason or faith. This led to ideas of other
Speaker 1: habitable places among the stars, and today we talk about
Speaker 1: the probability of life on other planets based on the
Speaker 1: likelihood that some sort of combination of elements created a
Speaker 1: hospitable environment similar to the ways our planet got lucky,
Speaker 1: but for Wilkins and his colleagues. Discussion was often centered
Speaker 1: around God creating life on other planets, just as they
Speaker 1: believed he had on Earth. To talk about the writing
Speaker 1: that Wilkins did regarding the Moon, we have to jump
Speaker 1: back to the year of his first one volume edition
Speaker 1: of his book, The Discovery of a World, That was
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty eight, and there was another book published that
Speaker 1: same year. This one was fictional and it was titled
Speaker 1: The Man in the Moon, and that story was written
Speaker 1: by Francis Godwin, and it told the tale of the
Speaker 1: main character, Domingo Gonzalez, being carried to the Moon by
Speaker 1: a flock of geese pulling a chariot. He was incidentally
Speaker 1: trying to get to Spain, but accidentally got the geese
Speaker 1: when they were doing their natural migration to the moon.
Speaker 1: Question mark. This mode of transit seems pretty swanky, but
Speaker 1: obviously completely impossible. But still this idea really got Wilkins
Speaker 1: thinking about what it would actually take to get a
Speaker 1: man to the moon, and that line of thought was
Speaker 1: part of his supplemental volume. Godwin was certainly not the
Speaker 1: first fiction writer to imagine traveling to the moon, but
Speaker 1: he was working with contemporary knowledge of it that previous
Speaker 1: writers had not had. There were certainly other books about
Speaker 1: moon exploration that stoked the fires of Wilkins's imagination as well,
Speaker 1: including work by Francis Bacon and Johannes Kuppler, and all
Speaker 1: of this that culminated in the sixteen forty edition of
Speaker 1: Wilkins's work, in which he stated quote that it is
Speaker 1: possible for some of our posterity to find out a
Speaker 1: conveyance to this other world, and if there be inhabitants there,
Speaker 1: to have commerce with them. He is open in his
Speaker 1: writing to the idea that we probably can't really imagine
Speaker 1: what a moon inhabitant might be, though, and his evidence
Speaker 1: that there probably are some sort of inhabitants there is
Speaker 1: kind of the argument that he's been laying out in
Speaker 1: the previous chapters of the book. So it's kind of like, look,
Speaker 1: the Moon has this property and this property and this property,
Speaker 1: and I think probably maybe God would have put some
Speaker 1: people there. I sort of, as I was working on this,
Speaker 1: really really wished that he could have lived long enough
Speaker 1: to see the Great Moon hoax, but that was two
Speaker 1: centuries later. It can be one of our bad uses
Speaker 1: for a time machine. We're going to go, pick him up.
Speaker 1: Take it right, the teacher, John, come with me, don't
Speaker 1: ask questions. While his ideation on a subject was inspired
Speaker 1: in part by fantasy, Wilkins was methodical and cataloging the
Speaker 1: challenges of space travel. Space Travelers would have to carry
Speaker 1: their needed supplies such as food and water, although he
Speaker 1: theory that once they were out of the pull of
Speaker 1: Earth they might not need any food, And then there
Speaker 1: was figuring out how to breathe while also not freezing
Speaker 1: to death, although he was open to the idea that
Speaker 1: space might not be cold at all. But then there
Speaker 1: was the matter of conveyance. So for the vehicle there
Speaker 1: were of course myriad concerns. The weight of it would
Speaker 1: be a key factor in its success, and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to escape the Earth's pole was going to be
Speaker 1: a big issue. Keep in mind, Sir Isaac Newton's Principia,
Speaker 1: in which he discusses the theory of gravity, was still
Speaker 1: almost five decades away. It wasn't published until sixteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: So Wilkins was on to this idea of escape velocity,
Speaker 1: but he didn't really have the scientific vocabulary to really
Speaker 1: approach it with the right kind of mindset. And there
Speaker 1: was also this other matter of time and how we
Speaker 1: were going to keep humans alive during a journey to
Speaker 1: the Moon, which Wilkins estimated would take about one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty days. And he had come to that conclusion
Speaker 1: based on his knowledge of earth bound travel over long distances,
Speaker 1: so calculating like ships traveling across the ocean, et cetera,
Speaker 1: led him to make some kind of estimates about that
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty day timeline. Wilkins obviously did not
Speaker 1: solve that problem. In sixteen forty, he warned us readers,
Speaker 1: after all, that he was just dealing in theoreticals and
Speaker 1: some of his assertions were way off base. He thought
Speaker 1: that Earth was the Moon's moon, just like the Moon
Speaker 1: was Earth's moon, which I think is a thing that
Speaker 1: I might have thought when I was like four. Not
Speaker 1: trying to disparage him at all, I'm just saying I
Speaker 1: understand I could just come to that conclusion. He thought
Speaker 1: that the Moon had seasons just like the Earth does,
Speaker 1: and he made it clear that he didn't think they
Speaker 1: were exactly alike, but that the Earth and the Moon
Speaker 1: were sort of correspondent to one another. Yeah, he didn't
Speaker 1: think like that autumn on the Moon was the same
Speaker 1: as autumn on Earth, but that they had an autumn
Speaker 1: which was a shift from their previous season of summer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he was also a little dismayed in all of
Speaker 1: this that humans were built in a way that they
Speaker 1: could not physiologically handle travel to the Moon on their own.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of his wrap up, like, I
Speaker 1: think we can do it. I don't know how. Here
Speaker 1: are my thoughts. So with his book second edition out
Speaker 1: in the world, he continued about his business of being
Speaker 1: a vicar and doing self directed scientific work as his
Speaker 1: time and interest allowed. Coming up next, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: what else was going on in England in the years
Speaker 1: following this second edition of Wilkins's book. First, we will
Speaker 1: take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1: In the sixteen forties, England was in the midst of
Speaker 1: major upheaval. The reign of King Charles the First had
Speaker 1: been loaded with conflict almost since his coronation in sixteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. He had dissolved the parliament in sixteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: setting off eleven years of what is referred to as
Speaker 1: personal rule, and made a series of unpopular decisions from
Speaker 1: there as usual when we talk about such events, this
Speaker 1: is worthy of a whole episode of its own, or
Speaker 1: even several. And after a series of conflicts Scotland, known
Speaker 1: as the Bishop's Wars, England became embroiled in Civil War
Speaker 1: in sixteen forty two, fought between Charles the First Royalist
Speaker 1: supporters and the Parliamentarians. This is again a very simplified
Speaker 1: version of this whole thing. That fighting continued in various
Speaker 1: different battles, and you'll sometimes see it listed out as
Speaker 1: even different wars right up into sixteen fifty two. One
Speaker 1: of the personal impacts to Wilkins was the the Anglican
Speaker 1: Church in which he was a minister was abolished. But
Speaker 1: he came through this very tumultuous time and history and
Speaker 1: pretty good shape. Although Wilkins had been associated with the
Speaker 1: royal family and had even been a chaplain to Charles
Speaker 1: the First's nephew, and though his position as an Anglican
Speaker 1: vicar was not a thing anymore, he was a moderate
Speaker 1: and amiable and good with people. And in his scientific
Speaker 1: circles his colleagues were aligned with either side of the
Speaker 1: much larger conflict, as well as having other ideological backgrounds,
Speaker 1: but their discussions of their work and the theories of
Speaker 1: the day really seemed to supersede all of their other loyalties.
Speaker 1: The Oxford Philosophical Club, as their group came to be known,
Speaker 1: met in both Oxford and London. Yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: very influential group in terms of like where science went
Speaker 1: from there. And in sixteen forty eight he was made
Speaker 1: warden of Wadham College, and this appointment was done by
Speaker 1: the Parliamentary Commissioners. But Wilkins remained able to walk that
Speaker 1: line between parliamentarians and royalists with a lot of grace.
Speaker 1: As we said, he got along kind of with everybody,
Speaker 1: and a lot of royalist families sent their sons to
Speaker 1: the school while Wilkins was its head. So while he
Speaker 1: hadn't abandoned his thoughts on flight, it was another eight
Speaker 1: years before he got back to writing about it. In
Speaker 1: sixteen forty eight, the same year of his appointment at Wadham,
Speaker 1: he published a new book which was titled Mathematical Magic,
Speaker 1: or the Wonders that May be Performed by Mechanical Geometry.
Speaker 1: And in this work he got a lot more detailed
Speaker 1: about exactly how one might attain flight. We should mention
Speaker 1: here that the use of the word magic isn't really
Speaker 1: what we might associate with it today, but more a
Speaker 1: scriptor of the marvel of science. Yeah, there was absolutely
Speaker 1: no actual magical element to this. He didn't think there
Speaker 1: were incantations involved. He just thought that learning about mechanics
Speaker 1: was a magical experience, and he wrote about all kinds
Speaker 1: of mechanisms in this book, Pulleys and Springs and Levers.
Speaker 1: The entire first section of the work is dedicated to
Speaker 1: examining the physics of these and other devices that form
Speaker 1: the sort of building blocks of larger machines, and like
Speaker 1: his previous writing, he doesn't stick strictly to scientific or
Speaker 1: known entities. Here. Many of his ideas are theoretical, and
Speaker 1: he owns that He suggests a way to harness the heat,
Speaker 1: for example, that rises through a chimney, so that you
Speaker 1: can then turn a spit with it so that the
Speaker 1: meat that's roasting on the fire below is cooked evenly.
Speaker 1: This sounds fairly great to me, or perhaps in his estimation,
Speaker 1: one could rig a series of gears in such a
Speaker 1: way that a simple puff of breath might pull a
Speaker 1: tree up from the roots. As with his previous writing,
Speaker 1: Wilkins builds his case very slowly throughout the book. He
Speaker 1: puts forth all these mechanical possibilities to make the case
Speaker 1: that if humans think creatively and harness the mechanisms at
Speaker 1: our disposal, couldn't we build machines that could fly and
Speaker 1: eventually leave the planet. All this theorizing culminates in the
Speaker 1: idea of a flying chariot, and Wilkins's approach is that
Speaker 1: if we can figure out how to fly around from
Speaker 1: place to place here on planet Earth, it will then
Speaker 1: be a very short jump to figure out how to
Speaker 1: fly into space. I love his optimism so much, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't, of course, have a specific version of the
Speaker 1: flying chariot in mind. He mentions various potential features it
Speaker 1: could have, but aside from thinking that it probably might
Speaker 1: need gears and wings and springs, it's pretty vague. He
Speaker 1: offers up some some theoretical pictures, but they're not really
Speaker 1: anything that could get to space. It starts to read
Speaker 1: a little bit like a theoretical baker bringing you a
Speaker 1: bunch of ingredients and telling you what those ingredients do,
Speaker 1: and then concluding with make a cake. So he clearly
Speaker 1: believed it was all possible and he really wanted humanity
Speaker 1: to make spaceflight a real thing, so that we could
Speaker 1: go meet the moon people and maybe trade with them.
Speaker 1: There are some notes written by wilkins protege Robert Hook
Speaker 1: that in the early sixteen fifties the two men tested
Speaker 1: out some kind of flying machine, although details on that
Speaker 1: one are scarce. Yeah, that's literally the only thing we
Speaker 1: know about him doing anything else in this arena. In
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty six, Wilkins married Rabina French, the widowed sister
Speaker 1: of Oliver Cromwell, and three years later, in sixteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Wilkins moved from Wadham to a more prestigious position as
Speaker 1: Master of Trinity College. That was thanks to the influence
Speaker 1: of his famous brother in law, but the country's fortunes
Speaker 1: made that appointment a very short stay. The English monarchy
Speaker 1: was restored in sixteen sixty, less than a year after
Speaker 1: his time at Trinity began, and Wilkins, who had also
Speaker 1: been an advisor to Oliver Cromwell, was removed from the post.
Speaker 1: Sixteen sixty wasn't all bad for John Wilkins, though, his
Speaker 1: Oxford Club received a royal decree from Charles's second new
Speaker 1: King and became the Royal Society for Promoting Natural Knowledge.
Speaker 1: This group, which had royal title but not funding, was
Speaker 1: the proto organization for what would eventually become the Royal
Speaker 1: Astronomical Society. The Church of England was also restored and
Speaker 1: he was once again an influential figure within it, and
Speaker 1: Wilkins rose through the ranks of the church, eventually becoming
Speaker 1: Bishop of Chester in sixteen sixty eight, and that same
Speaker 1: year he published another work titled An Essay Towards a
Speaker 1: Real Character and the Philosophical Language. In Wilkins's opening note
Speaker 1: to the reader states, it may perhaps be expected of
Speaker 1: some that I should give an account of my engaging
Speaker 1: in a work of this nature so unsuitable to my
Speaker 1: calling and business. In the text, he proposed that the
Speaker 1: development of universal language would really simplify things, and also
Speaker 1: that quote the several nations of the world do not
Speaker 1: more differ in their languages than the various kinds and
Speaker 1: proportions of these measures. He wanted there to be a
Speaker 1: consistent system of measurement for the entire globe as well.
Speaker 1: While Wilkins wrote many other works on subjects ranging from
Speaker 1: cryptography to prayer, it's this sixteen sixty eight work, along
Speaker 1: with his two volumes on the subject of the Moon
Speaker 1: and the potential to get there that are his most
Speaker 1: well known today. In sixteen seventy two, John Wilkins dine.
Speaker 1: He was fifty eight and he was buried at Saint
Speaker 1: Lawrence Jewry, where he had once been a vicar. He's
Speaker 1: so interesting because I don't think many people realize that
Speaker 1: there was a sixteen hundred minister going we need a
Speaker 1: space program, you guys. I can only deal with like
Speaker 1: the setup of ideas, but somebody else is gonna have
Speaker 1: to work out the details. I love it. Yeah, go
Speaker 1: to space. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
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