…….. of which I’m sure there are many here, although at 8am their all having a bit of sleep in. I should have started this thread during ‘Homes Under the Hammer”

Heres a little morsel of trivia I’m trying to find…. During the Scottish Enlightenment many of the big names in science, economics and philosophy (all the names that would later find themselves attached to characters in the TV series Lost) would meet in social clubs: The Select Society, the Poker Club, The Oyster Club, the Friday Club. In there they’d have a good old science/philosphy/economicsy/cultural chinwag. Probably all a bit ribald I’d imagine, membership to the Poker Club was by decided by ‘Ballot or Fistycuffs’.

Think of it as STW but with britches…. and gout.

Annnnyway. My question is… some of these clubs and societies were a bit flash in the pan, but some of them i believe evolved into ‘august scientific and medical bodies that still exist (today).’

What I can’t find out is which present day ‘august bodies’ have their origins in the 17th century drinky clubs.

Any ideas?

Sneaky Pete’s?

🙂

Well the Poker Club was in the building that is now Bannermans in the Cowgate. But its the institutions, not the buildings I’m looking for.

Most fortunately it happens that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose … I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours amusement, I return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther…

So that leads me to the Cape Club – so thats a society that still seems to exist in pretty much its sense of those original clubs – for people to ‘forget their cares and labour in mirth and diversion’, to promote friendship and to improve their minds with meaningful debate.

But my understanding is that some of these clubs evolved into more formal institutions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDB97j8_HSk

science?

I’m going to bump this….. having mentioned ‘Homes under the hammer’ I just looked up at the TV and I’m certain crumpled ex news of the world hack Paul Mcmullen was in the auction room.

Slightly OT, but I’m reading Quicksilver at the moment, and it has a lot of stuff about the formation of the Royal Society and the start of ‘proper’ scientific enquiry. It’s a novel but a really good read.

I’m going to give this one last futile bump before I resign myself to the conclusion that my curiosity will never be sated.

*opens whisky*

There is one called The Speculative Society. My father got invited into it but he was so creeped out he refused, and as such I think he is just one of two people ever to have done so. Didn’t help his career but you know, some of these can be really creepy you know?

Don’t worry simon I’m not looking for a club to join (I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member), I’m just trying to gather some factoids to give context to something.

Royal Society of Edinburgh was founded in 1783 – surely as a result of Adam Smith and Joseph Black out on the pish, but I can find no mention of this in their history. Apparently founded in the university library (yeah right).

okay, aside from actually quoting hume, i’ll bite. i think your problem is with establishing a causal link between a club and some sort of body. did enlightenment types who frequented the same establishments go on to get involved in setting up the likes of the royal society etc? yes they did.

or, to give a different example. it’s like asking did hutton’s penchant for a stroll lead to the geological society…

‘The Lunar Men’ by Jenny Uglow might have something, but I’m not offering to read it all again.

also, the function of the poker club wasn’t to have a bit of a drink but to discuss things a bit more quotidian to the times..

“Perhaps the most characteristic expression of the conviviality and energy of the place was the club, or the society. Dozens of them were formed during the century, some short-lived dining and drinking clubs, some maturing into august scientific and medical bodies that still exist. Some, like the Poker Club (concerned with poking up sluggish intellectual fires, not card games), the Oyster Club or the Friday Club, at first sight seem frivolous – excuses, perhaps, for male claret-swilling – but behind the grandiloquence, serious issues were debated. The Oyster Club, for example, had among its founders the economist Adam Smith, the chemist Joseph Black and the geologist James Hutton – all pioneers in their fields and indebted to each other’s criticism, help and stimulus.”

Its the ‘some of which still exist’ that I’m curious about. The Cape Club is something that was revived fairly recently, rather than something that has a continuity.

Not looking necessarily for something that still is a ‘club’ more at more formal organisations or bodies that evolved out of the mileu

Possibly Heriot-Watt University and the Edinburgh Academy. All conjecture but Henry Cockburn was definately a member of the Speculative Society and Leonard Horner moved in the same circles, so a few people have speculated that the ideas of the two might have originated from society meetings.

(though tbh it seems just as likely if not more so that the origin is from the RS or elsewhere.)