everybody gathered around the table at the royal society to see if it was true that if you took powdered unicorn horn and spread it in a circle and then dropped a spieder in the middle of the circle, would it be true that the spider wasn't able to make his way out as everyone knew? to their disappointment, it turned out not to be true. they chased the spider around the room, gathered him up, put him back. but time after time he managed to escape. the point is that brilliant ideas and crackpot schemes were all mixed together. a meeting of the royal society might start with a lecture on spiders and unicorns, and then the next speaker would be christopher wren talking about sat turn and astronomy -- saturn and astronomy. there's a couple of features to note here. one is that almost nothing was settled. this was an era when nearly any question you could ask was new and bewildering. why do flames burn? why do rocks fall? nobody knew. we tend to underestimate just how revolutionary the royal society's approach to these questions was. the society adopted a latin motto that meant roughly don't take anyo