What if the Royal Society had gone differently?

London's natural philosophers organise, publish a journal and make experiment the test of truth.

If it had gone differently: Science stays a private correspondence between gentlemen; results spread slowly and die with their authors.

1. 1687Newton's Principia, There is no unified mathematical physics; the study of motion stays a bag of rules of thumb for another century.
2. 1720The Enlightenment, Absolutism keeps its intellectual cover; 'rights of man' never enters common speech.