SUMMARY
The Zealand Society of Sciences was one of the four important learned societies that were successively
founded in the Dutch Republic after 1750. Their principal aim was the furthering of science to the profit
of the country.
Initially the Zealand Society was founded, not in the provincial capital of Middelburg, but in the compa
ratively unimportant town of Flushing, where a less rigid social structure enabled middle-class intellec
tuals and representatives of the aristocratic 'regent' families to work together. This informal stage came
to an end with the explicit recognition of the Society by the provincial government and the gradual re
moving of its seat to Middelburg, where the local elite came to dominate and virtually to rule it. The
orientation remained essentially Zealand-centred, with the accent on the island of Walcheren. Mem
bership from the other provinces of the Republic remained haphazard and comparatively scanty.
The Society's connexions with the government and the official Reformed Church, while a social asset,
impeded an open member recruitment based om merit. Dissenters, particularly the intellectually
prominent Mennonites, were hardly ever invited to join. Equally rare were representatives of commer
ce and industry. In political matters the Society, under the regents' sway, supported the Stadtholder.
Yet this did not entail a boycott of patriotically inclined members.
In order to stimulate scholarly endeavour, the Society printed treatises by members; to reach non-mem
bers, it proposed subjects for prize contest. Most of the treatises were submitted by members living in
Zealand; on the whole, they showed a lack of originality which reflected the province's remoteness from
the learned world of the Republic. The prize contests were preferably devoted to problems specific to
Zealand, or to aspects of its history and culture. The deference to governmental and ecclesiastical au
thority combined with a prevailing attachment to the status quo in a tacit consent to avoid controversial
matters.
The Enlightenment undoubtedly influenced the Zealand Society. Newton and Locke were admired;
but. if Newton's ideas were generally accepted. Locke's encountered some resistance. His investigation
of understanding and his outline of an ideal pedagogy were found acceptable, but his denial of innate
ideas seemed hard to reconcile with the dogma of man's fallen state. A similar hazy dualism reigned in
the approach to enlightened theology, to the advances in physics and the enlightened conception of
philosophical historiography. Far from being in the vanguard of Dutch enlightened thought, however
moderate this was in itself, the Society followed it with some hesitation and at a distance.
It is not hard to discern .under the superficial familiarity with enlightened terminology, distinct traces of
another, older cultural pattern, the Dutch humanism, which in the second half of the eighteenth century
had lost none of its prestige, particularly among the upper classes. Witness the thriving cult of Latin ver
se, the persistence of classical standards in art, and especially the Dutch educational system as represen
ted by grammar schools and universities, both in continuing submission to the humanistic conception of
scholarship. The ideal of civilization instilled by this curriculum implicitly shaped the notions of furthe
ring the 'useful' arts and sciences which had motivated the founding of the Society.
In Zealand, in those days, the concept of usefulness was still quite undifferentiated; it covered all scho
larship and science, from numismatics to applied physics, without any utilitarian bias. Technological in
novations were mostly outside the Society's scope. The natural sciences were preferably viewed in a
physico-theological context. The Society saw no need to distinguish between sciences useful to the com
munity, and pursuits leading to personal improvement. Still, from the 1770's onward the enlightened,
but most often not university-educated middle class became increasingly aware of this distinction. In ap
preciating the Society's refusal to recruit members among this class and among representatives of com
merce and industry, the orientation outlined above must be taken into account.
In the last decade of the century, the Zealand Society found itself in a quandary. Economic recession
curbed the generosity of its traditional supporters, the local regent class, while it had failed to reach a
new public. The learned elite of the Republic did not see it as functioning on a nationally significant le
vel; its increasing trend towards vulgarization within a purely provincial context confirmed this view.
And ideologically speaking, the Society still interpreted 'usefulness' in a way that was rapidly becoming
obsolete. Social and professional strata which it had consistently ignored now saw an embodiment of
their ideas in the newly emerged Society of Public Welfare. Without objecting to disinterested scientific
endeavour, they gave priority to whatever could remedy the ills of the commonwealth in the hard times
upon which it had fallenDuring the Batavian' and French period, the membership as well as the activi
ties of the Zealand Society were to show the signs of a new orientation.
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