Early Researches

Abstract

While at Cambridge, Michell came before the world as a natural philosopher. This designation is not used anymore, and we should be clear what we mean by it. Insofar as this biography is concerned, a “natural philosopher” was a person who made experiments and observations, usually with apparatus he built and instruments he often bought, and who called upon and sometimes developed theories of nature, which might or might not be mathematical. He published his researches in journals of scientific societies, and he belonged to a scientific society and often to one or more scientific clubs. Through these activities, he sought to advance the field of “natural philosophy.”