Invisible College is a term that refers to a secret group of researchers who work without official rules. The term was first used to describe a group of scientists and thinkers during the Enlightenment period, such as Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren, who were part of the Royal Society of London. Since the 1960s, scholars have studied this topic extensively, especially through the work of Derek Price and Donald Beaver. Research on Invisible College has mainly focused on law schools and scientific fields.

Background

The name came from a group of people in the mid-1600s who later created the Royal Society in London. Before that, they met informally, apart from larger groups connected to Wadham College (Oxford University) and Gresham College. They wrote letters to gain recognition for their work, show that their research was important first, and learn about others' studies. These early scientists were not part of an official organization, so they called themselves an "invisible college" because they lived near each other and met regularly to discuss shared scientific interests. Today, the term is less specific, and different people have used it in various ways. The term became popular because of the letter exchanges in the Republic of Letters.

Connection with Robert Boyle and the Royal Society

In letters from 1646 and 1647, Robert Boyle referred to "our invisible college" or "our philosophical college." This group shared a goal of learning through experiments. Three letters from Boyle serve as key evidence: he sent them to Isaac Marcombes (a former teacher of Boyle and a Huguenot living in Geneva), Francis Tallents (a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge), and Samuel Hartlib (based in London).

Dorothy Stimson wrote that the Royal Society’s work in 17th-century England was very important for the development of science and the acceptance of a new way of thinking. She also noted that Comenius had a major influence on this group.

In his book Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky wrote that many members of the group worked with chemistry. They criticized alchemists, their earlier intellectual predecessors, who made slow progress. In contrast, the Invisible College helped establish chemistry on a strong foundation in just a few decades, marking a major change in scientific history. What did the Invisible College have that alchemists lacked? It was not better tools—both used similar equipment like vials and scales. Nor was it individual genius, as no single person suddenly advanced chemistry like Isaac Newton did with physics. The Invisible College’s advantage was its members working together.

The Hartlib Circle was a wide network of people connected to Samuel Hartlib, an intelligencer. This group included Sir Cheney Culpeper and Benjamin Worsley, who were interested in alchemy. In 1646, Worsley experimented with making saltpetre. Charles Webster, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, argued that Worsley was the main organizer of the Invisible College at that time, a group with goals similar to the Hartlib Circle. Margery Purver stated that the 1647 mention of "invisible college" referred to the group around Hartlib, which aimed to persuade Parliament to create an "Office of Address" or a central communication center for sharing information. Maddison suggested that the "Invisible College" might have included Worsley, John Dury, and others with Boyle, who were interested in using science for practical benefits (possibly involving George Starkey).

Richard S. Westfall separated Hartlib’s "Comenian circle" from other groups and listed members of the "invisible college" based on this connection. These members included William Petty, Boyle, Arnold Boate, Gerard Boate, Cressy Dymock, and Gabriel Platte. Miles Symner may have been part of this group.

Lauren Kassell, writing for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, noted that a group of natural philosophers meeting in London starting in 1645 was called the "invisible college" by Thomas Birch in the 18th century. This became the accepted view, as seen in the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography. A different group, later centered at Wadham College, Oxford, and led by John Wilkins, played a key role in founding the Royal Society. Boyle joined this group in the 1650s. This group is more properly called "the men of Gresham" because of its ties to Gresham College in London.

Scholars now question whether the Gresham group was the same as the "invisible college." Christopher Hill wrote that the Gresham group was formed in 1645 by Theodore Haak in Samuel Foster’s rooms at Gresham College. He noted Haak’s connection to the Hartlib Circle and his links to Comenius, while also distinguishing the two groups. John Wallis mentioned Haak as the organizer of a group that included many physicians who later met in Foster’s rooms. However, Wallis’s account differs from Thomas Sprat’s description of the Royal Society’s history.

Modern use

The idea of the invisible college was created in the study of how science works by Diana Crane in 1972. This idea was based on Derek J. de Solla Price’s research about how scientists reference each other’s work. It is similar to, but different from, other ideas about groups of experts, such as epistemic communities (Haas, 1992) or communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Later, the idea was used to describe how scientists around the world communicate in a global network, as explained by Caroline S. Wagner in The New Invisible College: Science for Development (Brookings, 2008).

Alesia Zuccala points out that earlier studies about the invisible college show that it acts as "a fairly organized system for scientists" and that "a certain degree of consistent actions, such as sharing information and working together," happens within this system.

Lievrow and others note that while many studies have looked at how scientists share knowledge through formal ways, like publishing (e.g., Menzel, 1968), there has been little research on why and how scientific knowledge grows through both formal and informal communication networks.

Price explained that some, but not all, scientists in a specific research area keep in close informal contact, and the information they share this way is important for doing good research.

Crane said that although a social group may sometimes form within a research field, it is not always present in every field or at all times. In some areas, such groups might never form. When they do form, their size and importance to members are likely to change over time.

In the 1960s, a group of academics (including astronomer J. Allen Hynek and computer scientist Jacques Vallée) met regularly to discuss UFOs. Hynek called this group The Invisible College.

The term appears in the novel The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It inspired the Unseen University in the works of Terry Pratchett and was a key influence for Grant Morrison’s comic book series The Invisibles.