Science is a quintessential human social activity, based as it is on the mutual criticism of collaborating agents. Communication lies at its heart, and advances in communication have always resulted in surges in scientific knowledge. The establishment of networks of scholars allowed the rapid transmission of information-only a few months lay between Lippershey's invention of the telescope in the Netherlands, and Galileo's presentation of a much improved version to the Doge in Venice in 1609. The formalisation of these networks as learned societies dates from the seventeenth century. The printed book drove the scientific developments of the Renaissance, and scholars have always relied on correspondence with colleagues to check out their ideas (Darwin surely would not have been able to write the Origin of Species without his wide supporting circle of correspondents).
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