Abstract
In the context of the lecture of Lenka Ovčáčková personalities of the aristocratic circle were presented, which in the period from the second half of the 18th to the first half of the 19th century became significantly involved not only in the development of science, but also in shaping the related institutional scientific frame (Ignaz Antonín Born, Kaspar Maria Sternberg, Josef Emanuel Canal, Georg Franz August Buquoy, Johann Nepomuk Mittrowsky, Hugo Franz Salm-Reifferscheidt or Marie Christina Dietrichstein). The diversity of approaches and activities connected with founding natural science collections as well as with contributing to research into natural sciences as such, laid the foundation for scientific research in the Czech lands.
This historical space and time of the era of the late Enlightenment - in the respective period to a large extent influenced by the movement of freemasonry - is due to its tendency to understand the reality in a rational way closely linked with new approaches in the fields of education, science and culture. Since the beginning of the 19th century these activities were also influenced by the then spreading ideas of Naturphilosophie, which in the fields of natural sciences established a holistic view of nature.
The lecture was followed by an extensive discussion.