The formation of the Royal Academy in 1768 constituted the official recognition in England of those neo-classical theories of Italian origin which had been transmitted to Britain through French theorists like de Chambray and de Piles. Nature, it was said, was to be rendered by the artist not with her imperfections clinging to her but in her perfect forms; what those perfect forms were the artist could only learn by a close study of the masterpieces of the ancients and their Renaissance disciples.

The discovery of the Society Islands gave initial support to the belief that a kind of tropical Arcadia inhabited by men like Greek gods existed in the South Seas, increasing knowledge not only destroyed the illusion but also became a most enduring challenge to the supremacy of neo- classical values in art and thought. The effect of this challenge is to be observed in painting, in poetry, in the theatre, and even in ideas concerning the nature of the universe.

The Royal Society who promoted Cook's voyage to the South Seas in the same year, approached nature in a different way, appealing to travellers, virtuosi, and scientists to observe carefully, record accurately, and to experiment.  It was the empirical approach of the Society and not the neo- classical approach of the Academy which flourished under the impact of the new knowledge won from the Pacific.

On the one hand the discovery of Pacific cultures contributed  to the triumph of romanticism.  The descriptions of its natural features stimulated scientific thought and understanding.  Both impacted in the nineteenth-century world of values and nature as a dynamic interaction between people and their environment..