Learning, Language and Invention: Essays Presented to Francis Maddison ed. by W. D. Hackmann, A. J. Turner

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344 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE than Kramer envisions. In the final analysis, this is a poor book, but an absolutely essential one. Future students on early firearms will have to accept Kramer’s Chemie, but they would be well advised to keep his Waffentechnik and his “Berthold Schwarz” at a generous arm’s length. Bert Hall Dr. Hall is associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. He is currently working on latemedieval and Renaissance military technology. Learning, Language and Invention: Essays Presented to Francis Maddison. Edited by W. D. Hackmann and A.J. Turner. Aldershot and Paris: Variorum and the Société Internationale de 1’Astrolabe, 1994. Pp. xv+333; illustrations, notes, index. $87.50. To honor Francis Maddison’s long career at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, distinguished colleagues from around the world collaborated to produce this volume. The authors share a remarkable ability to tease stories out of texts and objects. Histori­ ans who enjoy the skilled untangling of scholarly puzzles will relish this book. Those who seek broad social interpretations of the history of ideas and their consequences should look elsewhere. Historians of technology will appreciate D. R. Hill’s “From Philo to Al-Jazari,” an elegant summary of the early history of mechanical engineering, based on the four oldest surviving texts—those ofPhilo of Byzantium (circa 200 b.c.), Hero of Alexandris (a.d. mid 1st cen­ tury), Banü Musa (a.d. 9th century), and al-Jarazi (a.d. 13th century). They might read philosopher ofscience R. M. Harré’s argument that “hi-tec” science is fundamentallydependent on technology, and not the other way around. His conclusion will not surprise them. However, the best stories concern scientific instruments and re­ lated images, many with a connection to Oxford or to Maddison’s research. In 1964, Maddison identified the first known extant exam­ ple of a spherical astrolabe. The example he found, and another example found in a private collection, were Islamic. Emmanuel Poulle ’s essay, an account of the spherical astrolabe in medieval Europe, introduces an anonymous Latin treatise on the instrument, known only from a 15th-century manuscript. Maddison has also published extensively on navigational instruments. Willem Hackmann’s paper discusses an engraving from the 1570s byjan van der Straet. It shows the historian Flavius Blondus, proclaimed to be the inventor of the mariner’s compass. Hackmann considers the possible sources ofvan der Straet’s notions about Flavius and about magnetism and weighs his influence on later authors. The Museum of the History of Sci­ ence in Oxford has a small Dutch painting from about 1600, The TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 345 Measurers, which shows ordinary people using a wide variety of mea­ suring devices. A musician is in the left corner of the painting. John Bergsagel contrasts the relationship of music and mathematics in the scholarly quadrivium with that shown in this image, where a teacher beats out a simple rhythm for a student. A. P. Segonds dis­ cusses a third image of the time, described by Tycho Brahe as en­ graved on an instrument at his observatory at Uraniborg. The em­ blem contrasted the fruitfulness of scholarly study with the deathly sterility ofworldly goods. Having lost his position in Denmark, Brahe sought a patron willing to surrender worldly goods for astronomical knowledge. Segonds examines Brahe’s emblem and traces its his­ tory. In the first half of the 17th century, Pierre Gassendi carried on the tradition of detailed astronomical observation associated with Brahe. None of Gassendi’s instruments survive. Using corre­ spondence and publications, and assisted by Oxford colleagues, Allan Chapman reconstructed two of Gassendi’s instruments for the 1992 celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. Chapman’s essay suggests the wealth of historical questions that are involved in the process of reconstruction. What materials are appropriate? How big were the instruments? How should scales be divided and subdivided, to be consistent with surviving observations? Two essays recount ties between the Netherlands and England during the 17th century. Emilie Savage-Smith and Colin Wakefield examine the gores of a celestial globe at Oxford...