Eighteenth-century Science Research Articles

Degrees of longitude and the earth's shape: The diffusion of a scientific idea in Paris in the 1730s

Summary The paper deals with the confusion that has arisen in studying the revival of geodesy in Paris in the 1730s. The episode highlights the vast qualitative differences in science-reporting to be found in periodicals of the early eighteenth century, and the actual roles that certain better-known journals played in the genesis of what became a trademark for eighteenth-century Parisian science.

Images and ideas: Leeuwenhoek's perception of the spermatozoa.

Henry Power, that optimistic devotee of the early microscope, warned in the I 660s that "our best Philosophers will but prove empty Conjecturalists, and their profoundest Speculations herein, but gloss'd outside Fallacies" if they did not exploit such new instruments.' He himself looked to the further confirmation and elucidation of the corpuscular natural philosophy,2 but in the following decades the most consequential revelations of the miscroscope might reasonably have been expected to pertain more specifically to biological generation. No other question in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century science was more laden with philosophical and religious overtones, for it asked if and how a despiritualized, mechanistic nature could engender the purposeful complexity of living organisms, including man. As such exceptional observers as Marcello Malpighi, Jan Swammerdam, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek probed various instances of generation with their microscopes, the community of the learned, the "Republic of Letters," waited for some decisive new testimony. For Leeuwenhoek, whose microscopes were the finest before the nineteenth century and whose persistence pushed early microscopy to its furthest limits, the generation of living things became an enduring preoccupation, and his observations and conclusions unsettled a recently recast consensus. However, these observations also revealed how little as yet though Leibniz, for one, was convinced otherwise3 the microscope could offer philosophy and how much, rather, it ultimately supported a resurgent skepticism. Probing the limits of what could then be observed in the minute mechanisms of living things, Leeuwenhoek's instruments seemed in the end to reaffirm that the fundamental processes of generation would remain unknown.

Ensayos Actuales sobre Adam Smith y David Hume (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 205 Robinet's book inevitably bears comparison to Michel Foucault's L'Arch~ologie du savoir and Noam Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics. Let it be said that Robinet is primarily a scholar in the sense that neither Foucault nor Chomsky is or claims to be. Both Robinet and Foucault explore the theme of representationalism, and although Foucault's model is grand and suggestive, scholarship like Robinet's provides the ground and test for such models. Similarly, polemical theses such as Chomsky's must bear up under the detail of exhaustive scholarly work such as Robinet's. Robinet forces the rereading of Foucault and Chomsky. He forces the reconsideration of stereotyped views of ideas and language in modern philosophy. He has enriched the history of philosophy. RICHARD A. WATSON Washington University Raul Orayen, editor. Ensayos Actuales sobre Adam Smith y David Hume. Buenos Aires: Editorial del Instituto, 1978. Pp. x + 365. In spite of cultural persecution by the military regime, and a general lack of scientific encouragement at all levels, Argentina still keeps the strongest philosophical tradition in Latin America. This volume, published by the Torcuato di Tella Institute, is a proof of this. It includes papers presented to the "Jornadas Adam Smith, David Hume y su ~poca," held in Buenos Aires in December 1976, celebrating the double bicentennial of Hume's death and the first publication of The Wealth of Nations. Most authors are Argentinian, but the well-known British philosopher Antony Flew is also present, as well as the Brazilian Eduardo Chaves. Critical comments made at the conference are also published, together with answers by the authors. The volume is divided into two parts, dedicated to the two philosophers, each with a special introduction and a bibliographical guide. Part i has four papers on Smith: "Adam Smith's Theorem" (J. Olivera); on some aspects of international economical strategy in The Wealth of Nations (J. Viilanueva); on value, labor, and capital (M. L6pez); and finally Flew's paper on Adam Smith and the Scottish founders of the social sciences. Part 2 is the most extensive and also the most interesting, with seven papers on Hume. Margarita Costa and Ezequiel de Olaso develop some of the views they had presented at the Hume Conference held at the University of Campinas, Brazil, in 1976, and later published in a special issue on Hume of the Brazilian philosophical journal Manuscrito. M. Costa carefully analyzes the foundations of causality in Hume, and Olaso strikingly shows that Hume's "Pyrrhonic crisis" involves an equivocal interpretation of ancient skepticism by the philosopher. J. Alessio proposes an original approach to the problem of the powers of objects in Hume's epistemology, in terms of dispositions; and E. Rabossi very effectively clarifies a precise aspect of the Treatise, abstract ideas and general terms. J. Larreta, 1. Zuberbi~hler and J. Ibafiez present a joint discussion of induction, coherence, and simplicity; and the scope and present import of Hume's view of science are analyzed by the dean of Argentinian philoso- 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY phy of science, Gregorio Kiimovsky. The problem of evil in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is discussed by E. Chaves, in its logical and semantical aspects. It is impossible to give, in a short note, a clear idea of the significance of such a volume for philosophy and the social sciences in Latin America, where publications of this quality do not abound. The Argentinian papers on Adam Smith reveal the existence of a solid scholarship in economics in that country; and Flew's contribution is as illuminating as usual. As for the papers on Hume, they fully display the maturity of the Argentinian philosophic community. Criticism of some of the more polemical views exposed in these papers would be out of place here. But one can regret, in a publication dedicated to two philosophers with such strong mutual ties, the absence of any discussion of the relationship between them. This certainly is one of the most important links to be found by the historian of eighteenth-century science and philosophy. One of the doors to this kind of discussion might be the analysis of Hume's economical essays and of their relevance...

Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access G. S. ROUSSEAU and ROY PORTER, eds. The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science. Cambridge, London, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1980. xiii, 500 pp., illus. $39.50. CHRISTOPHER J. LAWRENCE, M.B.CH.B. CHRISTOPHER J. LAWRENCE, M.B.CH.B. Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BP England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3, July 1982, Pages 348–349, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XXXVII.3.348 Published: 01 July 1982

The Rhetoric of Argument in Berkeley's Siris

Bishop Berkeley's Siris is a strange, anomalous text, an apparent lapse from his sceptical, strong-minded, and rigorous philosophy. His other works are uncluttered masterpieces of analysis and exposition, which develop their own terminology and appeal to personal introspection for verification. Siris, however, is littered with borrowings from eighteenth-century systems of chemistry and physics and from esoteric, hermetic philosophies, which underlie and shape its argument. Whereas elsewhere Berkeley sharply limits the grounds of knowledge, Siris enthusiastically advances the marvelous, mythopoeic idea of an animistic universe and treats the world as though it were the body of an animal whose every motion is directed by God. In its methods and conclusions, then, this text may strike modern readers as foreign or even bizarre, not worthy of consideration as serious philosophical discourse. Especially since the scientific theories it invokes have been disproven or superseded, its proposals may seem useless, of interest only to historians of science or philosophy. Yet I believe that in Siris Berkeley writes a self-conscious, philosophically informed discourse that is grounded in his sense of the rhetorical and ultimately supra-philosophical purposes of abstract inquiry. He uses the persuasive power that scientific argument had within his culture to develop insights that surpass the ideology and philosophy supporting eighteenth-century science. This practice is specifically informed by Berkeley's novel theories of language and of science, but its significance extends beyond his philosophy to larger issues concerning the often unacknowledged influence of rhetorical motives and strategies in scientific and philosophic texts.

G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (editors), The ferment of knowledge. Studies in the historiography of eighteenth-century science, Cambridge University Press, 1980, 8vo, pp. xiii, 500, £25.00.

G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (editors), The ferment of knowledge. Studies in the historiography of eighteenth-century science, Cambridge University Press, 1980, 8vo, pp. xiii, 500, £25.00.

Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision

For most of the two hundred years or so that have passed since the publication of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith's writings on political and economic questions have been viewed within a liberal capitalist perspective of nineteenth- and twentieth- century provenance. This essay in interpretation seeks to provide a more historical reading of certain political themes which recur in Smith's writings by bringing eighteenth-century perspectives to bear on the problem. Contrary to the view that sees Smith's work as marking the point at which 'politics' was being eclipsed by 'economics', it claims that Smith has a 'politics' which goes beyond certain political attitudes connected with the role of the state in economic affairs. It argues that he employs a consistent mode of political analysis which cannot be encompassed within the standard liberal capitalist categories, but can be understood by reference to the language and qualities of contemporary political debate, and of the eighteenth-century science of politics cultivated by Montesquieu and, above all, Hume, particularly as revealed by recent scholarship. A concluding chapter draws the various strands of the interpretation together to form a portrait of what Smith might legitimately be said to have been doing when he wrote on these matters.

Nature, poetry and medicine in late 18th century England: a unified perspective of Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin was the focus and embodiment of provincial England in his day. Renowned as a physician, he spent much of his life at Lichfield. He instigated the founding of the Lichfield Botanic Society, which provided the first English translation of the works of Linnaeus, and established a botanic garden; the Lunar Society of Birmingham; the Derby Philosophical Society; and two provincial libraries. A list of Darwin's correspondents and associates reads like a "who's who" of eighteenth century science, industry, medicine and philosophy. His poetry was also well received by his contemporaries and he expounded the evolutionary principles of life. Darwin can be seen as an English equivalent of Lamarck, being a philosopher of nature and human society. His ideas have been linked to a multitude of movements, including the nosological movement in Western medicine, nineteenth century utilitarianism, Romanticism in both Britain and Germany, and associationist psychology. The relationships between various aspects of Darwin's interests and the organizational principles of his writings were examined. His poetical form and medical theory were not peripheral to his study of nature but intrinsically linked in providing his contemporaries with a panorama of nature. A richer, more integrated comprehension of Erasmus Darwin as one of the most significant and representative personalities of his era was presented.

Nature, poetry and medicine in late 18th century England: a unified perspective of Erasmus Darwin

ABSTRACT Erasmus Darwin was the focus and embodiment of provincial England in his day. Renowned as a physician, he spent much of his life at Lichfield. He instigated the founding of the Lichfield Botanic Society, which provided the first English translation of the works of Linnaeus, and established a botanic garden; the Lunar Society of Birmingham; the Derby Philosophical Society; and two provincial libraries. A list of Darwin's correspondents and associates reads like a who's who of eighteenth century science, industry, medicine and philosophy. His poetry was also well received by his contemporaries and he expounded the evolutionary principles of life. Darwin can be seen as an English equivalent of Lamarck, being a philosopher of nature and human society. His ideas have been linked to a multitude of movements, including the nosological movement in Western medicine, nineteenth century utilitarianism, Romanticism in both Britain and Germany, and associationist psychology. The relationships between variou...

What Is Modern in the Eighteenth Century?–Not Science

SYMPOSIUM: THE MODERNITY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY What Is Modern in the Eighteenth Century?~Not Science Robert Schofield Every DISCIPLINE has its professional disease, some ailment of flesh or spirit to which its practitioners are peculiarly heir and against which they must guard themselves with particular care. For historians of science, possibly because priority disputes appear so prominently as dramatic elements in the sciences they study, the dis­ ease is that known as "precursoritis”—an endemic compulsion to locate some expression of a scientific law or discovery earlier than that commonly accepted as the first. It is, on the whole, a pleasant disease with no terminal complications, for the discovery of one precursor leads at once to the desire to find a precursor to that pre­ cursor, and so on through the span of time until one comes at last to rest with the Greeks. On the other hand, it is so infinitely con­ sumptive of time and ingenuity that professional historians of sci­ ence are inoculated against even the hint of precursors. To suggest, therefore, that one might find an aspect of modernity in the concepts of eighteenth-century science is to propose a viola­ tion of the canons of history of science on a centurial scale. Nor is this one of those rules established only for professional harmony, to be honored in cases like this one with canonical variations. For the rule is a realization of the nature of scientific ideas as products of creative imagination. An eighteenth-century novel is not modern because its plot employs the same elements employed in a modern novel. Tom Jones is not David Copperfield, and neither of these is Augie March, though all three are young men and each has experi­ 61 The Modernity of the Eighteenth Century ences with young women in his search for maturity. The tone, aim, and structure of the novel reflects the style of its age, and so it is with the concepts of science. The scientific style of an age is established by the way in which particular phenomena are set within a world view defined by selection from a limited set of fundamental dichot­ omies. The world may be finite or infinite, vitalistic or reductionist, static or changing, continuous or discontinuous, mechanistic or ma­ terialistic. Unless the selection of alternatives and the mode of order­ ing phenomena within that selection are both congruent to a mod­ ern view, there is no possibility of true precursority. If we look closely, every apparent case of conceptual similarity between eighteenth-century science and our own reveals just those incongruities which justify the canonical exclusion of comparisons. The elementary version of modern thermodynamics is a kinetic the­ ory reminiscent of eighteenth-century mechanical theories of heat. But only in the unpublished work of an anachronistic Henry Cav­ endish and in the scarcely-read suggestions of Daniel Bernouilli did that mechanical theory reach toward quantification, and their work scarcely approached the indeterminacies of twentieth-century statis­ tical mechanics. Eighteenth-century electricity was entirely static, while electrical theory from the nineteenth century to today is essentially current. Only the concept of charge conservation and the force law between charges remains unchanged from the eighteenth century. But con­ servation of charge, like that of heat, meant to the eighteenth century a conservation of material substance—that fluid of electricity which was also of conceptual significance in Coulomb’s determination of electrical force laws. Whatever electricity may be assumed to be —and the question is scarcely asked today, let alone answered—it is not regarded as a material fluid. Conceptually, eighteenth- and twentieth-century electricity are very different. Similar demonstrations can be produced for nearly every eigh­ teenth-century theory wistfully projected into the twentieth century. Newton’s light particles, with their periodic interactions with mat­ ter, are neither formally nor empirically equivalent to the photons of Einstein. Boscovich’s atoms, physically neutral point nodules of a forcefully described space, have no conjunction with modern atoms, 62 Symposium: Science filled to overflowing with strange particles and still stranger proper­ ties. The physiological speculations of iatro-physicists were not even related to the physical reductionism of the mid-nineteenth century and bear no...

Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 95 Mr. Curley has written a challenging and controversial book, and on three issues the reviewer had to record his disagreement with the author's position. Nevertheless he found his work interesting throughout, informative and well argued. It deserves a lasting place among Spinozistic scholarship. PAUL SELIGMAN University oJ Waterloo Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry. By Arnold Thackray. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970) "The two major problems confronting any philosophy of chemistry have always been to decide on the units that endure through chemical change, and on the terms in which the causes of that change might be discussed" (p. 199). The chemist in the eighteenth century faced these two fundamental problems--that of deciding what was to be considered an element and that of deciding on the ultimate terms of explanation for chemical phenomena--in rather explicit terms. Boyle and the mechanical philosophers of the late seventeenth century had reopened the question of the elements by rejecting the traditional four-element (earth, water, air, fire) and three-principle (salt, sulphur, mercury) theories and suggesting that there might not exist elementary substances in the traditional sense at all. These same mechanical philosophers sought to reduce chemistry to a branch of physics by attempting to explain away the chemical properties of matter solely in terms of the primary, physical properties which they believed matter to possess. In his book, Atoms and Powers, Thackray discusses the influence of Newtonianism on the eighteenth-century discussions of these problems. In the process, he adds some order and insight to what may mildly be described as a confused and only partly charted period of the history of science. Newton's reputation and ideas had a profound influence on almost every area of eighteenth-century science. In relation to chemistry, "Newtonianism" meant two things in the eighteenth century: (I) a belief in the "inertial homogeneity" of matter, and consequently in a highly porous and internally ordered structure to all known substances ; and (2) a belief that for chemistry, as for the other physical sciences, the route to an ordered, quantified, predictive science lay through the measurement of forces, in this case the forces of chemical affinity (p. 5). Thackray argues rather convincingly that Newtonianism was not in general a progressive trend for eighteenth-century chemistry, that quantitative and successfully predictive chemistry---culminating in the works of Lavoisier, Dalton, and others----came less from the Newtonian, reductionist approach than from a holistic approach which acknowledged the chemical Ievel of organization and sought generalizations in chemistry from empirical study of the phenomenal properties of chemical substances. The eighteenth-century chemist needed to learn about the chemical properties of matter before he could explain them in terms of Newtonian physics. Aside from the intrinsic interest of Thackray's book as an historical study, he raises several issues which should be of particular interest to readers of the Journal of the History o] Philosophy. First, he implicitly reveals the important difference between the historical and logical reconstructions of a science. A twentieth-century philosopher of science might rightfully discuss the significance of the reductionist approach to chemistry and the importance of measuring inter-particulate forces to the understanding 96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of chemical fact. History, however, need not follow a logical sequence; and the Newtonian trend, which might seem remarkably progressive to twentieth-century eyes, did not solve the basic problems facing the eighteenth-century chemist. It is more than slightly ironic that chemistry gained much of its order from a return to the premechanical view of elements as the bearers of qualities in chemical reactions. Secondly, Thackray's discussion casts considerable light on the subtle and fascinating problem of the nature of scientific change. His close analysis of Newtonianism and chemistry provides much-needed historical fuel for the discussion of the role of the paradigm in the development of science, "paradigm" taken in both the sociological and conceptual senses. Finally, an historian of philosophy would find this book useful in illustrating the scientific context of many important problems that arose in eighteenth-century philosophy, particularly problems concerning the nature of matter, the breakdown of the distinction...

Relations and rivalry: Interactions between Britain and the Netherlands in eighteenth-century science and technology.

Relations and rivalry: Interactions between Britain and the Netherlands in eighteenth-century science and technology.

Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759-99 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 401 solve the perplexing problem of Priestley's stubborn adherence to the phlogiston theoryha problem which perhaps reveals the major weakness of the whole interpretation: the belief that Priestley's science may be adequately comprehended by seeing him solely as a scientist. Joseph Priestley was, after all, an eighteenth-century figure. Living in a world in which the very term scientist did not exist, he was by persuasion, profession, and occupation first and foremost a minister of the Gospel, and only secondarily a supporter of radical politics and a lover of natural philosophy. To distinguish sharply this philosophy from his theology and politics is to indulge in that form of Whiggish hindsight to which the history of science is still all-too-prone. Schofield is aware of the danger--witness his inclusion of the completely "unscientific" but highly-revealing exchange of letters with Boscovich--but even so he is far from fully convinced. Thus he can refer to Priestley's correspondence on "Hartleyo ian physiological psychology" as relating primarily to theology and metaphysics "with only occasional and casual scientific references," while yet listing the Disquisitions on matter and ~dr/t among Priestley's scientific works l Such are the demarcation difficulties for those who would divide and classify interwoven networks of ideas! All recent enquiry has served to suggest how closely related--and how characteristic of British Newtonians--were Priestley's twin concerns with science and religion, and how important group (i.e., political) loyalties were in the acceptance and rejection of ideas in the still unprofessionalized context of eighteenth-century science. Examples of the importance of such loyalties abound in Priestley's own life, from his post-l?91 ostracism by the Royal Society, to his own later reflections on changing English reactions to the ideas of French chemists. Yet in this present study Schofield makes little effort to explore the theological setting of Priestley's scientific matter-theory, or the group-loyalties that affected the reception of his ideas. It may well be that the new synthesis that will relate a man's science to his wider body of beliefs, and to his context in society, is still beyond us. If so, it is far from clear that the production of individual scientific biographies, such as Schofield now pro~ poses, is the most fruitful line of attack. All this said, one cannot but be grateful for the energy devoted to this book, and for the fascinating human document with which we have been presented. Here Priestley comes alive again as a man of warm humanity, prodigious nervous energy, deep courage, and touching faith in human progress. Any layman who picks up the volume cannot but be enthralled by its contents. And all students of eighteenth-century ideas will be forced to view Priestley afreshhand perhaps someone will even be challenged to attempt that unified account which still escapes the narrow vision of historians of science. ARNOLDTHACKPAY University of Pennsylvania Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759-99. Ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.Pp. x + 260. $7~0) As Amulf Zweig indicates in his translator's preface, this volume contains most if not all of the philosophical correspondence of Kant and some letters of biographical interest as well. Also included are various letters to Kant, the most important of which, perhaps, being those from LamberL Mendelssohn, Maimon, and Markus Herz. These and the other letters received by Kant which are included in this volume, together, of course, with Kant's own letters, give us valuable if often indirect and circumstantial information concerning the development of Kant's doctrines, their reception, and the misinterpretations to which they fell prey. One also gleans insights from them concerning the philosophical climate of Germany during the last third of the eighteenth century. In letters both to and from Kant a great deal of extra-philosophical, biographical information is to be found as well. I shall limit myself to a consideration of the philosophical material, selecting from it a few notions I consider to be helpful to an understanding of Kant's philosophical development and the interpretation of his basic doctrines. For the most part I shall be following...

The Boscovich Archives at Berkeley

T IS NO exaggeration to speak at present of a Boscovichian among historians of science. In the last decade, Roger Boscovich (17111787) has been the subject of three international congresses, at least six books, and a host of important articles.' Such enthusiasm can in part be attributed to the fortuitous occurrence of bicentenary celebrations of his Philosophiae naturalis theoria redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium (1758) and the founding of the Brera Observatory (1762), which Boscovich helped to create. In these writings, there are the customary panegyrics about the learned Ragusan Jesuit, as well as overzealous claims of his influence on modern science. Beyond this, however, one finds a considerable amount of measured evidence for his role in the development of eighteenth-century science, and the recognition that he is an important and generally neglected figure of the history of science. The Boscovichian revival is genuine, widespread, and entirely valid. Every student of Boscovich must face formidable problems. The scientist's published works (principally written in Latin) are scarce, and no single library has in its holdings the hundred or more publications Boscovich could claim in his lifetime.2 There are no critical editions of any of his writings.3 Moreover, the variety of his interestsstretching from the mathematical sciences to hydraulics, and including poetry and diplomacy calls for encyclopedic knowledge which few contemporary specialists are in a position to muster. These practical difficulties are compounded by the problems surrounding

The Paracelsian Aerial Niter

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Paracelsian Aerial NiterAllen G. DebusAllen G. Debus Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 55, Number 1Mar., 1964 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/349794 Views: 8Total views on this site Citations: 24Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1964 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Hyeok Hweon Kang Cooking Niter, Prototyping Nature: Saltpeter and Artisanal Experiment in Korea, 1592–1635, Isis 113, no.11 (Mar 2022): 1–21.https://doi.org/10.1086/718283Antonio Clericuzio Digby on Plants and Palingenesis, (May 2022): 163–181.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99822-6_7Urszula Szulakowska Fludd, Robert, (Oct 2022): 1256–1262.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_488Adam D. Richter On food and fossils: natural philosophy, mathematics, and biblical history in the works of John Wallis, The Seventeenth Century 35, no.11 (Nov 2018): 77–104.https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2018.1541424Urszula Szulakowska Fludd, Robert, (Nov 2019): 1–7.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_488-2Doina-Cristina Rusu Rethinking Sylva sylvarum : Francis Bacon’s Use of Giambattista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis, Perspectives on Science 25, no.11 (Feb 2017): 1–35.https://doi.org/10.1162/POSC_a_00233Rodolfo Garau Springs, Nitre, and Conatus. The Role of the Heart in Hobbes's Physiology and Animal Locomotion, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24, no.22 (Jan 2016): 231–256.https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2015.1116432Urszula Szulakowska Fludd, Robert, (Nov 2015): 1–7.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_488-1Victor D. Boantza Chymical Philosophy and Boyle’s Incongruous Philosophical Chymistry, (Aug 2012): 257–284.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4807-1_11Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino Ontological tensions in sixteenth and seventeenth century chemistry: between mechanism and vitalism, Foundations of Chemistry 13, no.33 (Oct 2011): 173–186.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-011-9126-9Peter R. Anstey John Locke and Helmontian Medicine, (Jan 2010): 93–117.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_6Anthony R. Butler, Martin Feelisch Therapeutic Uses of Inorganic Nitrite and Nitrate, Circulation 117, no.1616 (Apr 2008): 2151–2159.https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.753814William R. Newman From Alchemy to “Chymistry”, (Jul 2006): 497–517.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572446.022Vladimir Jankovic The end of classical meteorology, c. 1800, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 256, no.11 (Jan 2006): 91–99.https://doi.org/10.1144/GSL.SP.2006.256.01.04M.J Eadie A pathology of the animal spirits – the clinical neurology of Thomas Willis (1621–1675) Part I – Background, and disorders of intrinsically normal animal spirits, Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 10, no.11 (Jan 2003): 14–29.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0967-5868(02)00165-0Paulo Alves Porto Michael Sendivogius on Nitre and the Preparation of the Philosophers' Stone, Ambix 48, no.11 (Jul 2013): 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1179/amb.2001.48.1.1 Allen G. Debus Chemists, Physicians, and Changing Perspectives on the Scientific Revolution, Isis 89, no.11 (Oct 2015): 66–81.https://doi.org/10.1086/383922Allen G. Debus Select Bibliography, (Jan 1997): 281–297.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5810-7_10Zbigniew Szydło The Alchemy of Michael Sendivogius: His Central Nitre Theory, Ambix 40, no.33 (Jul 2013): 129–146.https://doi.org/10.1179/amb.1993.40.3.129Lawrence M. Principe, Andrew Weeks Jacob Boehme's Divine Substance Salitter: its Nature, Origin, and Relationship to Seventeenth Century Scientific Theories, The British Journal for the History of Science 22, no.0101 (Jan 2009): 53.https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708740002553XBetty Jo Dobbs Studies in the Natural Philosophy of Sir Kenelm Digby Part III. Digby's Experimental Alchemy—The Book of Secrets, Ambix 21, no.11 (Mar 1974): 1–28.https://doi.org/10.1179/000269874791504107William P. D. Wightman Myth and method in seventeenth-century biological thought, Journal of the History of Biology 2, no.22 (Jan 1969): 321–336.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125022A. G. Debus Essay Review: Alchemy and the Historian of Science: Elias Ashmole Elias Ashmole (1617–1692). His Autobiographical and Historical Notes, his Correspondence, and Other Contemporary Sources Relating to his Life and Work , Edited, with a biographical introduction, by JostenC. H. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966). 5 volumes, pp. 2065. £1818s., History of Science 6, no.11 (Jul 2016): 128–138.https://doi.org/10.1177/007327536700600109Robert P. Multhauf, Bernard S. Finn, Aleida V. H. Cattell, Gertrude B. Calvert, and Diana D. Menkes Ninetieth Critical Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (To 1 January 1965), Isis 56, no.44 (Oct 2015): 490–657.https://doi.org/10.1086/350074

Eighteenth-century Medical Science

Eighteenth-century Medical Science

Morse's School Geographies: An Eighteenth-Century Science Textbook Series Used at the Junior-High-School Level

Morse's School Geographies: An Eighteenth-Century Science Textbook Series Used at the Junior-High-School Level

On the Conservation of Solar Energy

WITH your permission I should like to offer a few remarks upon the interesting paper of Dr. C. William Siemens on the “Conservation of Solar Energy,” published in NATURE (vol. xxv. p. 440). The main hypothesis upon which that paper is based, that of a fan-like action of the sun, is not improbable; nor are the consequences drawn illogical, if we could reasonably imagine space to be occupied by such condensed molecules as he supposes. That space is everywhere occupied by matter, there is no just reason to doubt. The hypothesis of an ether, specifically distinct from matter, is a gratuitous assumption, and one of the last surviving relics of eighteenth century science. Unless it can be proved that highly disintegrated matter is positively incapable of conveying light vibrations, there is no warrant for assigning this duty to a distinct form of substance. But that matter exists in outer space in the same conditions as in the planetary atmospheres is certainly improbable. Its duty as a conveyer of radiant vibrations seems to require a far greater tensity, and its disintegration is probably extreme.