Annals of Science最新文献

So-called antimatter in the form of elementary particles such as positive electrons (antielectrons alias positrons) and negative protons (antiprotons) has for long been investigated by physicists. However, atoms or molecules of this exotic kind are conspicuously absent from nature. Since antimatter is believed to be symmetric with ordinary matter, the flagrant asymmetry constitutes a problem that still worries physicists and cosmologists. As first suggested by Paul Dirac in 1933, in distant parts of the universe there might be entire stars and galaxies made of antiparticles alone. Why not? This paper examines how the concepts of antiparticles and antimatter slowly migrated from particle physics to astronomy and cosmology. At around 1970 a few physicists speculated about an anti-universe separate from ours while others looked for the charge asymmetry in quantum processes in the early big-bang explosion of the universe. Others again proposed a 'plasma cosmology' that kept our world and the hypothetical world of antimatter apart. Soviet physicists and astronomers were no less interested in the problem than their colleagues in the West. The paper details the development up to the late 1970s, paying attention not only to mainstream scientific works but also to more speculative ideas, some of them very speculative. By that time the antimatter mystery remained mysterious - which is still the situation.

This essay proposes that the only publication of the Accademia del Cimento, referred to as Saggi, had as one of its main goals the celebration of the House of Medici's paternity of cutting-edge experiments and instruments during the reign of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. These included Ferdinando II's thermometers and hygrometers, Torricelli's experiment and barometer, and Galileo's pendulum as a clock-regulator. It seems that this agenda went unnoticed, not at the time of its initial circulation, but rather in modern historiography. Christiaan Huygens's challenged invention of the pendulum clock provides a case study to explore the agenda of this publication and the problem of defining an invention in seventeenth-century Europe. This paper presents for the first time the document that attests to when the first specimen of Huygens's clock arrived in Florence, disproving the previously believed date of September 1657. The paper argues that over the last two centuries, this error has made the Medici narratives of this dispute appear inconsistent and marginalized them. In light of this new find, they must be reconsidered.

The 50-degree thermometer currently exhibited at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge (Wh.1116), was originally crafted by skilled Italian glassmakers for the Florentine Accademia del Cimento's activities in the 1650s. Used for early meteorological observations, it remained forgotten for over a century and a half, until Vincenzo Antinori's 1829 rediscovery. Donated by Henry Babbage to the University of Cambridge in 1872, the instrument reflects the wide-ranging approach of James Clerk Maxwell, the first director of the Cavendish Laboratory, who sought to build a collection integrating historical artifacts with experimental apparatus. This paper contextualizes the journey of the artifact, exploring its cultural value across centuries and portraying it as a tangible link between past and present scientific practices.

When American experimental psychologists began to study activity cycles in the early twentieth century, their research methods and interpretations of experimental results were guided by a commitment to behaviourism and neglected the work of biological rhythms researchers, now called chronobiologists, who approached behaviours from physiological and ecological perspectives, exploring activity and other rhythmic behaviours as governed by innate organic stimuli, biological clocks. The epistemological gap that developed between rhythms researchers and behavioural psychologists can be seen already in the work of Maynard S. Johnson and Curt P. Richter, both working with rodents in the 1920s and 1930s. This gap persisted into the 1960s, when psychologists began to realize that biological clocks help to explain some of their experimental results. This epistemological gap is plain from psychologists' reaction to the 1963 work of Michael Treisman, who was credited 50 years later with discovering the biological clock in humans, despite more than half a century of effort to study rhythms and locate clocks; recognition in the mid-1960s that clock-controlled circadian rhythms were useful in psychology began to close this gap.

This article sheds new light on Alexander von Humboldt's political position in the revolutionary decade between 1789 and 1799. The young naturalist interacted with both supporters and opponents of the revolution. In July 1790, he even participated in the preparations for the Festival of the Federation in Paris together with Georg Forster. However, Humboldt remained detached from Europe's polarized politics. He avoided taking a firm stance and distanced himself from revolutionary violence. Continuous emotional and physical crises, in addition to his immersion into scientific studies, fuelled this retreat. While steeped in Enlightenment ideas and committed to a cosmopolitan understanding of liberty, Humboldt absorbed the critique of the French Revolution and the skeptical take on rationalism that the philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander's brother, articulated.By recognizing these influences and reexamining autobiographical sources, we can identify the various intellectual and political contexts in which Alexander von Humboldt operated during the 1790s. This polycentric approach leads to a nuanced understanding of Humboldt's political thinking in revolutionary Europe. It explains his caution in political matters and revises the conventional image of Humboldt as a fervent supporter of the French Revolution.

This paper offers an introduction to the Renaissance defence of terrestrial motion by the Ferrara humanist Celio Calcagnini, Quod caelum stet, terra moveatur (ca. 1518). It presents its main argument and reconstructs its intellectual context. It also comprises the first translation in English. This treatise is an early document of the circulation of geokinetic conceptions. It was written in the very years when the revolutionary ideas of Copernicus started to circulate and De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was taking shape. Calcagnini's defence of terrestrial motion especially drew on natural and epistemological conceptions stemming from humanistic eclecticism, influenced by scepticism and Platonism. The paper also offers an interpretation of celestial motions that Calcagnini attributed to the Earth, although he did not expound on the mathematical details.

This article explores the interdisciplinary career and overlooked legacy of Henri Devaux (1862-1956), a French botanist-turned-physicist whose pioneering work on thin films and surface science predated the field's maturity. Trained as a botanist, Devaux crossed disciplinary boundaries to make foundational contributions to the study of thin films anticipating key developments in molecular biology and colloid chemistry. Despite this, his work remains marginalized in narratives dominated by figures like Irving Langmuir and Agnes Pockels. Devaux's career reflects the tensions of disciplinary transgression in early 20th-century France, bridging botany, physics, and chemistry while serving as an "ambassador" of plant physiology within physics. His devout Protestant faith further shaped his scientific identity: he framed research as a divine mission and conceived of "Complete Science"-a synthesis of empirical inquiry and religious revelation-that distinguished him from both secular and Catholic contemporaries. Drawing on his personal archives, this study argues that Devaux's legacy was shaped by experimental ingenuity, religious conviction, and deliberate navigation between institutional constraints. His story challenges standard narratives of scientific progress, illuminating how personal belief and disciplinary boundary-crossing can simultaneously drive innovation and limit historical recognition.

This paper presents the peculiar story of the drop, a non-standard unit which outlived the standardizing forces of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as an instructive lens for understanding how and why non-standard units survive. With the establishment of the metric system in France came a large-scale discussion on the merits of various units, the drop among them. Some partisans of the metric system argued that this unstandardizable unit should be abandoned in favour of decimal weight units. Despite this, the drop remained in use in both lay and scientific contexts. By closely studying medical and chemical practice, we show that the drop was a rich tool for both communication and scientific quantification. The drop's utility went beyond cases where achieving precision was superfluous; drops were also used by practitioners in ways that could not easily be replaced by the scales, accomplishing aims for which standard units were ill-adapted or even damaging to the task at hand. The drop's familiar and flexible nature made it uniquely useful in instructions to be carried out by lay people or factory workers, as well as in the many experimental procedures that required the practitioner's attention to be directed at sensory indications.

During the French Revolution, obstetrics underwent substantial transformations in practice, teaching, and the physical spaces where it was conducted. The revolutionary authorities implemented reforms in French medical institutions that promoted an instrument-centred style and the dissemination of novel surgical techniques in obstetrics. The selection of professors for the obstetrics chair at the newly established École de santé and the appointment of chiefs for the new maternity ward in Paris favoured proponents of a mechanistic approach to labour assistance. This essay explores the theoretical principles and societal pressures that guided these transformative reforms and the remarkable changes they introduced in healthcare and in the practise of medicine and surgery. Furthermore, it examines the consolidation of new epistemological, ethical, and professional boundaries within the context of late eighteenth-century French obstetrics. A critical section of this study focuses on the debate ignited by the contemporaries who voiced concerns that the rise of surgical interventions on pregnant women's bodies might result in unwarranted violence, in a diminishing of midwives' roles, and in a departure from the tradition of natural childbirth. These controversies among obstetricians highlight significant contradictions within the Revolutionary medical reforms.

Antonino Saliba, a sixteenth century cartographer hailing from the Maltese island of Gozo, published a map in 1582 espousing his cosmology. Its popularity at the time is attested via the multiple editions and copies that were produced in Europe. Numerous sky phenomena, amongst them comets, are portrayed in the map. This study presents a detailed analysis of Saliba's treatment of these phenomena, following the first comprehensive translation of the map's text to English. It elucidates the sources that Saliba used, clarifying and shedding further light on the views he held. Where possible, the comets mentioned by Saliba are identified and explained. Besides showing how Saliba wholly conformed to the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic representation of the world, in which respect he was quite orthodox, it is also shown for the first time that his work is significantly derived from previous and contemporary sources.