Annals of Science最新文献

In this essay, I will compare the character, scientific style, and writing style of the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs and the French physicist Pierre Maurice Duhem. I begin with biographical notes to portray some significant moments of their lives. I will contrast their characters and scientific styles as manifested in their social and scientific activity influenced by the cultural traditions of their countries and the social and scientific milieu of their time. Also, in these sections, I will discuss features of their familial relationships that affected their youth, their psychology, and the shaping of their characters. I will compare their writing styles emphasizing the differences observed between Gibbs's dense and austere style, unlike Duhem's detailed and informative way of writing his essays. I will further examine the way by which each physicist used Mach's doctrine of the economy of thought in shaping their writing style. A final contrast is reserved for their pedagogical styles. In this case, I will let their students and colleagues speak for them, while I comment on why they did not leave behind a school of thought.

The life and work of Hermann Günther Graßmann (1809-1877) attract not only ever again the attention of mathematicians, mathematical historians and those interested in the history of mathematics, they constitute also a challenge for the methodology of historiographical research. This challenge persists since Friedrich Engel's biography of 1911; there, two sources were presented and interpreted in a not legitimate manner which even mislead since then various scholars. This paper faces the intricate task to unravel not only the methodological shortcomings of Engel's biography, but also to re-assess the misinterpretations - particularly of alleged influences on Graßmann's approaches - induced by Engel's misleading claims. Based upon broader historically contextualised analyses of Graßmann's innovative elements in his theory of extension and upon new primary sources for his student times at the Gymnasium and Berlin University, the paper presents a novel assessment of Graßmann's approaches.

Modern commentators have doubts about the authenticity and cogency of the early propositions of Archimedes' On Equilibrium of Planes Book 1. Ernst Mach famously said that the proof of Prop. 6, the so-called law of the lever, assumes what is to be proven. Comparing the initial text in Heiberg's modern edition (1881, 1913) to the first propositions in Eutocius' commentary on EP 1, J. L. Berggren ([1976]. 'Spurious Theorems in Archimedes' Equilibrium of Planes: Book I', Archive for History of Exact Sciences 16.2 (1976), 87-103.) claimed that the propositions up through Proposition 3 of the standard modern edition are schoolbook additions written by an ancient author inferior to Archimedes. The present paper argues for the logical connectedness of Postulates 1-5 to Props. 1-6, by means of a detailed examination of the course of the argument and a re-examination of Eutocius' remarks. The paper reinterprets the role of the empirical in the early propositions and offers a reading of the contribution of Archimedes' mechanics to the method of EP 1.

The editors of History and Technology have declared their 'unreserved support' for Jenny Bulstrode's claim that eighteenth-century ironmaster Henry Cort stole his revolutionary iron-rolling process from enslaved 'Black metallurgists'. This paper critically examines their defence of her theory, with a particular focus on connections between sugar and iron production that are presented by Bulstrode as an essential catalyst for the supposed development of the process in Jamaica. By exploring in depth the historical context, technological details, and primary sources relating to Bulstrode's claim, this study demonstrates that her account remains both inaccurate and fundamentally implausible.

This article reframes the Analyst Controversy, incited by George Berkeley's incendiary tract The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician (1734), as not merely a debate about Newtonian fluxions but as a conflict over epistemic authority and competing ideas and ideals of reason in the Age of Reason. While often treated as a technical episode in the history of calculus, the controversy also reveals deeper tensions about the legitimate production of mathematical knowledge and the status of its truths. By situating the controversy in the broader social and political context of Augustan Britain, this article argues that Berkeley's critique challenged not only the foundations of Newtonian mathematics but also the Lockean social epistemology and Whig ideologies of order in which they were embedded.

In August 1623, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, and in April 1624, Galileo went to Rome to pay his respects to his old friend. Before returning to Florence at the beginning of June 1624, Galileo, informed Federico Cesi that he had 'six long meetings' with Urban. This is the only reference by Galileo to the meetings. There is no mention of the content of their discussions in any of the correspondence with Cesi or anyone else, nor is there any record about what went on during their meetings. In this paper, I shall try to test the viability of another hypothesis and examine how consistent such a hypothesis is with respect to earlier as well as later developments. The hypothesis is that Urban asked Galileo to write a book about astronomy in which an Aristotelian philosopher would be in conversation with a mathematically trained natural philosopher, and as the discussions concerning astronomy and physics unfolded, the Aristotelian would start to embrace the ideas that the mathematician had initially articulated. Urban's suggestion was the result of his worries about the growing antagonisms among the Jesuits, the philosophers, the theologians, the astronomers and the natural philosophers and he aimed at reversing what was so dramatically provoked by Il Saggiatore.

This essay treats the idea of useful knowledge as a historical concept, attempting to apprehend its evolutionary process from a long-term perspective. Focusing on two leaders, early modern Britain and the post-World War II United States, the essay explores some undercurrents left unexplored in the existing literature and in particular the changing purpose and motive of scientific research. Firstly, it deals with the emergent idea of useful knowledge in a broad context and tracks down how early modern Britons attempted to promote mechanical arts into sciences, arguing that by the late eighteenth century that idea was bifurcated into abstract and practical science. Secondly, the essay deals with how the post-World War II US developed the bifurcated idea into basic and applied research, focusing on university scientists, who endeavoured to adapt themselves with the rise of applied research and of academic entrepreneurship during the first four post-war decades; they were especially concerned about the motive of personal profit and their social standing as well. The essay concludes that the conventional orders of knowledge have been inverted in the contemporary US, a development closely interwoven with capitalism, thus dissenting from the prevailing interpretation that underlines continuities rather than changes.

In the 1820s, Stockholm Observatory undertook a significant upgrade of its instruments. The new acquisitions included a meridian circle, crafted by Traugott Ertel in Munich, which - after extensive delays - was finally installed at the observatory in 1834. Despite its advanced capabilities, the instrument saw limited use during its first forty years, as observatory directors were largely occupied with geodetic projects for the Crown. The meridian circle only reached its full scientific potential when Hugo Gyldén became the Academy Astronomer in 1871, marking the end of the Observatory's geodetic era. In addition to observations for a major zone project, from 1879 the instrument became the engine of the Swedish standard time system. Throughout the nineteenth century it also had an important role as the zero meridian for the military's geodetic pursuits. The instrument remained in use until the Observatory relocated to Saltsjöbaden in 1931. This paper explores the various roles played by the Ertel meridian circle during its century-long history, with a focus on the strategies employed by astronomers to preserve the ageing instrument's relevance.