Annals of Science最新文献

Over the past decades scholars have traced the intersections between science and spiritualism during the second half of the nineteenth century in a variety of locales around the world. This essay examines such intersections in one setting that has largely eluded their attention, Imperial Russia. It investigates the pivotal role played by Alexander N. Aksakov (1832-1903) in developing a scientific approach to 'mediumistic phenomena'. It follows Aksakov's personal journey from Swedenborgian mysticism to 'scientific spiritualism' by tracing his extensive network of contacts with like-minded individuals around the world. It details Aksakov's labours in forging close links between spiritualism and science from 1865 to 1875 and in fostering lively discussions - in Russia, Britain, France, and Germany - on the intersections of these two elements of contemporary cultures. By analysing his translating and publishing activities in multiple languages, up to the founding in 1874 of Psychische Studien, the first journal dedicated to scientific investigations of spiritualist phenomena, it explores Aksakov's role in both 'domesticating' spiritualism in his homeland and 'internationalizing' Russian contributions to its development on the world stage. It argues that the particularities of social and cultural landscape in post-Crimean Russia both facilitated and hampered Aksakov's efforts to educate the Russian public and Russian scientists about 'scientific spiritualism', shaping their forms, locales, and outcomes.

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.

Meteorology is not one of the most discussed topics in Paracelsus studies, although it is closely linked to both Paracelsus' medicine and cosmology. Furthermore, it appears to be at the very core of Paracelsus' famous matter theory of three chymical principles, mercury, sulphur and salt, known as the tria prima. By discussing prominent examples of Paracelsus' explanations on how the tria prima operate within the stars, this article shows how the Swiss physician conceived meteorology within his own body of knowledge, obviously constructed in opposition to the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition, how he based it on a peculiar interpretation of the Biblical creation story, and made it the proper laboratory of his chymical matter theory, applying it first systematically to the field of natural philosophy, especially to celestial phenomena, even before using it for his medical theory in his later writings.

The study evaluates Paracelsus's and Paracelsian-Weigelian microcosmogonies, i.e. theories concerning the nature and creation of human beings, especially their biblical underpinnings, and particularly in the light of Luther's and Lutheran anthropological and biblical-exegetical stances. The Lutheran approach to the origin and components of human beings-as seen in Luther's early Magnificat Commentary and the Genesis Commentary of his late career-relied on such magisterial principles as adherence to sola scriptura, literal biblical exegesis, and the hermeneutical standard to 'let scripture interpret scripture,' whereas the Paracelsians, Weigelians, and Pseudo-Weigelians-in such works as Paracelus's Astronomia Magna (1537/38) and the anonymous Astrologia Theologizata (1617)-employed such extra-biblical concepts as 'sidereal bodies,' the 'light of nature,' and a microcosm-macrocosm theory based on an alchemical interpretation of the limus terrae of Genesis 2:7. Seventeenth-century Orthodox Lutherans, including Nikolaus Hunnius and Ehregott Daniel Colberg, castigated the 'heretical' in Paracelsus and the Astrologia Theologizata. The study also addresses the authorship of several texts entitled Astrologia Theologizata and speculates on reasons for the tracts' deviations from Paracelsus's views. The case study of Paracelsian-Weigelian microcosmogonies underscores the centuries-long staying power of some of Paracelsus's core theological concepts, which were both seconded by votaries and vituperatively criticized by opponents.

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.

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.

We are all used to drawing straight lines to represent time, and above them, we plot historical events or physical or economic data. What to us is a self-evident convention, is however of an astonishingly recent date: it emerged only in the second half of the eighteenth century. To us, this late date seems paradoxical and cries out for an explanation. How else did earlier periods measure change, if not as a function of time? it will be argued that since Antiquity, time was taken to measure change, and change to occur in space. 'Our' idea of representing time as an independent dimension would have seemed aberrant. But then, a second issue arises. Did not medieval natural philosophers employ timelines, Oresme's diagram of the mean speed theorem being the most famous case? However, as will be shown, our interpretation of his diagram is probably wrong. This insight, in turn, takes care of a third paradox, namely Galileo's initial inability to represent the law of free fall correctly. This article will document that the timeline first emerged in the late sixteenth century in works on chronology, made its first appearance in physics in Galileo's diagrams, and had its general breakthrough in the eighteenth century.

On November 14th, 1770, the young chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) read his 'Sur la nature de l'eau' to the Académie des Sciences. Eventually published in the Académie's journal in 1773, the two-part memoire challenged a widely held view of earlier experimenters: the transmutability of matter. Specifically, experimenters such as Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont (1580-1644), Robert Boyle (1627-1691), and Ole Borsch (1626-1690) had noted that when distilled water was heated in a glass vessel, a small amount of earthy residue remained, seemingly demonstrating the transmutation of water into earth. Antoine-Laurent designed an experiment to determine whether it was really to the 'destruction of a portion of the water that this residual earth owed its origin, or if it was to that of the glass.' In partial agreement with Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (1720-1800), a fellow academician, Antoine-Laurent aimed to disprove the antiquated belief - the transmutation of one element into another - by using a glass vessel from the alchemist's cabinet: the pelican.

The history of science is increasingly directing its attention to the diachronic examination of women's involvement within spaces dedicated to scientific inquiry. While this field of study boasts rich and meticulous historiography, delving into the sixteenth century leaves the impression of encountering either a noticeable absence of women in the realm of natural history or an underexplored period in this regard. Undoubtedly, within the Italian context of the time, the cultural milieu shaped by the Counter-Reformation further heightened the social challenges faced by women.Notwithstanding these challenges, a noteworthy female figure emerges in the latter half of the sixteenth century - Francesca Fontana, the second wife of the natural history scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605). From an overall view of the sources, Fontana seems to assume a pivotal role in the realization of collections and works attributed to the eminent naturalist. This study aims to delineate the role played by Fontana within Aldrovandi's 'officina naturale.' By examining the available documents in a chronological order, my aim is to provide insights into the evolution of her education and her practical and technical skills, harnessed in the pursuit of her husband's enterprises and scholarly contributions.