bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Roman Lead Working in Britain
Authors: Tylecote R. F.
Published: January 2009

Synopsis

The exploitation of the lead resources of this country by the Romans commenced very soon after their arrival and shows every sign of being a well organized trade. Little evidence of deep mining has survived and it is probable that most of the ore was obtained by means of shallow workings, mainly in Somerset, Salop, Flintshire and Derbyshire. Although the silver content does not seem ever to have been as high as that of some well-known mines in the Mediterranean, it is clear that silver has been extracted by the Romans from some of the British lead. The lead was cast in carefully made moulds, producing pigs with inscriptions which indicate their date. These were then used for the pipes, cisterns and pewter tableware which contributed to the high standard of living of the period.
Oldenburg and the art of Scientific Communication
Authors: Hall Marie Boas
Published: January 2009

For fifteen years, from 1662 until his death in 1677, Henry Oldenburg served the Royal Society as second Secretary and was charged with almost the entire burden of its correspondence, domestic and foreign. During this time he acted as a centre for the communication of scientific news, searching out new sources of information, encouraging men everywhere to make their work public, acting as an intermediary between scientists and, through the Philosophical Transactions, providing a medium for the publication of short scientific papers. Oldenburg's contribution to scientific communication was unique in the seventeenth century, not least because he represented the Royal Society (of which he was an original Fellow) and served all its members impartially. It is not too much to say that he invented the professions of scientific administrator and scientific journalist.
Some Factors in the Early Development of the Concepts of Power, Work and Energy
Authors: Cardwell D. S. L.
Published: January 2009

Almost traditionally, it seems, accounts of the development of the concepts of work and energy have tended to describe them within the classical framework of Newtonian mechanics. They are seen as the end products of the celebratedvis-vivadispute in the eighteenth century: the outcome of a debate within the confines of the science of rational mechanics. I would like to suggest that this may be to take too narrow a view of the case. It is to project backwards our present specialist arrangement of scientific knowledge, our present divisions between the sciences, and to assume that past development was strictly guided by these divisions. And this is to make questionable historical and sociological assumptions.
The Metaphysics of Evolution
Authors: Hull David L.
Published: January 2009

Extreme variation in the meaning of the term “species” throughout the history of biology has often frustrated attempts of historians, philosophers and biologists to communicate with one another about the transition in biological thinking from the static species concept to the modern notion of evolving species. The most important change which has underlain all the other fluctuations in the meaning of the word “species” is the change from it denoting such metaphysical entities as essences, Forms or Natures to denoting classes of individual organisms. Several authors have taken notice of the role of metaphysics in the work of particular biologists. An attempt will be made in this paper to present a systematic investigation of the role which metaphysics has played in the work of representative biologists throughout the history of biology, especially as it relates to their species concepts.
The Third Law in Newton's Mechanics
Authors: Home Roderick W.
Published: January 2009

Most modern analysts of Newton's laws of motion, whether they have approached the subject from a historical or from a philosophical viewpoint, have tended to concentrate on the status of the first two laws; the third law has largely been overlooked, or else it has been dismissed as somehow less interesting. My purpose in this paper is to reverse this approach—I intend to investigate some of the historical aspects of the third law, particularly the empirical background to Newton's statement of it, and in so doing, I intend to skirt most of the questions which have been raised concerning the status of the other two laws. In concentrating on the historical aspects of the third law, I shall also by-pass Mach's controversial re-interpretation of its role in mechanics, for while Mach saw the law as the basis for an operational definition of “mass”, it is quite clear that Newton did not so regard it. On the contrary, Newton seems to have regarded all three of his laws as straightforward statements of fact about the world, so that a knowledge of the factual background to the laws is a fundamental pre-requisite to an understanding of Newton's thought.
Aspects of French Theoretical Physics in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Herivel J. W.
Published: January 2009

In France, as in other European countries, especially Britain and Germany, the nineteenth century was a period of great progress and achievement in science. This would still have been true if Claude Bernard and Louis Pasteur had been the only outstanding French scientists of the nineteenth century, whereas there were, of course, many others apart from an impressive number of brilliant French mathematicians. Nevertheless, although it was a great century for French science there was perhaps something rather disappointing about it, and something rather ingrowing about the attitude of French scientists towards scientific developments in other countries. For example, the French took it hard that the creator of the theory of evolution should have been an Englishman, remembering too late Darwin's predecessor Lamarck, and they certainly were very slow in accepting Darwin's theory of evolution.1 Again, the French may have felt that after the important contributions of French scientists such as Coulomb, Poisson, Biot and, above all, Ampère, the theory of electricity and magnetism which is today principally associated with the names of Faraday and Maxwell should have been created by a Frenchman. Once again this new theory was only accepted very slowly and hesitantly, and even unwillingly, in France—one thinks, for example, of the criticisms levelled at the theory by Pierre Duhem in his “The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory”.2 Of course it might be that if one knew how to weigh properly the various achievements of French scientists in different branches of science one would find that, allowing for her rather static population during the nineteenth century, thetotalcontribution of France compared well with those of Britain and Germany. Nevertheless, in one case at least, that of theoretical physics, there seems to have been an unmistakable failure to live up to the promise of the beginning of the century. The purpose of this paper is to advance possible reasons to explain this failure.
The Early Disputes between Lavoisier and Monnet, 1777–1781
Authors: Rappaport Rhoda
Published: January 2009

The list of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's opponents is a long and distinguished one, ranging from Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish to Jean-Paul Marat. Among the less distinguished members of this company is Antoine Monnet, a minor chemist and mineralogist whose fame rests in large part on the very fact that he and Lavoisier became enemies. Unlike his better-known contemporaries, Monnet remains almost wholly neglected, and no attempt has yet been made to sort out the issues in his controversy with Lavoisier; instead, Lavoisier's biographers have been content to accept Lavoisier's own version of at least a part of the affair, with the result that Monnet has emerged as the villain of the piece and Lavoisier as the injured victim. The two men probably first came into close contact in 1776 or 1777, the nature of their relationship has remained obscure for the period 1777–1780, and the situation after 1780 has been summarized by biographers in a manner resembling that of Edouard Grimaux:

“ayant en main tous les documents réunis par Guettard et Lavoisier, il [Monnet] ajouta de nouvelles cartes à celles qui étaient déjà gravées, et publia, en 1780, un altas minéralogique incomplet, qu'il signa avec Guettard, tout en s'attribuant la plus grande part du travail. Il cita, il est vrai, Lavoisier comme l'auteur des seize premières cartes, mais il utilisa sans son aveu et sans le nommer les matériaux préparés pour le reste du travail, et négligea d'indiquer que les coupes placées en marge de chaque carte étaient le résultat des nivellements faits au baromètre par Lavoisier. Celui-ci en fut vivement froissé … Il trouva toujours en Monnet un adversaire obstiné qui, en 1798, attaquait encore les doctrines nouvelles en publiant une soi-disant Démonstration de la fausseté des principes des nouveaux chimistes.”
Who was theBeagle's Naturalist?
Authors: Gruber Jacob W.
Published: January 2009

So great has been the impact of Darwinian evolution upon contemporary thought that even the tiniest aspect of Darwin's own history assumes importance as a datum in the history of those ideas which provide the ideological base of the contemporary world. In all of the accounts of the intellectual journey which led to the formulation of that theory, a great deal of stress is placed upon theBeaglevoyage, that prolonged period of initiation from which the young Darwin returned, the sober—and too often in later accounts, sombre—naturalist, scientifically seasoned by his experiences with a world observed but still unexplained and hardly known. The traditional outlines of the story have been repeated over and over again: the outfitting of theBeaglefor its surveying responsibilities; Fitzroy's proposal that “some well-educated and scientific person should be sought for who would willingly share such accommodations as I had to offer, in order to profit by the opportunity of visiting distant countries yet little known”; Henslow's recommendation of his friend and student Darwin; the parental refusal; and, finally, the permission granted. In the retelling, in the almost mystical affect attached to theBeaglevoyage and to Darwin's participation, the association of the inexperienced youth with theBeaglehas become a fixed point in intellectual history.
Mary Somerville
Authors: Patterson Elizabeth C.
Published: January 2009

“Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science”, read the obituary notice in The Morning Post of Monday, 2 December 1872, “there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science.”1 And in a full-length column the death in Naples on the preceding Friday of Mary Somerville was announced. The Times of the same date, in a notice 2 of equal length and somewhat more scientific detail, spoke of the high regard in which her services to science were held both by men of science and by the nation. She had been for almost half a century the most famous of English scientific ladies and in achieving that role had become the first scientific lady of the world.
Uniform Acceleration, Space, and Time
Authors: Drake Stillman
Published: January 2009

The most reliable source for a reconstruction of Galileo's progress toward a science of motion is the series of undated fragmentary notes on that subject preserved in Codex A of the Galilean manuscripts at Florence. A gathering of such fragments was published by Favaro in the National Edition of Galileo's works, following the Discorsi. The more sophisticated fragments are clearly associated with the composition of that work, and show a definite and consistent understanding of acceleration. Eliminating those, it will be found that the earlier notes fall into recognizable groups. First, there are some that refer to “moment of gravity”, or to the impetus of a body along a line of descent, and are associated with the discussion of inclined planes in De motu. Second, some refer to descent along arcs and chords of circles, associated with Galileo's letter of 29 November 1602 to Guido Ubaldo. These first two groups of notes do not explicitly refer to accelerated motion, and should not be assumed to do so implicity, where such an assumption can be avoided.
Early Opposition to the Phlogiston Theory: Two Anonymous Attacks
Authors: Perrin Carleton
Published: January 2009

For French chemistry the early 1770's were lively years of discovery and controversy. Two neglected areas of research were opened up in 1772 with the publication of theDigressions académiquesby Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and with the first knowledge of later British pneumatic chemistry. Guyton's book established the general fact of weight-gain in metals upon calcination, thereby raising the problem of reconciling this gain with simultaneous loss of phlogiston. The spread of pneumatic chemistry, which proceeded rapidly in 1773, stimulated a renewed interest in the nature of air and its part in chemical composition. It was, of course, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier who perceived a relationship between these two developments—one which he believed would revolutionize the current understanding of chemical processes. In 1772 Lavoisier began the series of investigations which culminated in hisOpuscules physiques et chimiques(1774), in which he demonstrated that weight-gain in both calcination and combustion is correlated with absorption of an equal weight of air.
William H. Bragg's Corpuscular Theory of X-Rays and γ-Rays
Authors: Stuewer Roger H.
Published: January 2009

The modern corpuscular theory of radiation was born in 1905 when Einstein advanced his light quantum hypothesis; and the steps by which Einstein's hypothesis, after years of profound scepticism, was finally and fully vindicated by Arthur Compton's 1922 scattering experiments constitutes one of the most stimulating chapters in the history of recent physics. To begin to appreciate the complexity of this chapter, however, it is only necessary to emphasize an elementary but very significant point, namely, that while Einstein based his arguments for quanta largely on the behaviour of high-frequency black body radiation or ultra-violet light, Compton experimented with X-rays. A modern physicist accustomed to picturing ultra-violet light and X-radiation as simply two adjacent regions in the electromagnetic spectrum might regard this distinction as hair-splitting. But who in 1905 was sure that X-rays and γ-rays are far more closely related to ultra-violet light than to α-particles, for example ? This only became evident after years of painstaking research, so that moving without elaboration from Einstein's hypothesis to Compton's experiments automatically eliminates from consideration an important segment of history—a segment in which a major role was played by William Henry Bragg.
Robert Hooke's Methodology of Science as exemplified in his ‘Discourse of Earthquakes’
Authors: Oldroyd D. R.
Published: January 2009

A number of authors have drawn attention to the contributions to geology of Robert Hooke, and it has been pointed out that in several ways his ideas were more advanced than those of Steno, who is sometimes taken to be the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. Moreover, it has been argued that in a number of instances Hooke should receive the credit for ideas which are usually believed to have originated in the work of James Hutton. This recognition of the significance of Hooke's work is regarded by the present writer as being well founded. But, by contrast, the relationship between Hooke's geological ideas and his views on the proper methods for conducting scientific enquiries has been largely overlooked, and his views on the methodology of science, as revealed in his Posthumous works, have received little discussion. Moreover, on one of the few occasions on which they were discussed, by William Whewell, they were belittled. Whewell regarded Hooke's methodological contribution as merely ‘an attempt to adapt the Novum organon to the age which succeeded its publication’, 5 and he implied that the ‘same imperfections’ were to be found in the writings of both Hooke and Bacon. The influence of Bacon is, to be sure, most obvious in Hooke's general philosophy. Nevertheless, it will be argued that Hooke had a much clearer idea than did Bacon of the importance of so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ methods in science, and that in many ways his methodological views represent a significant advance on those of Bacon.
Benjamin Martin and the Development of the Orrery
Authors: Millburn John R.
Published: January 2009

The catalogues of mid-eighteenth-century mathematical instrument makers included not only instruments in the sense ‘tools of science’ but also devices intended primarily for educational use. Among the latter would be found mechanical models of the solar system, in varying degrees of complexity and under various names; for convenience such models may be, and often were, loosely called orreries.
Property, Patronage, and the Politics of Science: The Founding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Authors: Shapin Steven
Published: January 2009

The institutionalization of natural knowledge in the form of a scientific society may be interpreted in several ways. If we wish to view science as something apart, unchanging in its intellectual nature, we may regard the scientific enterprise as presenting to the sustaining social system a number of absolute and necessary organizational demands: for example, scientific activity requires acceptance as an important social activity valued for its own sake, that is, it requires autonomy; it is separate from other forms of enquiry and requires distinct institutional modes; it is public knowledge and requires a public, universalistic forum; it is productive of constant change and requires of the sustaining social system a flexibility in adapting to change. Support for such an interpretation may be found in the rise of modern science in seventeenth-century England, France, and Italy and in the accompanying rise of specifically scientific societies. Thus, the founding of the Royal Society of London may be interpreted as the organizational embodiment of immanent demands arising from scientific activity—the cashing of a blank cheque payable to science written on society's current account.
Galileo and the Problem of Free Fall
Authors: Naylor R. H.
Published: January 2009

There can be little doubt that 1973 will remain notable as a year in which knowledge of Galileo's mechanics increased dramatically. Professor Stillman Drake's publication, in May, of some of Galileo's early work on the law of free fall was followed in the autumn by the publication of a number of important manuscripts clearly indicating Galileo's use of precise measurement. From a discussion of these manuscripts and Thomas Settle's performance of Galileo's inclined plane experiment, Drake implies that a clear view of Galileo's use of experiment is now emerging. Added emphasis was given to Drake's thesis that doubts concerning Galileo's use of experiment were largely unfounded, by James MacLachlan's realization of a Galilean experiment which was previously described as ‘imaginary’ by Koyré. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that, while it cannot be doubted that Galileo used experiment and precise measurement, his attitude to observation may well have been far more complex than Drake has supposed. My point of departure is James MacLachlan's remark that continuing disagreement over Galileo's use of experiment should lead to further examination of Galileo's experimental claims. I shall indicate that more than one view of Galileo's use of experiment may prove capable of explaining our present knowledge—a corollary of this being that alternative explanations may be proposed for the manuscripts recently published by Drake.
The Regenerator Principle in the Stirling and Ericsson Hot Air Engines
Authors: Daub Edward E.
Published: January 2009

During the first half of the nineteenth century the Stirling brothers and John Ericsson made significant attempts to design hot air engines which could provide an economical alternative to high-pressure steam. They believed that it would be possible to gain fuel efficiencies superior to those obtained with steam by employing a heat exchanger within the air engine cycle, erroneously supposing that such a heat exchanger could eliminate the large loss of heat incurred in the condenser of the steam engine. The Stirling brothers called their heat exchanger an economizer because it prevented the waste of heat, but Ericsson coined the term regenerator because he imagined that the power of the heat (caloric) could actually be regenerated, i.e. re-used in the engine to generate mechanical work. Ericsson's term became commonly accepted, so that Stirling's economizer is now also referred to as a generator. These attempts to attain high horsepower outputs with hot air engines were abandoned after the dramatic failure of Ericsson's notorious paddle steamer in the early 1850s. Further ventures were aimed at the more limited goal of low horsepowers and generally ignored the regenerator principle.
‘A Less Agreeable Matter’: The Disagreeable Case of Newton and Achromatic Refraction
Authors: Bechler Zev
Published: January 2009

There is no evidence to suggest that even as late as January 1672, when Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, anyone (except those unknown few who had in the previous years attended his Lucasian lectures at Cambridge) had any inkling of his new theory of colours. His name exploded on the scientific scene as the inventor and constructor of a new kind of telescope—what later became known as the reflector (which was somewhat misleading compared with its name during the seventeenth century: the catadioptrical telescope). Had the erudition of the London virtuosi been a little broader, they would have known that in fact he was not the inventor of the telescope, even though the precise form he gave it was his. Not only was the idea a hundred years old, during which period it was repeatedly suggested by various writers, but also Newton himself took the idea straight from the most recent of these suggestions, namely that included in James Gregory's Optica promota of 1663. The situation becomes even more ironic when we realize that the new instrument was admired for wrong reasons and on merits that were far from Newton's intentions. Nevertheless, admired it was, and there was a good reason for this: Newton's instrument was in fact the first reflector actually to be constructed and, moreover, for a few weeks (before its mirror became tarnished) it performed quite well. Several astonomers became interested because of the high magnifying power relative to its dimensions (about 7 inches long, with a magnification of 38).
Early Experimental Graphs
Authors: Tilling Laura
Published: January 2009

The graphical presentation of experimental data in the physical sciences has several advantages which today are too familiar to require very detailed enumeration. Its greatest strength lies in the clarity and succinctness with which it displays the information contained in tabulated results: for the experimenter a graph provides a rough and immediate check on the accuracy and suitability of the methods he is using, and for the reader of a scientific report it may convey in a few seconds information that could only be gleaned from a table of measurements by hours of close study. There are occasions whereonlythe analysis of experimental graphs will provide the information we require, but usually the actual analysis of results is carried out nowadays by computational methods. The use of graphs is therefore not so much a necessary part of scientific procedure as an extremely useful one, and one that is often taken very much for granted.
Robert Chambers and the Nebular Hypothesis
Authors: Ogilvie Marilyn Bailey
Published: January 2009

The role of Robert Chambers's anonymous Vestiges of the natural history of creation in popularizing evolutionary ideas establishes it as a significant work in the history of science even though its intrinsic scientific value is not great. Its fascinating subject, a universally applicable developmental hypothesis, piqued the curiosity of the nineteenth-century reading public. The clientele to whom the book especially appealed was not too concerned with errors in fact and unsupported generalizations, but instead was attracted by the smoothness of its literary style and the glibness of its pronouncements. These same characteristics caused it to be an anathema to both scientists and clergymen, who joined together to voice their disapproval; they agreed that the ideas in it were potentially harmful to those untrained in scientific procedures and unaware of the book's inherent religious heresies.
The Nature of the Early Royal Society: Part I
Authors: Hoppen K. Theodore
Published: January 2009

The foundation of the Royal Society marks an important step in the institutionalization of seventeenth-century British natural philosophy. The society's existence and activities provided a focus for the exchange of opinions, while its meetings and publications became forums for scientific debate. Some writers, however, have claimed much more than this for the society and have seen its establishment as marking a real watershed between, on the one hand, intellectually ‘conservative elements’ and, on the other, a set of ‘definite philosophical principles … inspiring … progressive minds’. Others have gone still further and argued not only that the society's activities ‘enormously’ accelerated ‘the development of natural sciences’, but that these activities were the result of the ‘working out of a conscious, deliberately-conceived ideal’. But views which see a single, logically consistent conception of the nature of the scientific enterprise informing the work and outlook of the Royal Society and its members involve a serious oversimplification of the complexity of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century. Despite some important work published in recent years, we are still far from achieving a satisfactory understanding of the complicated web of traditions, sources, and intellectual systems that provided both an inspirational dynamic for the work of natural philosophers such as those in the Royal Society and patterns of expression through which their preoccupations could be articulated. Thus the many studies which have been devoted to establishing connexions between the scientific movement and patterns of religious or political belief have been flawed from the start by unreal assumptions about the degree of intellectual coherence presented by the natural philosophy of the time. And until we can present a more three-dimensional picture of what the 'scientific movement’ was in fact all about, and until wider agreement has been reached as to satisfactory definitions of various types of socio-theological attitude and behaviour, such studies are no more than attempts to tie together two unknowns by means of a rope of sand.
Charles Lyell, Radical Actualism, and Theory
Authors: Cannon W. Faye
Published: January 2009

This is a theoretical paper. A little theory goes a long way in history, for me; but it is good to collect as much as is feasible in one paper, so that gaps and inconsistencies can be noticed. I use ‘theory’ in the definite sense of a set of hypothetical statements such that deductions can be made and compared with data, facts, or generalizations obtained in some other way than as derivation from theory. Deductions need not always be rigorous, and there may be two or more ‘solutions’ obtainable, of which the scientist may choose one and discard the rest (for example, he may discard all ‘imaginary’ solutions). I am ignoring the differences between propositions, demonstrations, problems, and the like. Actually there must always be several statements, including rules of procedure, in the set; but often many are assumed and only the new or controversial one is stated as ‘the’ hypothesis of Mr X.
The Non-Progress of Non-Progression: Two Responses to Lyell's Doctrine
Authors: Bartholomew Michael
Published: January 2009

‘Non-Progression’, the interpretation of life-history launched by Lyell in 1830 and defended by him for over twenty years, can be summarized as follows. Palaeontologists, Lyell contended, should assume that at every period of the earth's recoverable past, each class of plants and animals has been represented somewhere on earth. Species have been created solely as responses to perpetually shifting environmental conditions, and not as temporally conditioned stages in the unique unrolling of a grand plan. If certain environments are especially suited to reptiles, then the Creator tailors collections of beautifully adapted terrestrial, aquatic, and even aerial reptiles for them—as He did, for example, for the environments recorded in the British Jurassic; as He did, much more recently, for the Galapagos Islands; and as He will do again, if conditions somewhere on earth ever force mammals into extinction, leaving ecological niches which can more suitably be filled by reptiles. If, for example, changes in the topography and climate of the Sussex Weald eventually lead to the re-establishment of an environment that particularly suits iguanodons, then iguanodons will assuredly appear there again. The essential point about Lyell's interpretation is that time does nothing to determine a particular flora and fauna. When designing a new animal, the Creator, according to Lyell's view, has to take into account only the creature's or plant's destined environment: He has to consult no timetable, or lineage, governing the production of new forms. In notes for a speech given in 1852 Lyell reduced his interpretation to the epitome, ‘Adaptation to geographical circumst5 not progressive develop the real history of past changes’.
Darwin, Lyell, and the Geological Significance of Coral Reefs
Authors: Stoddart D. R.
Published: January 2009

In the half century following Cook's entry into the Pacific in 1769, few tropical phenomena excited more attention than coral islands and the corals which evidently built them. In the eighteenth century corals occupied a critical position in the Great Chain of Being. Sometimes interpreted as animals, sometimes as plants, they built large topographic structures of limestone, and thus spanned the gap between the organic and inorganic worlds. ‘The strata which they form are at once living and fossil; we can see them in the act of production, and the mountains grow up to the day before us, new parts of our own earth.’ Towards the end of the century, after Peyssonnel had conclusively shown that corals were animals—variously designated as worms, insects, or molluscous worms—this bridging significance was transferred to the coral islands, new areas of land emerging from the ocean and newly colonized by plants and animals, as an analogue of the primeval earth. This creative process served for some to counterbalance the Huttonian vision of universal degradation: ‘Whatever destroying tendencies … exist on the earth, these renovating powers compensate for them’.
The Nature of the Early Royal Society Part II
Authors: Hoppen K. Theodore
Published: January 2009

The original fellow of the Royal Society best known for his concern for the Hermetic tradition is Elias Ashmole, who was associated with the society as early as 1661 and who in 1664 was appointed a member of its committee ‘for collecting all the phenomena of nature hitherto observed, and all experiments made and recorded’, that typically Baconian attempt to clear the decks for ‘scientific’ action. And it was Ashmole's munificence that was instrumental in establishing the first chemical laboratory at any British university, namely that at Oxford set up in the original Ashmolean Building in 1683.
Natural Philosophy and Thermodynamics: William Thomson and ‘The Dynamical Theory of Heat’
Authors: Smith Crosbie
Published: January 2009

William Thomson's image as a professional mathematical physicist who adheres, particularly in his work in classical thermodynamics, to a strict experimental basis for his science, avoids speculative hypotheses, and becomes renowned for his omission of philosophical declarations has been reinforced in varying degrees by those historians who have attempted, as either admirers or critics of Thomson, to describe and assess his life. J. G. Crowther, for example, sees him as a thinker of great intellectual strength, but deficient in intellectual taste; a scientist aware only of his immediate work and without depth of vision. Not well read in the literature of the subjects of his research, Thomson is seen, moreover, as one whose achievements owe little to the work of others, and whose great personality ‘is an expression in the realm of ideas of the power and blindness of capitalism’, especially through ‘his view of the world in terms of engineering conceptions’. On the other hand, even Sir Joseph Larmor, for whom Thomson was nothing less than a hero, is to be found ascribing to him the epithet of pragmatist.
From Abacus to Algorism: Theory and Practice in Medieval Arithmetic
Authors: Evans Gillian R.
Published: January 2009

Even at the level of the most elementary arithmetical operations, procedures and practices change. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries an unusually well documented development took place: at the beginning of the period the authors of elementary manuals of computation taught the use of the abacus, whereas at the end they described the method of calculation which came to be known as the algorism. Their ideas about number, however, were still largely drawn from Boethius's rendering of Nicomachus of Gerasa'sIntroduction to arithmeticin theArithmeticaand there had been little progress in attempting to reconcile Boethius's teaching on the theory of number with the rather different assumptions that underlie the methods of practical calculation. Boethius and Nicomachus, for example, emphasize that one is not a number but the source of number, and they are aware of the special problems posed by ‘two’. Nicomachus questions whether ‘two’ is anything more than an embodiment of the principle of ‘otherness’; for him, it is open to dispute whether it can be rated a number in its own right. For the teacher of the skills of calculation, ‘one’ and ‘two’ are merely digits like any other. By the fourteenth century, collections of textbook material on elementary arithmetic provided the student with instruction in both theory and practice. The abacus manuals are missing from many such collections because by then the abacus has apparently been relegated to the status of a simple practical aid, but the other elements in medieval arithmetical studies are variously covered.
Address to the Opening Session of the XV International Congress of the History of Science, Edinburgh, 11 August 1977
Authors: Needham Joseph
Published: January 2009

My assignment today, as I understand it, is to say something about the Second International Congress of the History of Science, the only previous one held in the United Kingdom; to mention some of the great historians of science which these islands have produced; and to direct our thoughts for a few moments to the historiography of science, technology and medicine, namely the guiding ideas in the light of which one should attempt to write it. So much has already been said in thanks to the city and the university in which we are now assembled that I could hardly add to it, except to express my personal sense of elation at coming on this occasion to the ‘Athens of the North’ where so many distinguished men have lived in the past, from mediaeval times onwards.
Newton on Place, Time, and God: An Unpublished Source
Authors: McGuire J. E.
Published: January 2009

Manuscript Add. 3965, section 13, folios 541r–542r and 545r–546r is in the Portsmouth Collection of manuscripts and housed in the University Library, Cambridge. These drafts contain a careful account, in Newton's hand, of his views on place, time, and God. They are part of a large number of drafts relating to the three official editions of the Principia published in Newton's lifetime.
Arthur Holmes and Continental Drift
Authors: Frankel Henry
Published: January 2009

Although there are numerous and significant differences between the theories of scientific growth and change proposed by Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan, they all hold that specific scientific theories should be viewed as constitutive of more comprehensive theories. Kuhn calls those more general theories ‘paradigms’, Lakatos labels them ‘research programmes’ and Laudan refers to them as ‘research traditions’. They all argue that scientists are much more willing to give up the specific theory within a given research programme rather than the programme itself, and that individual theories should be viewed as attempts to increase the overall explanatory power of the more general theories, since the ultimate concern of the scientist is with the success of the general rather than the specific theory. When a basic theory or research programme is confronted with severe criticism, proponents attempt to protect the hard core or central elements of their programme through the invention of auxiliary hypotheses. Good auxiliary hypotheses adequately answer the objections for which they are designed, and suggest new avenues of research. In 1928, Arthur Holmes provided proponents of continental drift theory with an auxiliary hypothesis which afforded them a badly needed account of the forces responsible for continental drift. Although Holmes' proposal was not ultimately correct, it was the first plausible alternative offered by an exponent of the continental drift research programme.
Electricity, Knowledge, and the Nature of Progress in Priestley's Thought
Authors: McEvoy John G.
Published: January 2009

The appearance of Priestley's electrical work as a brief and irrelevant prelude to his more substantial chemical enquiries may explain why it has been strangely overlooked by historians of science. It was only fairly recently that Sir Philip Hartog sought to rectify this situation with the affirmation that ‘Priestley's electrical work offers the key to Priestley's scientific mind’. Attacking traditional chemical historiography for tracing Priestley's opposition to Lavoisier's theory to a deficiency in his scientific sensibilities, Hartog insisted that Priestley's natural philosophy can properly be understood only in relation to his ‘profound convictions on scientific method’ as fully expressed in the History of electricity. Only thus would Priestley's scientific thought be related correctly to his ‘work as a whole’.
Buffon, German Biology, and the Historical Interpretation of Biological Species
Authors: Sloan Phillip R.
Published: January 2009

The entry of time and history into biological systems of classification is perhaps the single most significant development in the history of biological systematics in the modern era. Darwin's claiming that descent is ‘… the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system’, rather than seeing the answer in the multitude of previous attempts to resolve the problem in terms of morphological affinities, analogies, and complex relations of resemblance, marked the turning point in a long search into the meaning of biological taxonomy, and allowed the development of Darwin's insights by Haeckel, Plate and others into modern phylogenetic systematics.
The Suicidal Success of Radiochemistry
Authors: Badash Lawrence
Published: January 2009

In his presidential address to the chemistry section of the British Association in 1907, Arthur Smithells pointed to work in radioactivity with wonder, calling it the ‘chemistry of phantoms’. Indeed, the transitory nature of the radioelements, coupled with the exceedingly small quantities commonly handled, made many a traditional chemist hesitant to accept these unusual substances as real elements worthy of insertion into the periodic table. Besides, there were too many of them: by 1913 over thirty radioelements were known, but there were no more than twelve boxes in the periodic table in which to house them. Moreover, there was much confusion about radioelements that had different physical properties such as half-life and range of emitted alpha particle, but which could not be separated chemically. Small wonder then that Alexander Russell, the only person who worked with both Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy, recalled the prevalent attitude of chemists as discouraging of interpretative attempts: theirs was, so they claimed, ‘an experimental science. No good ever came from pontificating on the ways of Nature from the comfort of an armchair. The laboratory bench, not the sofa, … was where the truth would be found’.
Frederick Soddy and the Practical Significance of Radioactive Matter
Authors: Freedman Michael I.
Published: January 2009

It is for his scientific achievements that we best remember Frederick Soddy—first as the young chemist working with Ernest Rutherford and with William Ramsay in elaborating the disintegration theory of radioactive change, and then as the mature chemist, heading a research programme of his own at the University of Glasgow, a programme which culminated in his formulation of the concept of isotopes in the years before the First World War. Yet there was another side to Soddy's early scientific career: beyond his profound concern with the purely theoretical and experimental aspects of radioactivity research, there was a serious interest in what might be called the practical significance of his science. By practical, I mean those aspects capable of being put to use for the immediate or potential future benefit of man. In this paper I wish to elucidate the nature of this concern during Soddy's career, focusing particularly upon his years at the University of Glasgow, 1904–1914.
The Central Role of Energy in Soddy's Holistic and Critical Approach to Nuclear Science, Economics, and Social Responsibility
Authors: Trenn Thaddeus J.
Published: January 2009

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956), one of the foremost radiochemists of his day, was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Soddy was also among the first of the scientific leaders of his age, along with Blackett (1897–1974), Bernal (1901–71), and others, to become interested in the social implications of their work. In 1950 his colleague Paneth wrote that currently ‘there is widespread discussion on the responsibility towards the community of men of science and particularly experts in radioactivity; but a perusal of Prof. Soddy's non-chemical writings of no less than thirty years ago [viz., during and after the first world war] shows how strongly he felt the duty to fight for a better order of things'. Soddy was a complex iconoclast often derided for dealing with what seemed to be disparate interests. What, it could be asked, could monetary reform possibly have to do with radiochemistry? But to make sense of Soddy, the question must rather be formulated in the other direction: What fundamental concern did Soddy have that enabled him to embrace holistically a variety of seemingly diverse activities? The answer can be given in a word: energy. And the way in which Soddy dealt with this issue involved him directly with social economics as well as with the social responsibility of scientists.
Soddy at Oxford
Authors: Cruickshank A. D.
Published: January 2009

Frederick Soddy's productive pure research ended with the outbreak of World War I. Before that time Soddy was internationally acknowledged as a great scientist. He had, with Rutherford, produced the atomic disintegration theory and, in association with Ramsay, had proved it experimentally. He had been one of the first men to elucidate the nature of isotopes, and it was he who gave them their name. After the war he was dismissed as a man who had forsaken his science to propound wild theories of monetary reform.
Faraday, Thomson, and the Concept of the Magnetic Field
Authors: Gooding David
Published: January 2009

In June 1849 William Thomson (Later Lord Kelvin) wrote to Michael Faraday suggesting that the concept of a uniform magnetic field could be used to predict the motions of small magnetic and diamagnetic bodies. In his letter Thomson showed how Faraday's lines of magnetic force could represent the effect of the ‘conducting power’ for magnetic force of matter in the region of magnets. This was Thomson's extension to magnetism of an analogy between the mathematical descriptions of the distribution of static electricity and of the diffusion of heat through uniform bodies. In 1850 Faraday published his first comprehensive theory of the magnetic properties of matter. He explained the behaviour of matter in the field by four assumptions: that matter has a specific disturbing effect on the normal distribution of lines of magnetic force; that this effect depends on its ability to conduct or transmit the magnetic action; and that material bodies tend to move so as to cause the least possible disturbance of the lines from their normal distribution. Faraday also assumed that diamagnetics transmit magnetic action less well than empty space, while paramagnetics transmit it more readily than space. This implied that space must have a specific conductivity between that of paramagnetic and diamagnetic materials. In order to preserve a distinction between matter and space Faraday defined ‘matter’ as either the source of action or as a conductor which is able to influence the lines of action; space was the absence of such powers. While space could conduct, it differed from matter in that it could neither originale lines of force nor influence their course and distribution.
Coadaptation and the Inadequacy of Natural Selection
Authors: Ridley Mark
Published: January 2009

When Charles Darwin published his theory in 1859 the biological community gave very different receptions to the idea of evolution and to the theory of natural selection. Evolution was accepted as widely and rapidly as natural selection was rejected. Most biologists were ready to accept that evolution had occurred, but not that natural selection was its cause. They preferred other explanations of evolution, such as theories of big directed variation, or admitted that they did not know its cause. Darwin himself never maintained that natural selection was the sole cause of evolution. He thought of it as one among several causes, and did not specify how much evolution had occurred by the natural selection of fortuitous variations, and how much by other factors such as the inherited effects of use and disuse. However, Darwin did maintain that natural selection was in principle capable of explaining all the observed properties of organisms. He did not think that there were some characteristics that were particularly likely to have evolved by natural selection, and other kinds that were not. Against this, many of this critics thought that there were characteristics that natural selection was particularly powerless to explain. Thus it could not account for characteristics that were detrimental, or those that seemed useless (such as species differences), or those that were of too little importance for natural selection to have favoured them. There were also characteristics of such complexity that it was unimaginable that natural selection could have built them up in tiny stages from fortuitous, undirected variants. The present essay will be concerned with just one, the last mentioned, of these kinds of characteristics.