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Ann Sci 2021 May 9:1-30. Epub 2021 May 9.

DAFIST, University of Genova, Genova, Italy.

In 1588 Tycho Brahe proposed a new cosmological system keeping a motionless Earth at the centre of the world. In the first half of the following century the reception of Tycho's model within the Society of Jesus was characterized by a strong resistance at the beginning, followed by a long and winding path, and then a good fortune, whereas heliocentric models were increasingly investigated in European observatories. In 1651 a Jesuit astronomer, Giovan Battista Riccioli, published the , an encyclopaedic synthesis of astronomical knowledge where the Earth's motions or rest were extensively discussed in order to prove the Earth's immobility. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Apr 29:1-53. Epub 2021 Apr 29.

Department of History, Baruch College of CUNY, New York, NY, USA.

The French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) chose to be actively engaged in the fine arts throughout his life-yet scholarship has ignored or dismissed these pursuits. This empirical study documents his unknown, but deep involvement with art and artists from age thirteen until his death. This was no casual pastime. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Apr 23:1-25. Epub 2021 Apr 23.

Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI, USA.

Between 1920 and 1922, the University of Bristol biochemist, Maximilian Nierenstein, published four papers in a series exploring the structure of catechin in the The Society then abruptly refused to accept any more of his papers on catechin, or any other subject. It provided him with no reasons for the embargo until 1925. It then transpired that Nierenstein was boycotted because it was deemed that he had not responded adequately to criticisms of his work made by his rival in catechin research, the German natural products chemist, Karl Freudenberg. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Apr 11:1-29. Epub 2021 Apr 11.

All Souls College, Oxford, UK.

Few texts in the history of science and philosophy have achieved the level of interpretative indeterminacy as a short manuscript tract by Isaac Newton, known as 'De gravitatione'. On the basis of some new evidence, this article argues that it is an introductory fragment of some lectures on hydrostatics delivered in the of spring 1671. Taking seriously the possibility of a pedagogical purpose, it is then argued that the famous digression on space, far from articulating a sophisticated metaphysics that may have owed something to Henry More, was a simple piece of mixed-mathematical prolegomena designed to facilitate the subsequent geometrical argumentation. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Mar 1:1-35. Epub 2021 Mar 1.

SYRTE, Observatoire de Paris-Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université Paris, France.

We are interested in the case of Friedrich Christoph Mayer, who in the 1720s, while at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (in Latin Academiae scientiarum imperialis Petropolitanae), developed a system of the aurora borealis, as well as a mathematical method for calculating the height of the aurora from the geometrical characteristics of the auroral arc. Mayer, encountering a major contradiction in his system which placed the aurora at the height of the clouds, whereas his mathematical method led to an altitude a hundred times higher, never applied his method to concrete cases to deduce the height of the aurora, and quickly lost interest in their detailed description, a task that was nevertheless assigned to him at the St. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Dec 14:1-24. Epub 2020 Dec 14.

National Research Council for Science and Technology (Argentina).

This paper is intended as a contribution to the study of science and religion in late modern Catholic societies. I explore the treatment of natural philosophy vis-à-vis religious (Roman Catholic) authority, the teaching of Biblical geology, and the use of natural theology in texts from Río de la Plata in the transition from late colonial to early independent times (1770-1815). After reviewing the assimilation of modern science into scholastic teaching and the articulation of reason and religious authority, the article considers the handling of the early history of the Earth in the theses of scholastic teachers and in the geological memoirs of the naturalist priest from Montevideo Dámaso Larrañaga. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Jan 10;78(1):92-116. Epub 2020 Dec 10.

Department of Pediatrics, Hunterdon Medical Center, Flemington, NJ, USA.

In 1956 the biomedical world was surprised to hear a report that human cells each contained forty six chromosomes, rather than the forty eight count that had been documented since the 1920s. Application of available techniques to culture human cells , halt their division at metaphase, and disperse chromosomes in an optical plane permitted perception of visual images not seen before. Researchers continued to obtain the preconceived forty eight counts until reeducation with these novel epistemic 'chromosomes' convinced them that they could confidently report forty six chromosomes per cell. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Jan 30;78(1):64-91. Epub 2020 Oct 30.

Department of the History of Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People's Republic of China.

This article critically examines the translations of two terms - and - in modern China. The last decades of the Qing dynasty (1860s-1910s) witnessed a transition in the terminological usage of the Chinese equivalents of mineral and mineralogy from (metals and rocks) and (a study of metals and rocks) to and . A scrutiny of this transition raises questions regarding not only the exchanges in scientific knowledge between China, the West, and Japan since the nineteenth century, but the changes in the understanding of natural things in China. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Oct 8;77(4):495-523. Epub 2020 Oct 8.

Institute for Advanced Studies of the Humanities, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus's infamous was published. The publication of the is best remembered for Malthus's principle - that population multiplies geometrically as opposed to subsistence increasing arithmetically. What is not well known, however, is that Malthus's also offered a sophisticated - and heterodox - theory of mind. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Oct 27;77(4):399-444. Epub 2020 Sep 27.

Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA.

Accounts of how the concept of temperature has evolved typically cast the story as ancillary to the history of the thermometer or the history of the concept of heat. But then, because the history of temperature is not treated as a subject in its own right, modern associations inadvertently get read back into the historical record. This essay attempts to lay down an authoritative record not of what people in the past thought about what we call 'temperature' but of what they thought about what they called 'temperature' (or one of its cognates), from medieval times to today. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Oct 20;77(4):469-494. Epub 2020 Sep 20.

Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

In 1758 in London, Swedish natural philosopher and mystic theologian Emanuel Swedenborg published (), a treatise on the plurality of worlds and life on other planets. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these topics formed a heterogenous literary genre which encompassed theology, astronomy, philosophy and satire. In , Swedenborg made detailed claims of communication with extraterrestrial spirits in the afterlife, through which he sought to spread his theology to new audiences. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Jan 12;78(1):41-63. Epub 2020 Sep 12.

Department of Philosophy, History, and Art, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.

The phenomenon of 'plant sleep' - whereby vegetables rhythmically open and close their leaves or petals in daily cycles - has been a continual source of fascination for those with botanical interests, from the Portuguese physician Cristóbal Acosta and the Italian naturalist Prospero Alpini in the sixteenth century to Percy Bysshe Shelley and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth. But it was in 1757 that the topic received its earliest systemic treatment on English shores with the prodigious author, botanist, actor, and Royal Society critic John Hill's . As the present article aims to illustrate, Hill and his respondents used this remarkable behaviour, exhibited by certain plants, as a lens through which to reassess the nature of vegetables, and to address pressing questions of wider natural philosophical import, particularly the degree of continuity between the structures and functions of plants and animals and whether similar mechanisms necessarily account for related movements in different life forms. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Jan 6;78(1):1-21. Epub 2020 Sep 6.

Department of Mathematics, London School of Economics, London, UK.

At the beginning of the 13th century Fibonacci described the rules for making mixtures of all kinds, using the Hindu-Arabic system of arithmetic. His work was repeated in the early printed books of arithmetic, many of which contained chapters on 'alligation', as the subject became known. But the rules were expressed in words, so the subject often appeared difficult, and occasionally mysterious. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Oct 3;77(4):445-468. Epub 2020 Sep 3.

Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali, Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia, Italy.

It is well attested that Francis Bacon considered his to be an exemplar, but what lessons should be taken from its example have been subject to debate. Instead of looking at this work as a mere model for the fusion of natural history and natural philosophy, it is also possible to see Bacon as trying to provide tentative solutions to outstanding questions regarding the wind, a topic that was deeply scrutinized during the early modern period. An examination of Bacon's provisional concluding rules reveals deep correspondences with earlier works, such as José de Acosta's , that revised classical understandings of the wind based on experience, experiments, and accounts of travels beyond Europe. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jul 2;77(3):253-348. Epub 2020 Sep 2.

Department of Economics, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.

When Henry Macomber published his census of owners of the first edition of the in 1953, he believed the edition to be small, 'perhaps not more than 250 copies', an estimate that still enjoys currency. Lower estimates of the size of the first edition of the were based partly on assessments regarding an inhospitable market for highly technical mathematical books, and partly on the presumption that the vaunted incomprehensibility of the would have militated against a sizeable edition. Our preliminary census more than doubles the number of identified copies, to 387-suggesting a much larger print run than commonly assumed - as well as encourages us to believe that there existed a wider, and competent, readership of the from the start. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Oct 26;77(4):524-548. Epub 2020 Aug 26.

Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

One of the most influential imagined histories of science of the nineteenth century was John Tyndall's Belfast Address of 1874. In that address, Tyndall presented a sweeping history of science that focused on the attempt to understand the material nature of life. While the address has garnered attention for its discussion of the conflict at the centre of this history, namely between science and theology, less has been said about how Tyndall's history culminated with a discussion of the evolutionary researches of Charles Darwin. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jul 5;77(3):349-365. Epub 2020 Aug 5.

Edinburgh, UK.

While Joseph Hooker was considering his upcoming presentation on the geographical distribution of species, he asked Charles Darwin for help with some references. During the ensuing exchange of correspondence, Darwin seems to have contradicted himself, regarding his being aware of Leopold von Buch's observation that distributed varieties become species, prior to writing . Literalists and conspiracists have interpreted this apparent self-contradiction as a sign of duplicity and fraud. Read More

Ann Sci 2021 Jan 20;78(1):22-40. Epub 2020 Jul 20.

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Seville, Seville, Spain.

The consensus today is that both Newton and Leibniz created calculus independently. Yet, this was not so clear at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A bitter controversy took place at that time, which came to be known as the 'calculus war', probably the greatest clash in the history of science. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Apr;77(2):155-168

Office of Digital Learning, University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA.

The Scottish Enlightenment has long been identified with abolitionism because of the writings of the moral and economic philosophers and the absence of slaves in Scotland itself. However, Scots were disproportionately represented in the ownership, management, and especially medical treatment of slaves in the British Caribbean. Sugar and cotton flowed into Glasgow and young, educated Scots looking for work as traders, bookkeepers, doctors made the return trip back to the Caribbean to manage the plantations. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Apr;77(2):169-188

Wissenschaftsgeschichte/History of Science, Universität Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.

Key figures in the founding years of the United States of America were part of the first American learned agricultural society, known as the (PSPA). Its members were who set out to describe, explore and explain agricultural processes by practical experiences, observations, and theories written in British books. Those theories, however, did not provide any reason for the widespread agricultural practice in Pennsylvania of using plaster as fertilizer, which was German in origin. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 04;77(2):135-138

Faculty of History, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

Ann Sci 2020 Apr;77(2):139-154

Laboratoire ICT, University of Paris (Diderot), Paris, France.

While the emergence of a new scientific culture in 16th-century Europe is well known, the role of the actors of the Hispanic New World in this time of renewal of knowledge has long been judged marginal for two reasons: first, because the strong presence of the Inquisition in the Hispanic World has been considered by historians to have been an obstacle for research or scientific innovation; and second, because the discontinuity of the territories of the Hispanic Monarchy and the problem of distances between Spain and the New World have long been interpreted in ways that suggest the marginality and peripheral status of the American colonies. However, some works counterbalance this dismissal and shed new light on the scientific activity of the Hispanic New World. This is the case with the treatise , by the secular priest Alvaro Alonso Barba, which would achieve remarkable fame and circulation, and would become a seminal work in the fields of metallurgy and mining until the mid-1700s. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 07 18;77(3):366-376. Epub 2020 May 18.

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany.

Ann Sci 2020 Apr 6;77(2):215-252. Epub 2020 May 6.

Department of History, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Canada.

Eighteenth-century events, replete with Dickensian dualities, brought two Enlightenment families to America. Pierre-Samuel du Pont and Joseph Priestley contemplated relocating their families decades before immigrating. After arriving, they discovered deficiencies in education and chemistry. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Apr 6;77(2):189-214. Epub 2020 May 6.

Independent Scholar.

From 1797 to 1801 a controversy played out on the pages of the , the first scientific journal published in the United States. At its centre was the well-known feud between the followers of Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley, the lone supporter of the phlogiston model. The American debate, however, had more than two sides. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 6;77(1):50-70. Epub 2020 Apr 6.

Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.

This paper explores the rules for the expurgation of texts of astrology in the Iberian Indices of forbidden books. It addresses the prohibitions put forward in Rule IX of the Index of Trent and the bull of Sixtus V, and studies its impact on the rules and their interpretation in the Spanish and Portuguese Indices, in particular, those published in the first decades of the seventeenth century: the Spanish of 1612 and the Portuguese of 1624. It shows how these indices offer a more meticulous examination of the prohibitions providing not only more detail regarding the different practices of astrology, but also explicitly accept the doctrine of inclinations of Thomas Aquinas as a central rule to deal with astrological judgments on human behaviour. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 6;77(1):10-25. Epub 2020 Apr 6.

Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.

Astrologers have exercised self-censorship throughout the centuries in order to fend off criticism. This was largely for religious reasons, but social, political, and ethical motivations also have to be taken into account. This paper explores the main reasons that led astrologers to increase censorship in their writings in the decades that preceded the Church's regulations and offers some examples of this self-imposed restraint in astrological judgements. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 6;77(1):127-133. Epub 2020 Apr 6.

Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 14;77(1):108-126. Epub 2020 Mar 14.

Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, The University of Chicago, Chicago, USA.

This paper offers an opportunity to ponder the way the Catholic Church and its methods of information control reshaped, and paradoxically even enabled, the dissemination and practice of science in early modern Italy. Focusing on the activities of Newtonian scholars operating in Rome in the First half of the eighteenth century - especially the Celestine monk Celestino Galiani (1681-1753) and prelate Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) - I will argue that major contributions to the spread of Newtonianism in Italy came from individuals operating within the Church, acting more-or-less independently from the Church's oversight. These scholars realized they were witnessing an inexorable transition and that the medieval scholastic cosmology and physics could not survive. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 11;77(1):96-107. Epub 2020 Mar 11.

Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.

It is known that throughout the seventeenth century the world system proposed by Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) assumed a preponderant position in the Iberian cosmological debate, according to many opinions the one showing the best agreement to empirical evidence. Moreover, the Tychonian model (or variants thereof) did not present the difficulties of apparent contradiction with scriptures, as the heliocentric system of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) did, since it kept the earth fixed at the centre of the world. However, Tycho, as a Lutheran author, was targeted by the Inquisition. Read More