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Ann Sci 2019 Mar 18:1-26. Epub 2019 Mar 18.

a Fakultat fur Kulturwissenschaften, Philosophy , Alpen-Adria Universitat Klagenfurt , Klagenfurt , Austria.

This article studies the theory of animal seeds as purely material entities in the early seventeenth-century medical writings of Antonio Ponce Santacruz, royal physician to the Spanish king Philipp IV. Santacruz adopts the theory of the eduction of substantial forms from the potentiality of matter, according to which new kinds of causal powers can arise out of material composites of a certain complexity. Santacruz stands out among the late Aristotelian defenders of eduction theory because he applies the concept of an instrument of direction developed by the medieval Avicenna commentator Gentile da Foligno and gives a novel turn to this concept by interpreting animal seeds as separate instruments. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Jan 4;76(1):1-16. Epub 2019 Mar 4.

a Physics Department, University of California , Santa Cruz , CA , USA.

The worksheets that presumably contained Newton's early development of the fundamental concepts in his Principia have been lost. A plausible reconstruction of this development is presented based on Newton's exchange of letters with Robert Hooke in 1679, with Edmund Halley in 1686, and on some clues in the diagram associated with Proposition 1 in Book 1 of the Principia that have been ignored in the past. A graphical construction associated with this proposition leads to a rapidly convergent method to obtain orbits for central forces, which elucidates how Newton may have have been led to formulate some of his most fundamental propositions in the Principia. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Jan 4;76(1):17-57. Epub 2019 Mar 4.

a Department of History , University of North Carolina at Greensboro , Greensboro , NC , USA.

This paper investigates the relationship between Helmholtz's formulation of the principle of the conservation of force and the two principles well known in rational mechanics as the principle of vis viva and the principle of the conservation of vis viva. An examination of the relevant literature from Leibniz to Duhamel reveals both Helmholtz's indebtedness to that tradition and his creative refashioning of it as he endeavoured to craft an argument that would both prohibit the construction of a perpetuum mobile and the efficacy of a supposed vital force and demonstrate the necessity of an ontology of mass points subject to attractive and repulsive central forces depending solely on distance. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Jan 22;76(1):58-86. Epub 2019 Feb 22.

a Humanities , York University , Toronto , Canada.

The torsion balance, an instrument that was first developed to demonstrate the high precision of physical science in the laboratory became a different sort of demonstration instrument in its brief vogue in the 1920s. This article considers intersecting stories of acquiring and testing the torsion balance as a field instrument in Canada, Britain and Australia. It examines the purchasing trip and fieldwork of A. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Nov 30:1-2. Epub 2018 Nov 30.

a Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, UK.

Ann Sci 2018 Nov 27:1-9. Epub 2018 Nov 27.

a Division of Humanities and Social Sciences , California Institute of Technology , Pasadena , CA , USA.

Ann Sci 2018 Nov 27:1-31. Epub 2018 Nov 27.

a Formerly of the Science Museum , London , UK.

Diffraction gratings are famously associated with Henry Rowland of Johns Hopkins University but there were precursors. Although gratings were first made and used in Europe, reliable machines for ruling gratings were developed in the USA, and two men, Lewis Rutherfurd and William Rogers, tackled the problem before Rowland. Rutherfurd, a wealthy independent astronomer, designed and built the first screw-operated engine for ruling diffraction gratings, the fore-runner of almost all subsequent ruling engines. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Nov 19:1-3. Epub 2018 Nov 19.

a Department of Romance Studies , Cornell University , Ithaca , NY 14853

Ann Sci 2018 Nov 19:1-2. Epub 2018 Nov 19.

a Pompeu Fabra University , Barcelona.

Ann Sci 2018 Oct 8;75(4):275-303. Epub 2018 Nov 8.

a All Souls College, University of Oxford , Oxford , UK.

The known works of the medieval astronomer/astrologer Henry Bate (1246-after 1310) include a set of planetary mean motion tables for the meridian of his Flemish hometown Mechelen. These tables survive in three manuscripts representing two significantly different recensions, but have never been examined for their principles of construction or underlying parameters. Such analysis reveals that Bate employed an unusual value for the length of the tropical year (c. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Oct 17;75(4):304-329. Epub 2018 Oct 17.

a Department of History and Philosophy of Science , University of Cambridge , Cambridge CB2 3RH , UK.

This paper offers a re-interpretation of the development of practical mathematics in Elizabethan England, placing artisanal know-how and the materials of the discipline at the heart of analysis, and bringing attention to Tudor economic policy by way of historical context. A major new source for the early instrument trade is presented: a manuscript volume of Chancery Court documents c.1565-c. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Jul 4;75(3):165-200. Epub 2018 Oct 4.

a Department of History , Princeton University , Princeton , NJ , USA.

What happens when you take the idea of the biblical Adam-the first human - and apply it to insects? You create an origin story for Nature's tiniest creatures, one that gives them 'a Pedigree as ancient as the first creation'. This the naturalist Robert Hooke argued in his treatise, the Micrographia (1665). In what follows, I will retrace how Hooke endeavoured to show that insects-then widely believed to have arisen out of the dirt - were the products of an ancient lineage. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Sep 21:1-4. Epub 2018 Sep 21.

a Museum of the History of Science , Oxford , UK.

Ann Sci 2018 Sep 19:1-4. Epub 2018 Sep 19.

a Department of Classics , Carleton College , Northfield , MN , USA.

Ann Sci 2018 Aug 31:1-3. Epub 2018 Aug 31.

a University of Saskatchewan , Saskatoon , SK , Canada S7N5A5.

Ann Sci 2019 Jan 23;76(1):87-95. Epub 2018 Aug 23.

a School of History and Philosophy of Science , University of Sydney, and Campion College , Sydney , NSW , Australia.

Ann Sci 2018 Jul 13;75(3):255-259. Epub 2018 Aug 13.

a School of English and Drama , Queen Mary University of London , London , E1 4NS , UK .

Ann Sci 2018 Oct 1;75(4):361-367. Epub 2018 Aug 1.

a Department of History, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Ann Sci 2018 Jul 24:1-3. Epub 2018 Jul 24.

a Department of Arts and Sciences , The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences , 2139 Auburn Avenue, Cincinnati , Ohio 45219 , USA.

Ann Sci 2018 Jul 20;75(3):201-233. Epub 2018 Jul 20.

a Museum of the History of Science , Oxford , UK.

As one of his first acts upon becoming Astronomer Royal in 1835, George Airy made moves to set up a new observatory at Greenwich to study the Earth's magnetic field. This paper uses Airy's correspondence to argue that, while members of the reform movement in British science were putting pressure on the Royal Observatory to branch out into geomagnetism and meteorology, Airy established the magnetic observatory on his own initiative, ahead of Alexander von Humboldt's request for British participation in the worldwide magnetic charting project that later became known as the 'Magnetic Crusade'. That the Greenwich magnetic observatory did not become operational until 1839 was due to a series of incidental factors that provide a case study in the technical and political obstacles to be overcome in building a new government observatory. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Jul 19;75(3):234-254. Epub 2018 Jul 19.

a Center for the History of Physics , American Institute of Physics , College Park , MD , USA.

During the 1970s, widespread scientific interest in the risks of climate change prompted John A. Eddy (1931-2009), an astrophysicist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, to investigate whether sunspots could be used to predict future climate changes. Methodologically, Eddy's investigations were uniquely historical in nature. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Jun 14:1-3. Epub 2018 Jun 14.

a University of California , Irvine , CA 92697 , USA.

Ann Sci 2018 Apr 1;75(2):73-96. Epub 2018 Jun 1.

a Faculty of Arts, Education and Law , Griffith University , Brisbane , Australia.

Among the elements of the modern scientific ethos, as identified by R.K. Merton and others, is the commitment of individual effort to a long-term inquiry that may not bring substantial results in a lifetime. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Apr 14;75(2):120-144. Epub 2018 May 14.

a Department of Business, Technology and Engineering , University of California , Berkeley , USA.

All three 'scientific' pollsters (Crossley, Gallup and Roper) wrongly predicted incumbent President Harry Truman's defeat in the 1948 presidential election, and thus faced a potentially serious legitimacy crisis. This 'fiasco' occurred at a most inopportune time. Social science was embroiled in a policy debate taking place in the halls of Congress. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Apr 24:1-3. Epub 2018 Apr 24.

a Department of History , Oklahoma State University , Stillwater , OK , 74078 , USA.

Ann Sci 2018 Apr 24:1-2. Epub 2018 Apr 24.

a Department of Science and Technology Studies , University College London , London , UK.

Ann Sci 2018 Apr 20;75(2):97-119. Epub 2018 Apr 20.

a College of Social Sciences, School of Interdisciplinary Studies , University of Glasgow , Dumfries , UK.

This paper traces how media representations encouraged enthusiasts, youth and skilled volunteers to participate actively in science and technology during the twentieth century. It assesses how distinctive discourses about scientific amateurs positioned them with respect to professionals in shifting political and cultural environments. In particular, the account assesses the seminal role of a periodical, Scientific American magazine, in shaping and championing an enduring vision of autonomous scientific enthusiasms. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Mar 13:1-2. Epub 2018 Mar 13.

a Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science , Vrije Universiteit Brussel , Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 , Brussels , Belgium .

Ann Sci 2018 Feb 16:1-2. Epub 2018 Feb 16.

Ann Sci 2018 Jan 8;75(1):1-20. Epub 2018 Feb 8.

a Lanzhou Jiaotong University, China; The University of Oxford , UK.

This paper provides an account of Chinese translations of Newton's Principia produced over the past century and a half within the larger context of the dissemination of Newtonian philosophy in China. Given its fundamental importance in the history of science, the Principia, originally penned in Latin, has been translated into a number of other languages. While in all these languages no more than two full translations have appeared, as many as four complete versions in Chinese have been produced since the 1850s, when first attempts were made to translate the Principia in late imperial China. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 04 9;75(2):145-148. Epub 2018 Jan 9.

a School of HPS , University of Sydney , Sydney , Australia.

Ann Sci 2018 Jan 4;75(1):40-54. Epub 2018 Jan 4.

a School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science , University of Leeds , Leeds , United Kingdom.

In 1912, Julian Huxley published his first book The Individual in the Animal Kingdom which he dedicated to the then world-famous French philosopher Henri Bergson. Historians have generally adopted one of two attitudes towards Huxley's early encounter with Bergson. They either dismiss it entirely as unimportant or minimize it, deeming it a youthful indiscretion preceding Huxley's full conversion to Fisherian Darwinism. Read More

Ann Sci 2018 Jan 15;75(1):21-39. Epub 2017 Nov 15.

a University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UK.

This article reveals how nineteenth-century chemists and health reformers tried to eradicate the use of yeast in bread, claiming they had devised healthier and more sanitary ways to raise bread. It describes the alternative technological solutions to baking bread, investigating factors that influenced their development and adaptation in the marketplace. A lack of scientific and cultural consensus surrounding yeast, what it was and what it did, fermented during this period. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Nov 2:1-6. Epub 2017 Nov 2.

a University of Toronto , Toronto , ON M5S 2J5 , Canada.

Ann Sci 2017 Oct 24;74(4):255-261. Epub 2017 Oct 24.

a School of Humanities & Languages , The University of New South Wales , Sydney , Australia.

This examination of an important paper by Sydney Ross is the first in a projected series of occasional reflections on 'Annals of Science Classic Papers' that have had enduring utility within the field of history of science and beyond. First the messages of the paper are examined, some well known but others, particularly Ross's own contemporary concerns about the use of the word 'scientist', less so. The varied uses made of the paper by scholars are then traced before Ross's biography is examined in order to try to understand how a figure professionally marginal to the field of history of science came to write such a significant piece. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 10 19;74(4):262-281. Epub 2017 Oct 19.

a Department of Biosciences, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis , University of Oslo , Blindern , Oslo , Norway.

Scottish publisher and naturalist Robert Chambers pursued an amateur interest in geology through much of his life. His early measurements of raised beaches in Scotland earned him membership in the Geological Society of London in 1844, a recognition much appreciated by the anonymous author of the 'scandalous' Vestiges published the same year. Although familiar with emerging ice age theories, Chambers remained with most British geologists a sceptic through the 1840s, even after a trip to the glaciers of the Alps in 1848, which nevertheless prepared him for the turning point, which came in 1849 during an extensive field trip in Norway and Sweden. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Oct 9;74(4):282-298. Epub 2017 Oct 9.

a Science and Technology Studies , York University , Toronto , ON , Canada.

How do glaciers move? This seemingly straightforward question provided the backdrop for a heated debate between the physicists John Tyndall (1820-1893) and James David Forbes (1809-1868) in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Forbes described the motion of glaciers as that of a viscous fluid. After visiting the Alps, Tyndall proposed an alternative theory that combined fracture and regelation. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Oct 9;74(4):299-325. Epub 2017 Oct 9.

a University Paris Diderot (Paris 7) , France.

The emergence of dimensional analysis in the early nineteenth century involved a redefinition of the pre-existing concepts of homogeneity and dimensions, which entailed a shift from a qualitative to a quantitative conception of these notions. Prior to the nineteenth century, these concepts had been used as criteria to assess the soundness of operations and relations between geometrical quantities. Notably, the terms in such relations were required to be homogeneous, which meant that they needed to have the same geometrical dimensions. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Jul;74(3):253

a Co-Editors.

Ann Sci 2017 Jul 8;74(3):179-191. Epub 2017 Aug 8.

a Department of History and Philosophy and Science , University of Sydney , Camperdown , Australia.

In 1668-1669 William Neile and John Wallis engaged in a protracted correspondence regarding the nature of motion. Neile was unhappy with the laws of motion that had been established by the Royal Society in three papers published in 1668, deeming them not explanations of motion at all, but mere descriptions. Neile insisted that science could not be informative without a discussion of causes, meaning that Wallis's purely kinematic account of collision could not be complete. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Jul 7;74(3):192-213. Epub 2017 Aug 7.

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

In this paper, we address the emergence of horticultural practice, agents, spaces and institutions in the two urban settings of Lisbon and Porto, in Portugal, during the second half of the nineteenth century. We do so by following the networking activities of two players: the self-made horticulturist and entrepreneur José Marques Loureiro, who created, in Porto, a commercial horticultural establishment and founded the Journal of Practical Horticulture; and the agronomist Francisco Simões Margiochi, head of the gardens and green grounds department of the municipality, who created the first course on gardening and horticulture, and founded the Royal Horticultural Society, both in Lisbon. Their joint activities were aimed at establishing horticulture as an applied science and to cater simultaneously to an extended audience of citizens. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 10 20;74(4):326-330. Epub 2017 Jun 20.

a Faculty of Environmental Studies , York University , Toronto, ON , Canada .

Ann Sci 2017 Jul 2;74(3):214-239. Epub 2017 Jun 2.

a School of History, Rutherford College, University of Kent , Canterbury , UK.

Making use of a source previously unknown to historians, this article sheds new light on the British expedition to the Sandwich Islands to observe the 1874 transit of Venus. This source, a series of caricature drawings that follow the expedition from departure to return, gives insight into expeditionary culture and the experience of a previously unremarked member of this astronomical expedition, Evelyn J.W. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Apr 16;74(2):149-164. Epub 2017 Feb 16.

a Centre for History and Philosophy of Science , University of Leeds , Leeds , UK.

Modern methods of analysing biological materials, including protein and DNA sequencing, are increasingly the objects of historical study. Yet twentieth-century taxonomic techniques have been overlooked in one of their most important contexts: agricultural botany. This paper addresses this omission by harnessing unexamined archival material from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), a British plant science organization. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Apr 11;74(2):126-148. Epub 2017 May 11.

a Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University , Copenhagen , Denmark.

Faced with various anomalies related to nuclear physics in particular, in 1929 Niels Bohr suggested that energy might not be conserved in the atomic nucleus and the processes involving it. By this radical proposal he hoped not only to get rid of the anomalies but also saw a possibility to explain a puzzle in astrophysics, namely the energy generated by stars. Bohr repeated his suggestion of stellar energy arising ex nihilo on several occasions but without ever going into detail. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Apr 29;74(2):108-125. Epub 2017 Mar 29.

a Vrije Universiteit Brussel , Belgium.

In this paper I will probe into Herman Boerhaave's (1668-1738) appropriation of Isaac Newton's natural philosophy. It will be shown that Newton's work served multiple purposes in Boerhaave's oeuvre, for he appropriated Newton's work differently in different contexts and in different episodes in his career. Three important episodes in, and contexts of, Boerhaave's appropriation of Newton's natural philosophical ideas and methods will be considered: 1710-11, the time of his often neglected lectures on the place of physics in medicine; 1715, when he delivered his most famous rectorial address; and, finally, 1731/2, in publishing his Elementa chemiae. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Apr 21;74(2):91-107. Epub 2017 Mar 21.

a Department of History, Program in the History of Science and Medicine , Yale University , USA.

The apothecary occupied a liminal position in early modern society between profit and healing. Finding ways to distance their public image from trade was a common problem for apothecaries across Europe. This article uses the case of a Bolognese apothecary, Filippo Pastarino, to address the question of how early modern apothecaries chose to represent themselves to political authorities and to the wider public. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 01 9;74(1):1-24. Epub 2016 Dec 9.

a All Souls College , Oxford , UK.

The article introduces a previously unknown fourteenth-century treatise on computus and calendrical astronomy entitled Expositio kalendarii novi, whose author proposed elaborate solutions to the technical flaws inherent in the calendar used by the Roman Church. An analysis of verbal parallels to other contemporary works on the same topic makes it possible to establish that the Expositio was produced in the context of a calendar reform initiative led by Pope Clement VI in 1344/45 and that this anonymous text is probably identical to a 'great and laborious work' on the calendar that the monk Johannes de Termis prepared for the pope around this time. Its author strove to make an original contribution by extracting new astronomical parameters from both ancient and contemporary data, which made him arrive at an estimate of the length of the tropical year that was independent of the then-current Alfonsine Tables. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Jan 1;74(1):64-82. Epub 2016 Nov 1.

a History and Geography , Morgan State University , Baltimore , MD , USA.

Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryologist and evolutionary popularizer, publicly advocated a social vision of evolution that intertwined science and modernist Protestant theology in the early 1920s. The moral prestige of professional science in American culture - along with Conklin's own elite scientific status - diverted attention from the frequency with which his work crossed boundaries between natural science, religion and philosophy. Writing for broad audiences, Conklin was one of the most significant of the religious and modernist biological scientists whose rhetoric went well beyond simply claiming that certain kinds of religion were amenable to evolutionary science; he instead incorporated religion itself into evolution's broadest workings. Read More

Ann Sci 2017 Jan 20;74(1):25-63. Epub 2016 Oct 20.

b Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Museu Nacional Quinta da Boa Vista , Rio de Janeiro , Brazil.

The current work presents the results of a review of most of the European diaries and travel chronicles containing reports of New World non-human primates dating from the discovery of America in 1492 until the end of the sixteenth century. We report the integral texts translated into English of these literary sources, giving a critical interpretation from a historical and scientific point of view. We note the ways these primates were perceived and described, with attention to the most important characteristics that were highlighted by the first explorers. Read More