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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 Apr;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 May 18:1-11. 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

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 11;77(1):71-95. Epub 2020 Mar 11.

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

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Inquisition was the institution most invested in the censorship of printed books in the Portuguese empire. Besides publishing the , the Holy Office was also responsible for overseeing their implementation and ensuring their efficacy in preventing the importation, reading, and circulation of banned books. Overall, the sixteenth-century condemned 785 authors and 1081 titles, including 52 authors and 85 titles of medicine, natural history, natural philosophy, astronomy, chronology, cosmography, astrology, and divinatory arts. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 5;77(1):26-49. Epub 2020 Mar 5.

Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, University of York, York, UK.

Historians have portrayed the papal bull (1586) as a significant turning point in the history of the Catholic Church's censorship of astrology. They argue that this bull was intended to prohibit the idea that the stars could naturally incline humans towards future actions, but also had the effect of preventing the discussion of other forms of natural astrology including those useful to medicine, agriculture, and navigation. The bull, therefore, threatened to overturn principles established by Thomas Aquinas, which not only justified long-standing astrological practices, but also informed the Roman Inquisition's attitude towards this art. Read More

Ann Sci 2020 Jan 5;77(1):1-9. Epub 2020 Mar 5.

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

Ann Sci 2019 Jul - Oct;76(3-4):303-323. Epub 2020 Feb 7.

Department of the History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People's Republic of China.

During the late Ming and early Qing period, Jesuit missionaries introduced European science into China, and thereby profoundly influenced the later development of Chinese astronomy. Not only did European astronomy become the official system of the Qing dynasty, but the traditional way to 'attain up above' by connecting the study of astronomy and learning gradually fell into disuse. However, the astronomers in this period expressed different views on these two processes. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Jul - Oct;76(3-4):241-266. Epub 2020 Feb 3.

School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

Robert Hooke's development of the theory of matter-as-vibration provides coherence to a career in natural philosophy which is commonly perceived as scattered and haphazard. It also highlights aspects of his work for which he is rarely credited: besides the creative speculative imagination and practical-instrumental ingenuity for which he is known, it displays lucid and consistent theoretical thought and mathematical skills. Most generally and importantly, however, Hooke's 'Principles … of Congruity and Incongruity of bodies' represent a uniquely powerful approach to the most pressing challenge of the New Science: legitimizing the application of mathematics to the study of nature. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Jul - Oct;76(3-4):267-302. Epub 2020 Jan 28.

Department of History, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA.

Following Galileo's trial of 1633, the Jesuit theologian Melchior Inchofer, author of the most negative reports used by the Roman Inquisition against Galileo, repudiated the Copernicans for the 'heresy' of the soul of the world (), in an unpublished manuscript. I show that Inchofer's arguments applied far more to the beliefs of Giordano Bruno than to those of Galileo. Since antiquity, various Christian authorities had repudiated several beliefs about the as 'heretical', hence I review their critiques against Pythagoras, Origen, and Peter Abelard, for allegedly asserting animistic beliefs about the Earth, or a universal spirit, or that souls move the heavenly bodies. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Jul - Oct;76(3-4):324-339. Epub 2020 Jan 27.

St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

It is common to assume that Descartes did not have a conception of an object's matter density independently of its size, but this is a rather incomplete assessment of the early modern natural philosopher's theory. Key to our understanding of Descartes's physics is a consideration of the ratios between the quantities of the different types of matter in which an object consists. As these ratios determine the degree of an object's porosity and elasticity, they also affect in Descartes's theory the phenomena of gravity and weight. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Apr;76(2):113-156

Independent researcher.

Thomas Urquhart (1611-1660), celebrated for his English translation of Rabelais' , has earned some notoriety for his eccentric, putatively incomprehensible early book on trigonometry (1645). was too impractical to succeed in its own day as a textbook, since it lacked both trigonometric tables and sample calculations. But its current bad reputation is based on literary authors' amplifications of the verdict prefaced to its 19th century reprinting by one mathematician, William Wallace, who lacked the background to appreciate the book's historical context. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Apr 24;76(2):157-183. Epub 2019 Jul 24.

School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology , Stockholm , Sweden.

Abel Evans's poem (1713) celebrates Jacob Bobart the Younger, second keeper of the Oxford Physick Garden (now the Oxford University Botanic Garden), as a model monarch to his botanical subjects. This paper takes as a point of departure from which to explore the early history of the Physick Garden (founded 1621), situating botanical collections and collecting spaces within utopian visions and projects as well as debates about order more widely in the turbulent seventeenth-century. Three perspectives on the Physick Garden as an ordered collection are explored: the architecture of the quadripartite Garden, with particular attention to the iconography of the Danby Gate; the particular challenges involved in managing living collections, whose survival depends on the spatial order regulating the microclimates in which they grow; and the taxonomic ordering associated with the collections. Read More

Ann Sci 2019 Apr 18;76(2):184-209. Epub 2019 Mar 18.

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 2019 Apr 27;76(2):210-218. Epub 2018 Nov 27.

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

Ann Sci 2018 Oct 27;75(4):330-360. 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.