2. The analysis of stuff

Author(s):  
William H. Brock

The fundamental problem in chemistry is transmutation. How can two homogeneous stuffs with very different properties merge to form another homogeneous material whose properties are different from the reactants? ‘The analysis of stuff’ outlines the history of chemical analysis beginning in the early 16th century with Paracelsus, a deeply religious practising doctor who began to work with chemical remedies rather than those based on plants. The iatrochemistry movement promoted by Paracelsians meant that chemistry became part of the European medical curriculum. Other key characters in the chemical revolution are also discussed—Joan Baptista van Helmont, Daniel Sennert, and Robert Boyle—along with the documentation of elements by Antoine Lavoisier and Isaac Newton.

The demand and search for the scientific literature of the past has grown enormously in the last twenty years. In an age as conscious as ours of the significance of science to mankind, some scientists naturally turned their thoughts to the origins of science as we know it, how scientific theories grew and how discoveries were made. Both institutions and individual scientists partake in these interests and form collections of books necessary for their study. How did their predecessors fare in this respect? They, of course, formed their libraries at a time when books were easy to find—and cheap. But what did they select for their particular reading? For example, what did the libraries of the three greatest scientists of the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle, look like? Fortunately in the case of Newton, the history of his books is now fairly clear, thanks to the devoted labours of Colonel R . de Villamil (i), but it is a sad reflection on our attitude to our great intellectual leaders that this library o f the greatest English scientist, whose work changed the world for hundreds of years, was not taken care of, was, in fact, forgotten and at times entirely neglected.


Each number of Notes and Records contains a short bibliography of books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Sociey or its Fellows which have appeared since the publication of the last number. If Fellows would be good enough to draw the Editor’s attention to omissions these would be added to the list in the next issue. B ooks Auber, F. Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) als Physiologe und Statistiker. Basle / Stuttgart, 1959. 11 Sw. fr. Bibby, C. T. H. Huxley . Watts, 1959. 25s. Boas, Maria. Robert Boyle and seventeenth-century Chemistry . Cambridge, 1958. 30s. Bell, P. R., Challinor, J., Haldane, J. B. S., and others. Darwin´s Biological Work . Cambridge University Press, 1959. 40s. Barnet, S. A., ed. A Century of Darwin . Heinemann, 1958. 30s. Cohen, B. Franklin and Newton. An Inquiry into speculative Newtonian experimental science and Franklin´s work in electricity as an example thereof. Philadelphia (The American Philosophical Society), 1956. $6.00. Cohen, B., and Schofield, R. E., ed. Isaac Newton´s Papers and Letters in Natural Philosophy . C.U.P., 1958. 70s. Darlington, C. D. Darwin’s place in history . Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1959. 9s. 6d. Darwin, C. (Peckham, M., ed.). The Origin of Species. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. 120s. Darwin, F., ed. The autobiography oj Charles Darwin and selected letters. New York, Dover Publications Inc., 1958. $1.65.


Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold

Isaac Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man’s death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt’s by a millennium. This book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe’s learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The book reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton’s earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton’s unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, the book reconciles Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.


Author(s):  
Erin Webster

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 237428952110102
Author(s):  
Susan A. Kirch ◽  
Moshe J. Sadofsky

Medical schooling, at least as structured in the United States and Canada, is commonly assembled intuitively or empirically to meet concrete goals. Despite a long history of scholarship in educational theory to address how people learn, this is rarely examined during medical curriculum design. We provide a historical perspective on educational theory–practice–philosophy and a tool to aid faculty in learning how to identify and use theory–practice–philosophy for the design of curriculum and instruction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Irene Dingel

Abstract Hardly any corpus doctrinae had as intensive a reception and as wide a dissemination as the Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum (1560). Situating it in the history of the concept of a corpus doctrinae and briefly sketching its origin and goal elucidate the function and significance of this collection of Melanchthon’s writings. An intensive investigation reveals however any connection of this work with the development of the Reformation in Siebenbürgen (ung. Erdély, rum. Transilvania) in the later 16th century. The records of the Siebenbürgen synods mention the Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum occasionally, revealing the extent to which it served as a norm for public teaching. Unique and characteristic for Siebenbürgen is that the Formula of Concord (1577) did not replace this Corpus Doctrinae; it remained influential long into the seventeenth century. It was however interpreted within the horizon of a Wittenberg theology that was marked by the pre-confessional harmony and doctrinal agreement between Luther and Melanchthon while seeking to ignore Philippist interpretations and focusing on the common teachings of both reformers.


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin H. Ackerknecht

SynopsisPsychosomatic medicine begins with the Greeks. It finds a place in Galen's system as diseases of passion, a concept current until the middle of the nineteenth century. The great French and German clinicians of the nineteenth century were all familiar with psychosomatic diseases. During the twentieth century the field was for a while monopolized by psychoanalysts. The psychosomatic specialist is essentially the doctor who listens to the patient.


1665 ◽  
Vol 1 (18) ◽  
pp. 315-316 ◽  

The publisher of these tracts, knowing that the Honorable Robert Boyle had not left unconsidered the natural history of the sea, of which subject the late, and these present papers, have entertained the reader as to the observables of its flux and reflux; He was on this occasion instant, with that gentleman to impart to him, for publication, these heads of inquiries, he had drawn up, touching that subject: which having obtained (though the author desires, they may be lookt upon as unfinisht) he thus subjoyns.


Each number of Notes and Records contains a short bibliography of books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Society or its Fellows which have been noted since the publication of the last number. If Fellows would be good enough to draw the Editor’s attention to omissions these would be added to the list in the next issue. Books Badash, L. (Editor). Rutherford and Boltwood: letters on radioactivity. (Yale studies in the History of Sciences and Medicine, Vol. 4.) New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. $12.50. Begg, A. C. and Begg, N.C. James Cook and New Zealand . Wellington, N.Z.: A. R. Shearer, 1969. £ 2 5s. Berkeley, E. and Berkeley, Dorothy, S. Dr Alexander Gordon of Charles Town . University of North Carolina Press, 1969. $10.00. Bestcrman, T. Voltaire. London: Longmans, 1969. 8s. Bowden, D. K. Leibniz as a librarian and eighteenth-century librarians Germany . London: University College, 1969. 7s. 6d. Darwin, C. R. Questions about the breeding of animals . Facsim. repr. with an introduction by Sir Gavin Dc Beer. London: Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1969. £1 15s. Davis, N. P. Lawrence and Openhimer . London: Cape, 1969. 2s. Dobson, J. John Hunter. Edinburgh & London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1969. £ 2 10s. Eales, N. B. The Cole library of early medicine and zoology . Catalogue of books and pamphlets. Part 1. 1472 to 1800. Oxford: Aldcn Press for the Library, University of Reading, 1969. £$ 5s. Edleston, J. (Editor). Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes . (1830.) (Cass Library of Science Classics. No. 12.) London: Frank Cass, 1969. £ 6 6s. Fothergill, B. Sir William Hamilton . Faber and Faber, 1969. £ 2 10s. French, R. K. Robert Whytt, the soul, and medicine . (Publications of the Wellcome Institute, No. 17.) London: Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1969. £ 2 5s.


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