scholarly journals The diary of Sir Charles Blagden

1950 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-89 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Considerable Portion ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of

Among the Blagden papers recently acquired by the Royal Society is a considerable portion of the diary of Sir Charles Blagden himself, closely written in difficult handwriting from edge to edge of the paper on hundreds of small sheets. The complete decipherment and transcription of this diary may take a long time, if it is ever done. But it was thought that the Fellows and those engaged in the history of science at the close of the eighteenth century might be interested in a sample of the diary of this man, Secretary of the Royal Society from 1784 to 1797, who was closely associated with many of the persons and events which made those days memorable in the history of science. Even before his appointment to the Secretaryship of the Royal Society, when he was acting as Secretary to Henry Cavendish, it was he who informed Lavoisier in June 1783 that Cavendish had burned inflammable air and obtained water. On this information Lavoisier repeated the experiment and solved the problem of the composition of water.

The weather and diseases : some eighteenth-century contributions to observational meteorology

1952 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-307 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Meteorological Observation ◽  
Instrumental Observations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Instrumental Records

Students of the history of science are well aware how rapidly ideas were exchanged, remembering the available means of communication, during the years immediately preceding and following the foundation of the Royal Society. This is very evident in regard to meteorological observation and measurement. Robert Hooke’s daily readings of temperature and rainfall in 1664 are well known and he, with Locke soon afterwards, was quick to stress the need for comparable observations in different places. Accordingly, we in England possess some remarkably early series of records ; of temperature, for example, at Wrentham in Suffolk (1673-1674), and, of course, Towneley’s well-known rainfall record near Burnley (1677-1704). Gadbury kept a very useful diary in London (1669-1689) and while his instrumental observations were few, there is a consistency about his daily recording which accords well with the spirit of the age and that consciousness of time which became so evident not only in the social diarists but among the craftsmen such as Tompion with his clocks. Zeal with regard to maintenance of consistent daily observations has always been very variable. For example, in 1694, Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., while on one of his journeys visited Towneley and much admired his work ; but in his diary he enters that he ‘ had a mind to do likewise, but bethought myself of the tediousness of it ’. Thomas Short of Sheffield in 1749 also commented on the many who began a record but were prone to let it lapse. Prolonged maintenance of daily observations demands an odd and uncommon type of enthusiasm which at intervals has been roused into activity. Perusal of our older records leads one to think that the initial impetus died down about 1710 ; for no English instrumental records of a continuous kind survive, as far as we know, for the period 1716-1722.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

Between History and Nature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.

George Gabriel Stokes

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Dynamics ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Mathematical Analysis ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Natural Philosophers

George Gabriel Stokes was one of the most significant mathematicians and natural philosophers of the nineteenth century. Serving as Lucasian professor at Cambridge he made wide-ranging contributions to optics, fluid dynamics and mathematical analysis. As Secretary of the Royal Society he played a major role in the direction of British science acting as both a sounding board and a gatekeeper. Outside his own area he was a distinguished public servant and MP for Cambridge University. He was keenly interested in the relation between science and religion and wrote extensively on the matter. This edited collection of essays brings together experts in mathematics, physics and the history of science to cover the many facets of Stokes’s life in a scholarly but accessible way.

Recording the Aloes at Chelsea - a singular solution to a difficult problem

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Singular Solution ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
General Series ◽  
History Of

In the Royal Society archives there is a collection of drawings of Aloes and other plants, made by two of the great botanical artists of the eighteenth century - Georg Dionysius Ehret and Jacob van Huysum. Although the Manuscripts General Series Catalogue records this manuscript only as a ‘Volume of 35 botanical paintings by Georg Dionysius Ehret’ of unknown provenance, the manuscript catalogue of the Arundel and other manuscripts, said to be the work of Jonas Dryander (1748-1810), provides the first clue linking these drawings to the two artists, and to the important collection of Aloes growing at that time in the Society of Apothecaries Physic Garden at Chelsea'. The history of the commissioning of the drawings is told briefly in the Journal Books of the Royal Society, and in the Minutes of Council, but the significance of these lovely and important drawings has been almost completely overlooked.

Welcome and introduction

1989 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-96
Keyword(s):  
Advisory Committee ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Imperial College ◽  
Joint Meeting ◽  
Emeritus Professor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

It is my pleasant duty to welcome you all most warmly to this meeting, which is one of the many events stimulated by the advisory committee of the William and Mary Trust on Science and Technology and Medicine, under the Chairmanship of Sir Arnold Burgen, the immediate past Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society. This is a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the British Academy, whose President, Sir Randolph Quirk, will be Chairman this afternoon, and it covers Science and Civilization under William and Mary, presumably with the intention that the Society would cover Science if the Academy would cover Civilization. The meeting has been organized by Professor Rupert Hall, a Fellow of the Academy and also well known to the Society, who is now Emeritus Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Imperial College in the University of London; and Mr Norman Robinson, who retired in 1988 as Librarian to the Royal Society after 40 years service to the Society.

scholarly journals KATEGORIALE SAMLINGER: Eller hvordan man fik indført en vis orden i universet i det 18. århundredes

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Winther Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vantage Points

Following the zoologists of eighteenthcentury Britain from the field to the study this article investigates how animals were categorised in the grand taxonomic systems of the day. The article analyses the epistemological, social and cosmological underpinnings of this particular kind of classificatory collections, showing both how the notions of specimens, species, genera, orders and classes of the taxonomic systems as well as the methods of categorisation were culturally framed, and how the categorisation of animals entailed a categorisation of humans well. The article hence deals with the categorial collections of eighteenth-century zoology from the vantage points of both a history of science and an anthropology of the “totemic” perspective.  

scholarly journals The Body of Sound: Sounding out the History of Science

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Schulze
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western History ◽  
Science History ◽  
Hermann Von Helmholtz ◽  
Material Appearance ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anthropology Of The Senses ◽  
Lower Material

Sound affects and pervades our body in a physical as well as a phenomenological sense: a notion that may sound fairly trivial today. But for a long time in Western history ‘sound’ was no scientific entity. It was looked upon merely as the lower, material appearance of truly higher forces: of more ephemeral, angel-, spirit- or godlike structures – and later of compositional knowledge. To be interested in sound was to be defamed as being unscientific, noncompositional, unmanly. Which steps were taken historically that gradually gave sound the character of a scientific entity? This article moves along recent science history: since the nineteenth century when the physicality of sound and later the corporeality of sonic experiences were first discovered and tentatively described. Exemplary studies from the science history of acoustics, musicology and anthropology of the senses are analysed and restudied – from Hermann von Helmholtz to Michel Serres. Even today, we may ask ourselves: What would an auditorily-founded research be like? Could there be a field of sensory research – via sensing sound?

scholarly journals Robert Hooke, F. R. S. (1635-1703)

1960 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-145 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Hooke’S Law ◽  
Hooke's Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Instruments

The period which saw the foundation of the Royal Society is rich in names remarkable for original achievement in the field of science, but, if we except Newton—and his first paper appeared eleven years after the foundation of the Society which is now being celebrated—none is more noteworthy than Robert Hooke. Without any advantages of birth or influence, poor in health and poor, as a young man, in worldly goods, he carried out work of the first importance in most branches of science then known, and of one branch, meteorology, he may claim to be the founder. Not only was he outstanding as an experimenter and as the inventor of new instruments, but he had an informed imagination which led him to astonishingly correct anticipations of many advances subsequently to be made. Although to many his name is known only through Hooke’s Law, outstanding figures in the history of science have been loud in his praises. Thomas Young wrote of the ‘inexhaustible but neglected mines of nascent inventions, the works of the great Robert Hooke’, a most apt phrase, since Hooke’s work contains so much that is suggestive and original, which his restless spirit lacked time to develop.

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