The Dawn of Scientific Biography

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Michael Segre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Model

Abstract This article endeavors to contribute to a better understanding of the literary contexts of early biographies of scientists written during the Scientific Revolution. To what extent are these biographies influenced by stereotypes that are an inadequate fit for modern history of science? Its claim is that there was, indeed, a literary model for biographies of scientists, and that this model had deep roots in Biblical and classical literature. While the model was similar to that used in Renaissance biographies of artists, it did not fully emerge until as late as the seventeenth century.

History of Science and Medicine

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Growth Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.

Wonderful Works of Nature: C.S. Lewis and Reijer Hooykaas on Francis Bacon and the Scientific Revolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-209
Author(s):  
Arend Smilde
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good For

This article examines a disagreement which briefly came to light decades ago, half-posthumously, between two twentieth-century Christian scholars, C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) and Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994), the first Dutch professor in the history of science, who later succeeded to the chair of Eduard Dijksterhuis in Utrecht. Hooykaas and Lewis diverge in their views of the role traditionally ascribed to the work of Francis Bacon (1561–1626) as a major inspiration for the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. Put briefly, while Bacon is a hero for Hooykaas, he is an antihero for Lewis. Sorting out the extent to which either scholar was right not only results in a fairly clear answer but entails, as a bonus, a fine example of what the history of science as an academic discipline is indeed good for.

LITERARY-AESTHETIC POSITIONS IN EPISTOLAR SOURCES

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-27
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
Unique Information ◽  
Scientific Dialogue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
Literary Environment ◽  
Literary Aesthetic

Scientific correspondence in archives is an integral part of Russian Oriental studies. The names of Russian scientists complement each other with unique information about the study of the Uzbek classical literature, the creation of works, the scientific and literary environment of this period as an integral part of their scientific activities. Through epistolary sources one can get an idea about the exchange of opinions, reviews, criticism, literary and aesthetic views. In this regard, the scientific dialogue between A. Samoylovich, V. Barthold, I. Yu. Krachkovsky, V. Gordlevsky, N. Ostroumov, A. Semenov and other scientists are noteworthy. Considering that this aspect of the matter has not yet been studied in the Uzbek literature, the study of epistolary sources enriches the history of science with new facts and reveals more information the scientific biography of scientists. The article discusses the scientific correspondence of Academician A.N. Samoylovich in archives.

The Social and Economic Causes of the Revolution in the Mathematical Sciences in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England

1975 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Laws Of Motion ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
The Revolution

Some such expression as “the scientific revolution in England” is often used in referring to the period in seventeenth-century history in which, under English auspices and the leadership of mathematical scientists of whom many were English or worked in England (foremost in whose ranks was Isaac Newton), success was finally achieved in formulating quantitative, empirically sound, and predictive laws of motion. In recent years there have appeared several theories of the social and economic causes of this revolution. These theories have had a constructive effect to the extent that they have prompted serious consideration of previously ignored aspects of the history of science. However, without denying their value in this regard, they are at best inadequate. The purpose of this essay is not to review or to dispute these earlier theories but to propose an alternative to them.

scholarly journals Batalia „szklanej rury”. Współzawodnictwo „starego” i „nowego” w debacie wokół doświadczeń z próżnią z 1647 roku

1970 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Anna Kołos
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Normal Science ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Knowledge Formation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

The article addresses the issue of one of the more intense and captivating European scientific disputes, likewise common to Poland, in the era of the seventeenth-century transformation of knowledge formation, which centered around the possibility of the existence of vacuum, and which culminated in 1647. The fundamental aim of the article comes down to an attempt to determine a position in the scientific-cognitive debate, from which the pro and anti-Polish and European representatives of The Republic of Letters (Respublica literaria)  could voice their opinions. In the course of the analysis of the mid-seventeenth century scientific discourse, the reflections of Valeriano Magni, Torricelli, Jan Brożek, Wojciech Wijuk Kojałowicz, Blaise Pascal, Giovanni Elefantuzzi, Jacob Pierius, and Pierre Guiffart are subjected to close scrutiny. From the perspective of contextualism in the history of science, experiments demonstrating the existence of vacuum are perceived as anomalies that fall into the crisis of normal science, largely based on Aristotle’s physics. The conflict between the old and the new is not, however, presented as a battle of progression with epigonism, but merely as a contest between opposing individual views and the concept of science, which before the formation of the new paradigm was accompanied by ambiguous verification criteria.

The History of Science as European Self-Portraiture

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORRAINE DASTON
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
World History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

Since the Enlightenment, the history of science has been enlisted to show the unity and distinctiveness of Europe. This paper, written on the occasion of the award of the 2005 Erasmus Prize to historians of science Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, traces the intertwined narratives of the history of science and European modernity from the 18th century to the present. Whether understood as triumph or tragedy (and there have been eloquent proponents of both views), the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as Europe's decisive break with tradition – the first such break in world history and the model for all subsequent epics of modernization in other cultures. The paper concludes with reflections on how a new history of science, exemplified in the work of Shapin and Schaffer, may transform the self-image of Europe and conceptions of truth itself.

Al-Bīrūnī on Hermetic Forgery

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-66
Author(s):  
Kevin van Bladel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Reception History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hermes Trismegistus

AbstractIn Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recognized that the Arabic works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were inventions of recent centuries falsely written in the name of the ancient sage of legend. He did, however, accept the existence of a historical Hermes and even attempted to establish his chronology. This article presents al-Bīrūnī’s statements about this and contextualizes his view of the Arabic Hermetica as he derived it from Arabic chronographic sources. Al-Bīrūnī’s argument is compared with the celebrated seventeenth-century European criticism of the Greek Hermetica by Isaac Casaubon. It documents a hitherto unknown but significant event in the reception history of the Hermetica and helps to illustrate al-Bīrūnī’s attitude toward the history of science.

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