scholarly journals Alchemists, Epics, and Heroes: The Rhetorical Construction of the Seventeenth Century Experimental Philosopher

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer O'Meara
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Construction ◽  
Experimental Philosopher

The Mariner’s Sextant and the Royal Society

1978 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Practical Problem ◽  
Heavenly Body ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Experimental Philosopher ◽  
Measuring Devices ◽  
Physical Principles

ONE would be hard pressed to name a device superior to the mariner’s sextant by which physical principles are better adapted to solve a relatively simple practical problem. The sextant, an instrument superbly elegant in its simplicity, designed merely to measure accurately the altitude of a heavenly body from a platform as unstable as the heaving deck of a ship at sea, is ideal for its purpose. The first part of this paper describes the principal altitude measuring devices employed during the Golden Age of Discoveries. It covers a period of about a quarter of a millennium from the time when Portuguese mariners under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) first struck out to navigate the open Atlantic, to the time when Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the eminent experimental philosopher of the seventeenth century, first described, in 1666, a reflecting instrument for measuring altitudes at sea.

Salivary Conditioning in the Seventeenth Century.

1963 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jozef Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century

Transmission of Renaissance herbal images to China: the Beitang copy of Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and its annotations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-253
Author(s):  
Wu Huiyi ◽  
Zheng Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
National Library ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Northern Chinese ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Animal Names ◽  
National Library Of China ◽  
Made In

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.

Annotations in copies of Thomas Johnson's Mercurius botanicus (1634) and Mercurii botanici, pars altera (1641): authorship and provenance

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Edgington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Original Owner ◽  
Thomas Wilson ◽  
Royal Botanic Gardens

By an analysis of extensive and detailed annotations in copies of Thomas Johnson's Mercurius botanicus (1634) and Mercurii botanici, pars altera (1641) held in the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the probable author is identified as William Bincks, an apprentice apothecary of Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. Through Elias Ashmole, a friend of Bincks' master Thomas Agar, a link is established with the probable original owner, John Watlington of Reading, botanist and apothecary, and colleague of Thomas Johnson. The route by which the book ended up in the hands of Thomas Wilson, a journeyman copyist of Leeds, is suggested. Plants growing near Kingston-upon-Thames in the late seventeenth century, recorded in manuscript, are noted, many being first records for the county of Surrey.

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