Perspectival Instruments

Despite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that ‘scientific instruments are perspectival’ has received little critical attention. I show that this claim is best understood as highlighting the dependence of instruments on different perspectives. When closely analysed, instead of constituting a novel epistemic challenge, this dependence can be exploited to mount novel strategies for resolving two old epistemic problems: conceptual relativism and theory ladeness. The novel content of this paper consists in articulating and developing these strategies by introducing two fine-grained notions of perspectives as the key units of analysis: ‘broad perspectives’ and ‘narrow perspectives’

Pierre des Noyers, a scholar and scientific intermediary at the court of Louise-Marie Gonzaga

Pierre des Noyers, secretary of Queen of Poland Louise-Marie Gonzaga, is known for his role as a messenger, envoy, court journalist and sometimes propagandist. His work as an unofficial diplomat for the Queen and ambassador for France is less famous though no less interesting. Even though he was already quite involved in these time-consuming tasks, Pierre des Noyers also acted as a scientific intermediary for the quite curious Queen Louise-Marie of Poland. He maintained contacts with many scholars from France and Italy. He could nurture this network thanks to his position as an informal diplomat at the court of the Queen and his dedication to science in general. Even by discarding his most official and political letters, his known correspondence amounts to several hundred letters written in a period of around 50 years to various friends and scholars. Roberval, Gassendi, Boulliau, Hevelius or Pascal are among these contacts and he plays for most of them the role of a scientific intermediary sharing with them observations, books and anecdotes. His letters are filled with astronomical observations, prodigies and prophecies. Des Noyers was also a practitioner of science. Having possessed a rather large collection of scientific instruments he always sought the improved ones and his daily life was marked by scientific studies. He wrote meteorological bulletins for Academia del Cimento in Florence, studied the measurement of time, observed the sun and showed interest in the inner workings of the human body. This article will delve further into more scientific aspects of Pierre des Noyers’s life, both at the court of Louise-Marie and outside. The first part presents a rough overview of the secretary’s contacts in the scientific environment of 17th Century France and how they were used to connect scholars from Poland with this environment. The second part of this work presents Pierre des Noyers’s practice of science as a tool to understand the world and for which utmost diligence in measurement and practice is required. The last part focuses on des Noyers’s application of this scientific method in two, now pseudo-scientific fields: astrology and divination.

New light on the role of instruments in exploration during the 1830 s

This paper sets out a new interpretation of the agency of scientific instruments in the field. It uses Actor Network Theory as a conceptual framework, which invokes the concept of non-human agency, meaning that scientific instruments can affect outcomes and processes. It argues that the instruments taken on expeditions by travellers on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) had agency in knowledge creation simply by being present. Having bequeathed the instruments, the RGS had sanctioned the expedition, and knowledge had to result regardless of whether the instruments had been utilized as intended. The paper builds on the work of historians on the morality of precision, but, by engaging in a detailed comparison of rhetoric and action in two case studies, it suggests a different approach. Observing the strategies of the RGS for knowledge creation in varying circumstances, it argues that the instruments had agency owing to their embedded resource rather than their tangible numerical outputs. The instruments did not always work as mediators between humans and natural phenomena, as the human actants were not able to exploit them as such. Nevertheless, they had agency in knowledge creation as their presence ensured success. The paper is based on published and unpublished material, the latter in the RGS–Institute of British Geographers archives.

Analysis of the Effect of Reflected Shock Waves in the Experimental Chamber

As part of the research in the field of vacuum chamber pumping in the Environmental Electron Microscope, research on supersonic flow through apertures is being carried out at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Technology of Brno University of Technology in cooperation with the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the CAS. This paper deals with the influence of reflected shock waves on the resulting flow in the pumped part of the Experimental Chamber.

Mathematical and Physical Analysis of Pressure Gradient in the Experimental Chamber for Subsequent Comparison with Optical Methods

As a part of the research in the field of pumping vacuum chambers in the Environmental Electron Microscope, a research on supersonic flow through the Appertures is being carried out at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Technology of the Brno University of Technology in cooperation with the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Czech Academy of Science. This paper deals with the possibility of investigating shock waves using the Shlieren optical method, which allows to observe pressure gradients as the first derivation of pressure.

Mathematical and Physical Analysis of the Effect of Conical and Detached Shock Waves at the Tip of a Static Probe in an Experimental Chamber

As part of the research in the field of pumping vacuum chambers in the Environmental Electron Microscope, research on supersonic flow through apertures is being carried out at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Technology of the Brno University of Technology in cooperation with the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the CAS. This paper deals with the influence of the shape of the static probe cone design for static pressure measurements in the supersonic flow regime in the Experimental Chamber. The cone of the probe has an effect on the shape of the shock wave, which significantly influences the detected static pressure value.