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Lenses and Waves
In 1690, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) published Traité de la Lumière, containing his renowned wave theory of light. It is considered a landmark in seventeenth-century science, for the way Huygens mathematized the corpuscular nature of light and his probabilistic conception of natural knowledge. This book discusses the development of Huygens' wave theory, reconstructing the winding road that eventually led to Traité de la Lumière. For the first time, the full range of manuscript sources is taken into account. In addition, the development of Huygens' thinking on the nature of light is put in the context of his optics as a whole, which was dominated by his lifelong pursuit of theoretical ...
The Origins of the Telescope
The origins of the telescope have been discussed and debated since shortly after the instrument's appearance in The Hague in 1608. Civic and national pride have led local dignitaries, popular writers, and numerous scholars to search the archives and to construct sharply divergent histories. Did the honor of the invention belong to the Dutch, to the Italians, to the English, or to the Spanish? And if the city of Middelburg in the Netherlands was, in fact, the cradle of the instrument, was the "true inventor" Hans Lipperhey or his rival Zacharias Jansen? Or was the instrument there before anyone knew it? Over the past several decades, a group of historians and scientists have sought out new documents, re-examined familiar ones, and tested early lenses and telescopes. This volume contains the proceedings of a symposium held in Middelburg in September 2008 to mark 400 years of the telescope. The essays in it, taken as a whole, present a new and convincing account of the origins of the instrument that changed mankind's vision of the universe.
Rethinking Stevin, Stevin Rethinking
This book studies the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620) as a new type of ‘man of knowledge’. Stevin exemplifies a wider trend of polymathy in the early modern period. Polymaths played a crucial role in the transformation of European learning.
Isaac Vossius (1618-1689) between Science and Scholarship
Mostly remembered for his library and for his biblical criticism, Isaac Vossius (1618-1689) played a central role in the early modern European world of learning. Taking his cue from the unlikely bedfellows Joseph Scaliger and René Descartes, Vossius published on chronology, biblical criticism, optics, African geography and Chinese civilization, while collecting, annotating and selling one of the century’s most precious libraries. He was appointed an early Fellow of the Royal Society, and moved in the circles which later gave rise to the Académie Royale des Sciences. Together with Christiaan Huygens, he was considered the Dutch Republic’s foremost student of nature. In this volume, a range of authors analyse Vossius’ participation in the full spectrum of the Republic of Letters, much of which has sadly been written out of the history of both scholarship and science. Contributors include: Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Karel Davids, Thijs Weststeijn, Colette Nativel, Susan Derksen and Astrid C. Balsem
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
Containing 609 encyclopedic articles written by more than 200 prominent scholars, The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science presents an unparalleled history of the field invaluable to anyone with an interest in the technology, ideas, discoveries, and learned institutions that have shaped our world over the past five centuries. Focusing on the period from the Renaissance to the early twenty-first century, the articles cover all disciplines (Biology, Alchemy, Behaviorism), historical periods (the Scientific Revolution, World War II, the Cold War), concepts (Hypothesis, Space and Time, Ether), and methodologies and philosophies (Observation and Experiment, Darwinism). Coverage is in...
The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age
This volume is the first to adopt systematically a comparative approach to the role of ancient texts and traditions in early modern scholarship, science, medicine, and theology. It offers a new method for understanding early modern knowledge.
Silent Messengers
This book speaks about a world of mute objects ranging from plant bulbs, divining rods, and archeological findings to drawn, painted, or printed images. It describes the functions of these objects as ambiguous and polyvalent carriers of knowledge, and it analyzes the ways in which networks of scholars, craftsmen, mathematicians, anatomy professors, or merchants active in the Low Countries attributed new meanings to them. The book examines a period in which cities like Antwerp and Amsterdam were nodal points in the international exchange of goods, news, and skills. (Series: Low Countries Studies on the Circulation of Natural Knowledge - Vol. 1)
On the Theory of the Reflection and Refraction of Light
1997 - the centennial year of the electron - provides a good occasion to publish the first English translation ever made of H.A. Lorentz's doctoral dissertation of 1875. Just 22 years old, Lorentz took up and handled magisterially one major unresolved problem of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, the reflection and refraction of light. By then the superiority of Maxwell's electromagnetic ether theory over current elastic solid conceptions such as Fresnel's was not nearly a settled issue. In his dissertation, Lorentz strove with considerable success to make it that. Still, he found that neither theory allowed for a satisfactory account of dispersion. One intriguing aspect of Lorentz's earliest...
How Modern Science Came Into the World
Once upon a time 'The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century' was an innovative concept that inspired a stimulating narrative of how modern science came into the world. Half a century later, what we now know as 'the master narrative' serves rather as a strait-jacket - so often events and contexts just fail to fit in. No attempt has been made so far to replace the master narrative. H. Floris Cohen now comes up with precisely such a replacement. Key to his path-breaking analysis-cum-narrative is a vision of the Scientific Revolution as made up of six distinct yet narrowly interconnected, revolutionary transformations, each of some twenty-five to thirty years' duration. This vision enables him to explain how modern science could come about in Europe rather than in Greece, China, or the Islamic world. It also enables him to explain how half-way into the 17th century a vast crisis of legitimacy could arise and, in the end, be overcome.
Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics: An Historic-Axiomatic Approach
This unique textbook presents a novel, axiomatic pedagogical path from classical to quantum physics. Readers are introduced to the description of classical mechanics, which rests on Euler’s and Helmholtz’s rather than Newton’s or Hamilton’s representations. Special attention is given to the common attributes rather than to the differences between classical and quantum mechanics. Readers will also learn about Schrödinger’s forgotten demands on quantization, his equation, Einstein’s idea of ‘quantization as selection problem’. The Schrödinger equation is derived without any assumptions about the nature of quantum systems, such as interference and superposition, or the existen...
