Contribution and Co-production: The Collaborative Culture of Linnaean Botany

This essay aims to elucidate the collaborative dimension of the knowledge-making process in eighteenth-century Linnaean botany. Due to its ever increasing and potentially infinite need for information, Linnaean botany had to rely more and more heavily on the accumulation and aggregation of contributions by many people. This, in turn, had a crucial impact on the genesis and form of botanical publications: the more comprehensive the project, the larger the effect. It was the botanist Carl Linnaeus who managed to establish himself as the centre of this contributory knowledge-making process. Given the exponential growth in the number of known species and the resulting need for observation, this was the necessary condition which allowed him continuously to update and correct his systematic works, and allowed them to maintain their status as the central catalogues of a global botany for decades.     

The Challenge of Colour: Eighteenth-Century Botanists and the Hand-Colouring of Illustrations

Colourful plant images are often taken as the icon of natural history illustration. However, so far, little attention has been paid to the question of how this beautiful colouring was achieved. At a case study of the eighteenth-century Nuremberg doctor and botanist, Christoph Jacob Trew, the process of how illustrations were hand-coloured, who was involved in this work, and how the colouring was supervised and evaluated is reconstructed, mostly based on Trew's correspondence with the engraver and publisher of his books, Johann Jacob Haid in Augsburg. Furthermore, the question of standardizing colours, their uses and their recipes is discussed at two examples of the same time period: the colour charts of the Bauer brothers, arguably the most renowned botanical draughtsmen of the period, and the colour tables by the Regensburg naturalist, Jacob Christian Schaeffer. Hand-colouring botanical illustrations, it is argued, was far from a straightforward task but confronted botanists and their employees with a plethora of practical and methodological problems, to which different solutions were developed in the course of time. Analysing these problems and solutions reveals some new and interesting aspects of the practices of eighteenth-century botany and of the production of scientific illustrations in general.     

Theophrastus on Lyngurium: Medieval and Early Modern Lore from the Classical Lapidary Tradition

The ancient philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371-285 BC) described a gemstone called lyngurium, purported to be solidified lynx urine, in his work De lapidibus ('On Stones'). Knowledge of the stone passed from him to other classical authors and into the medieval lapidary tradition, but there it was almost always linked to the 'learned master Theophrastus'. Although no physical example of the stone appears to have been seen or touched in ancient, medieval, or early modern times, its physical and medicinal properties were continually reiterated and elaborated as if it did 'exist'. By the seventeenth century, it began to disappear from lapidaries, but with no attempt to explain previous authors' errors since it had never 'existed' anyway. In tracing the career of lyngurium, this study sheds some light on the transmission of knowledge from the classical world to the Renaissance and the changing criteria by which such knowledge was judged.     

Charles de Bovelles's treatise on the regular polyhedra (Paris, 1511)

The mathematical works of the French philosopher Charles de Bovelles (c. 1479–1566) have received little attention from historians of scientific thought. At the University of Paris, Bovelles studied under Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, sharing with him a high regard for the Christian Neoplatonic philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa. One aspect of Cusanus's philosophy (described in his major work, On Learned Ignorance) was particularly favoured by Lefèvre and Bovelles: the use of geometrical symbolism to provide mathematical guidance to the divine. While Lefèvre was preparing an edition of Cusanus's works (Paris, 1514), Bovelles wrote a treatise of his own, in which the geometry of the five polyhedra was used to provide an approach to the mystery of the Trinity. Seen in the context of Renaissance syncretism of Platonism and Christianity, Bovelles's treatise adds a theological layer of interpretation to the literal meaning of the polyhedral physics described by Plato in the Timaeus. In so doing, it contributes to the discussion of a problem that was later to concern several Renaissance philosophers and cosmologists, including, at the end of the century, Johannes Kepler.     

世界植物园的现状与展望

世界植物园的发展史，是一部人类加深认识、进行保护和扩大利用植物的历史。随着植物园数量的增长，植物园可分为综合性、园林和观赏园艺、经济植物及种质保存等类型。当前植物瞻的任务主要为植物多样性的保护、植物资源利用、展示教育与咨询和科学研究。由于植物资源的竞争更加激烈但规范化、管理更加现代化与科学化、植物园更加开放与联合，展望植物园今后的发展，可能将在植物园学和科学植物园、专类园建设及群落建园、植物园信息管理系统、虚拟植物园与科普、植物园网络化、推动植物资源可持续利用等方面不断加强与完善。     

Jewish theologies of space in the scientific revolution: Henry More,Joseph Raphson,Isaac Newton and their predecessors

Theological speculations on God's relation to place and space were introduced into the Jewish tradition by the early rabbis, initially in response to the previous appearance of words like māqôm (place) in Biblical literature. In the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers modified these rabbinical ideas in the context of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and anti-Aristotelian currents within Jewish thought. One development in medieval Jewish thought of special interest for the development of ideas of space was the rise of Cabala, which Christian thinkers of the Renaissance and early modern periods saw as a sacred and primeval deposit of wisdom akin to prisca theologia. Both Henry More and, under More's influence, Joseph Raphson made use of Cabalist ideas in developing their own theologies of space. Isaac Newton was aware of these Jewish ideas but for the most part repudiated them, while making some use of māqôm as an expression of God's omnipresence.     

Is the classical limit “singular”?

We argue against claims that the classical ? → 0 limit is “singular” in a way that frustrates an eliminative reduction of classical to quantum physics. We show one precise sense in which quantum mechanics and scaling behavior can be used to recover classical mechanics exactly, without making prior reference to the classical theory. To do so, we use the tools of strict deformation quantization, which provides a rigorous way to capture the ? → 0 limit. We then use the tools of category theory to demonstrate one way that this reduction is explanatory: it illustrates a sense in which the structure of quantum mechanics determines that of classical mechanics.     

John case on art and nature

John Case (d. 1600), the most important English Aristotelian of the Renaissance period, has not yet received the attention he deserves. In his Lapis philosophicus (Oxford, 1599), an exposition of Aristotle's Physics, is found a discussion of the relation of nature to art which parallels in many ways that formulated a few years later in the writings of Francis Bacon. Case argues, in a way more reminiscent of the works of Giambattista della Porta than of those of Aristotle, that the natural philosopher can legitimately apply the productive arts in helping nature to fulfill her function. Moreover, while rejecting the excessive claims of the Paracelsians, Case does accept the transmutational claims of the alchemists. In the final analysis, his ‘Aristotelianism’ has been tempered by the tradition of Renaissance natural magic. Like many other Peripatetic thinkers of the period, Case shows himself to be an eclectic, drawing materials from a wide variety of sources and open to many of the new scientific tendencies then developing.     

The natures of numbers in and around Bombelli’s L’algebra

The purpose of this article is to analyse the mathematical practices leading to Rafael Bombelli’s L’algebra (1572). The context for the analysis is the Italian algebra practiced by abbacus masters and Renaissance mathematicians of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. We will focus here on the semiotic aspects of algebraic practices and on the organisation of knowledge. Our purpose is to show how symbols that stand for underdetermined meanings combine with shifting principles of organisation to change the character of algebra.     

‘And Eden from the Chaos rose’: utopian order and rebellion in the Oxford Physick Garden

Abel Evans's poem Vertumnus (1713) celebrates Jacob Bobart the Younger, second keeper of the Oxford Physick Garden (now the Oxford University Botanic Garden), as a model monarch to his botanical subjects. This paper takes Vertumnus as a point of departure from which to explore the early history of the Physick Garden (founded 1621), situating botanical collections and collecting spaces within utopian visions and projects as well as debates about order more widely in the turbulent seventeenth-century. Three perspectives on the Physick Garden as an ordered collection are explored: the architecture of the quadripartite Garden, with particular attention to the iconography of the Danby Gate; the particular challenges involved in managing living collections, whose survival depends on the spatial order regulating the microclimates in which they grow; and the taxonomic ordering associated with the hortus siccus collections. A final section on the ideal ‘Botanick throne’ focuses on the metaphor of the state as a garden in the period, as human and botanical subjects resist being order and can rebel, but also respond to right rule and wise cultivation. However, the political metaphor is Evans’s; there is little to suggest that Bobart himself was driven by utopian, theological and political visions.     

The genesis of a mediaeval historian: Pierre Duhem and the origins of statics

Contrary to what might be expected given a religious or other motivation, Pierre Duhem's interest in mediaeval science was the result of his surprise encounter with Jordanus de Nemore while working on Les origines de la statique in the late autumn of 1903. Historical assumptions common among physicists at that time may explain this surprise, which occasioned a frantic search for more mediaeval precursors for Renaissance mechanics. It also raised serious historiographical problems that threatened even his methodological views, until they were resolved in his To save the phenomena of 1908.     

Zur kristallmorphologischen Eiweisstestung von Samen

Summary The method of sensitive copper II-chloride crystallization has proved to be suitable for tests with biological protein substances.Seed and parts of seed taken from Leguminosae and Gramineae were tested. These two botanical families form typical and reproducible crystal patterns of cupric chloride.     

Reviving material theories of induction

John Norton says that philosophers have been led astray for thousands of years by their attempt to treat induction formally. He is correct that such an attempt has caused no end of trouble, but he is wrong about the history. There is a rich tradition of non-formal induction. In fact, material theories of induction prevailed all through antiquity and from the Renaissance to the mid-1800s. Recovering these past systems would not only fill lacunae in Norton’s own theory but would highlight areas where Norton has not freed himself from the straightjacket of formal induction as much as he might think. This essay begins that recovery.     

Quantum sidelights on The Material Theory of Induction

John Norton's The Material Theory of Induction bristles with fresh insights and provocative ideas that provide a much needed stimulus to a stodgy if not moribund field. I use quantum mechanics (QM) as a medium for exploring some of these ideas. First, I note that QM offers more predictability than Newtonian mechanics for the Norton dome and other cases where classical determinism falters. But this ability of QM to partially cure the ills of classical determinism depends on facts about the quantum Hamiltonian operator that vary from case to case, providing an illustration of Norton's theme of the importance of contingent facts for inductive reasoning. Second, I agree with Norton that Bayesianism as developed for classical probability theory does not constitute a universal inference machine, and I use QM to explain the sense in which this is so. But at the same time I defend a brand of quantum Bayesianism as providing an illuminating account of how physicists' reasoning about quantum events. Third, I argue that if the probabilities induced by quantum states are regarded as objective chances then there are strong reasons to think that fair infinite lotteries are impossible in a quantum world.     

Use of Cowan strain I of Staphylococcus aureus for radio-immunological determination of retrovirus proteins]

The use of Staphylococcus aureus for the radio-immunoassay of C-type virus polypeptides provided very specific results and proved to present several advantages over the classical methods of precipitation of immune complexes.     

The puzzle of canonical transformations in early quantum mechanics

The essential role of classical mechanics in the “old quantum theory” is well known. With the rise of a genuine quantum formalism, classical analogies remained a powerful heuristic tool. However, classical insights soon proved problematic, and in some cases, even counterproductive. The case of the implementation of quantum canonical transformations provides a distinguished case study for the historian studying the circumstances which led to the transformation theory of London, Dirac and Jordan.The attempts to use canonical transformations in strict analogy to classical practice met serious difficulties as soon as one tried to accommodate the action-angle scheme. At some point, the very consistency of quantization went addressed because of the unclear quantum equivalence of classically equivalent Hamiltonians.The early attempts, often beset with ill-defined problems, are illustrative of the lack of understanding of the underlying mathematical scheme. The latter had to be properly appraised before the problem of the meaning of changing variables in quantum theory could be solved. This is why the latter proved instrumental in the discovery of transformation theory.Some of the problems which arose then are still highly instructive from the foundational point of view, and worth to be rediscovered, beyond their historical interest.     

Mathematics, technics, and courtly life in Late Renaissance Urbino

The present article seeks to provide an overview of the general characteristics of the cultural and scientific climate in the Duchy of Urbino. Three of the Duchy’s milieus seem to have been particularly important for scholars who were engaged in the study of mathematics: the so-called “School of Urbino”, the environment of the court, and the world of the technicians and engineers. While the Urbino School has already been the object of previous studies, the other two milieus and their effect on the mathematicians’ work have been rather neglected and are, consequently, addressed here. The paper’s final section presents some documents that attest the importance of Renaissance scholars’ interaction with these environments to their actual scientific activity, taking the case of Guidobaldo dal Monte as an example.     

Interprétation chymique de la création et origine corpusculaire de la vie chez Athanasius Kircher

The famous Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) tried to interpret the Creation of the world and to explain the origin of life in the last book of his geocosmic encyclopedia, Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1664–1665). His interpretation largely depended on the ‘concept of seeds’ which was derived from the tradition of Renaissance ‘chymical’ (chemical and alchemical) philosophy. The impact of Paracelsianism on his vision of the world is also undeniable. Through this undertaking, Kircher namely developed a corpuscular theory for the spontaneous generation of living beings. The present study examines this theory and its relationship with Kircher's chymical interpretation of the Creation in order to place it in its own intellectual and historical context and will uncover one of its most important sources.