The story of ‘Scientist: The Story of a Word’

This examination of an important paper by Sydney Ross is the first in a projected series of occasional reflections on ‘Annals of Science Classic Papers’ that have had enduring utility within the field of history of science and beyond. First the messages of the paper are examined, some well known but others, particularly Ross's own contemporary concerns about the use of the word ‘scientist’, less so. The varied uses made of the paper by scholars are then traced before Ross's biography is examined in order to try to understand how a figure professionally marginal to the field of history of science came to write such a significant piece. Ross’s interest in the topic appears to have been informed by a romantically tinged scientific progressivism and a deep concern with the importance of linguistic precision in science and in public affairs. The inspirations of the author and the interests of his audience have been only partially aligned, but the paper's insights remain of broad historical interest and have wider ramifications since the denotation ‘scientist’ and its proper application are much debated today in contests over the authority of science.     

The ‘Chemistry of Space’: The Sources of Hermann Grassmann's Scientific Achievements

Albert Lewis's article (Annals of Science, 1977) analysing the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher on Hermann Grassmann, stimulated many different studies on the founder of n-dimensional outer algebra.

Following a brief outline of the various, sometimes diverging, analyses of Grassmann's creative thinking, new research is presented which confirms Lewis's original contribution and widens it considerably. It will be shown that:

i.?Grassmann, although a self-taught mathematician, was at the centre of a hitherto understated intellectual trend, which was defining for Germany. Initiated by Pestalozzi's concept of elementary mathematical education and culminating in the modern mathematics of the late 19th Century, it was reflected in the contributions of Grassmann, Riemann, Jacobi and Eisenstein.

ii.?Hermann Grassmann, his father Justus, and his brother Robert were all demonstrably influenced by Schleiermacher's dialectic; however the two brothers responded to it in very different ways.

iii.?Whilst the more philosophical parts of Hermann's 1844 Extension Theory are characterised by the influence of Schleiermacher and also by the mathematical knowledge of his father, the entire development of this work is the unfolding of a single idea based on the father's interpretation of combinatorial multiplication as a ‘chemical conjunction‘, which was developed largely dialectically by Hermann.     

A myth revealed: The case of the ‘Beeldsnyder achromatic objective’

This paper examines the efforts of two young Russian chemists during the late 1850s and early 1860s to establish a professional chemistry journal and a public laboratory for chemistry research in Russia. These two, N. N. Sokolov and A. N. Engel' gardt, were important participants in the early efforts to institutionalize and professionalize chemistry in Russia. However, both the chemistry laboratory and the chemistry journal ended after only a few years. The chemistry journal was curtailed not because of Government interference, as is sometimes asserted, but because of a conflict over editorial policy and independence. The chemistry laboratory was closed and the equipment donated to St Petersburg University when Sokolov was appointed to the position of adjunct there.     

‘Natures’ and ‘Laws’: The making of the concept of law of nature – Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253) and Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292)

Contemporary scholars set the Greek conception of an immanent natural order in opposition to the seventeenth century mechanistic conception of extrinsic laws imposed upon nature from without. By contrast, we argue that in the process of making the concept of law of nature, forms and laws were coherently used in theories of natural causation. We submit that such a combination can be found in the thirteenth century. The heroes of our claim are Robert Grosseteste who turned the idea of corporeal form into the common feature of matter, and Roger Bacon who described the effects of that common feature. Bacon detached the explanatory principle from matter and rendered it independent and therefore external to natural substances. Our plausibility argument, anchored in close reading of the relevant texts, facilitates a coherent conception of both ‘natures’ and ‘laws’.     

‘The accomplishment of many years’: Three notes towards a history of the sand-glass

The first note examines current assumptions about the medieval origins of the sand-glass and underlines the defective nature of our knowledge. The second note suggests a possible etymology for an unusual fifteenth-century English term for the instrument. The third note assembles such evidence as can be found on the price of sand-glasses and the structure of the trade that produced them.     

The ‘Darwin-Marx correspondence’: a correction and revision

The logical links between the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of creation and the practice of natural philosophy on the one hand, and the rejection of belief in demonic agency on the other, were made explicit in the seventeenth century by, among others, Balthasar Bekker (1634–98), whose ideas I argue to have been not without influence. In section 1, I present the accounts of three historians of the opposition to belief in witchcraft and of the decline of the witch-persecution, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Keith Thomas, and Brian Easlea. In section 2, I maintain that Bekker has been underestimated both by Trevor-Roper and by Easlea. In section 3, I investigate more generally some of the connections between the new natural philosophy and belief in supernatural interventions, cast doubt on the view that rejection of belief in witchcraft and the devil requires rejection of belief in creation, and thus supplement or qualify the accounts of Trevor-Roper, Thomas, and Easlea of why belief in witchcraft faded away.     

Boyle’s teleological mechanism and the myth of immanent teleology

According to recent commentators, medieval natural philosophers endorsed immanent teleology, the view that natural agents possess immanent active powers to achieve certain ends. Moreover, some scholars have argued that Robert Boyle, despite his intentions, failed to eliminate immanent teleology from his natural philosophy. I argue in this paper that it is not at all clear that immanent teleology was widely endorsed in the medieval period. Moreover, I argue that a proper understanding of immanent teleology, and why it was rejected by mainstream medieval natural philosophers, reveals that Boyle did not fail to eliminate immanent teleology from his natural philosophy. I conclude that any attempt to describe the break between medieval and early modern natural philosophy in terms of a break with immanent teleology is likely not on target.     

The proton Compton wavelength as the ‘quantum’ of length

Résumé La plupart des longueurs expérimentales concernant les forces fondamentales dans le nucleus sont des multiples intégraux de la longueur d'onde Compton, ₀, du proton, où ₀=h/m ₀ c=1.32×10^–13 cm (qui peut ainsi s'appeler un « compton »). Ces longueurs comprennent la portée effective des interactions des nucléons, et les amplitudes de dispersion.On a également trouvé par différentes méthodes que le radius d'unité,R ₀, du nucleus se situe entre 1,0 et 1,5 × 10^–13 cm. Il semble donc que le vrai radius du proton peut bien être sa longueur d'onde Compton.     

The folding process of hen lysozyme: a perspective from the ‘new view’

How a conformationally disordered polypeptide chain rapidly and efficiently achieves its well-defined native structure is still a major question in modern structural biology. Although much progress has been made towards rationalizing the principles of protein structure and dynamics, the mechanism of the folding process and the determinants of the final fold are not yet known in any detail. One protein for which folding has been studied in great detail by a combination of diverse techniques is hen lysozyme. In this article we review the present state of our knowledge of the folding process of this enzyme and focus in particular on recent experiments to probe some of its specific features. These results are then discussed in the context of the ‘new view’ of protein folding based on energy surfaces and land scapes. It is shown that a schematic energy surface for lysozyme folding, which is broadly consistent with our experimental data, begins to provide a unified model for protein folding through which experimental and theoretical ideas can be brought together.     

‘The happy thought of a single man’: On the legendary beginnings of a style of reasoning

In this paper I direct attention to one feature of Hacking’s recent work on styles of reasoning and argue that this feature is of far greater philosophical significance than Hacking’s limited discussion of this suggests. The feature in question is his use of ‘legendary beginnings’ in setting out a given style, viz. the method of introducing a style of reasoning by recounting a popular and quasi-mythical narrative that ties the crystallisation of that style to a particular person in a particular place and at a particular time. Whilst Hacking both deploys and discusses this method, his comments suggest that this is primarily a stylistic device employed for reasons of expedience. In contrast, it is argued here that recounting the legendary origins of a style of reasoning affords a distinctive way of vindicating that style, a vindication from within the style itself.     

The ‘nec plus ultra’ of precision measurement: Geodesy and the forgotten purpose of the Metre Convention

Geodesy—the determination of the size and shape of the earth—has often been the science operating at the frontier of precision in the measurement of length. Its contribution to the technologies and standards of length measurement has, however, been underestimated in the literature. That, instead, places emphasis on the on the creation and international acceptance of the metric system as a whole. By new research into the standards-in-use of the community of geodesists, I rediscover the original purpose of the Metre Convention of 1875, and show for the first time the significant influence of geodesy on the standardisation of length measurement thereafter. I emphasise the role of the coherence of the web of measurement in the context of change and improvement in standards.     

The ‘Società degli Spettroscopisti Italiani’: birth and evolution

The anniversary of the death of Pietro Tacchini (1838–1905), one of the pioneers of solar physics in Italy, is commemorared by this account of his major creation, the Società degli Spettroscopisti Italiani (1871). Established to promote cooperation among solar spectroscopists engaged in the study of the solar chromosphere, it was the first scientific Society devoted to spectroscopy and its astronomical applications. Its journal, the Memorie, collected most of the important works on solar physics by Angelo Secchi SJ (1818–1878), Tacchini himself, and many other protagonists of the newly born astrophysics. A brief history of the Society and its development draws on many previously unexploited archival sources, in order to show its role in raising astrophysics to the status of a scientific discipline, in the context of the astronomical research of that time in Italy and abroad, especially in the USA.     

Berthelot's anti-atomism: A ‘matter of taste’?

The influential French chemist Marcelin Berthelot spoke against the use of Dalton's atomic theory and Avogadro's hypothesis in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper argues that Berthelot conceded that atomism might be acceptable as a system of conventions, but he feared the power of such conventions in constructing a realistic picture of atoms which was not warranted empirically. Equally, Berthelot's anti-atomism was a last-ditch effort to assert the place of chemistry within the tradition of natural history and to deny the possible reduction of chemical science to the laws of nineteenth-century physics.     

Modulation of an ‘equilibrium enzyme’: Ecological evidence

Summary The activity of D-lactate dehydrogenase in the foot of the snail,Helix pomatia, is closely correlated with time of year and mean daily temperature, and increases strikingly after the animals have been exposed to a nitrogen atmosphere for 24 h.I thank U. Platzer for technical assistance and D. Frank for help with the statistics. The investigation was supported by the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung in Österreich, project No. 1257 and 2919.     

The problem of ‘conditioning’ the action of antiphlogistic corticoids by the thyroid gland

Zusammenfassung Experimentell wurde die Wirkung von Prednison und Hydrocortisonacetat auf die Entwicklung des Fremdk?rpergranuloms an intakten und an thyreoid- und parathyreoidektomierten Tieren untersucht. Nach beidseitiger Thyreoidektomie konnte keine Unterdrückung der entwicklungshemmenden Effekte der Corticoide festgestellt werden.