Books in the Archimedes series

This book is an annotated translation of Xu Shuwei's (1080-1154) collection of 90 medical case records - Ninety Discussions of Cold Damage Disorders (shanghan jiushi lun ) - which was the first such collection in China.

This book offers a comprehensive study and account of the co-evolution of technological and scientific literature in the early modern period (1450-1750). It examines the various relationships of these literatures in six areas of knowledge ¿ Architecture, Chemistry, Gunnery, Mechanical Engineering, Mining, and Practical Mathematics ¿ which represent the main types of advanced technological and scientific knowledge of the era. These six fields of technologically advanced knowledge and their interrelations and interactions with learned knowledge are investigated and discussed through a specific lens: by focusing on the technological literature.Among present-day historians of science, it hardly remains controversial that contact and exchange between educated and practical knowledge played a significant role in the development of the natural sciences and technology in early modern Europe. Several paths for such exchange arose from the late Middle Ages onward due to the formationof an economy of knowledge that fostered contacts and exchange between the two worlds. How can this development be adequately described and how, on the basis of such a description, can the significance of this process for the early modern history of knowledge in the West be assessed? These are the overarching questions this book tries to answer.There exists a considerable amount of literature concerning several stations and events in the course of this long development process as well as its various aspects. As meritorious and indispensable as many of these studies are, none of them tried to portray this process as a whole with its most essential branches. What is more, many of them implicitly or explicitly took physics as a model of science, and thus highlighted mechanics and mechanical engineering as the model of all interrelations of practical and learned knowledge. By contrast, this book aims at a more complete portrait of the early modern interrelations and interactions between learned and practical knowledge. It tries to convey a new idea of the variety and disunity of these relations by discussing and comparing altogether six widely different fields of knowledge and practice.The targeted audience of this book is first of all the historians of science and technology. As one of the peer reviewers suggested ¿ the book could very well become a textbook used for teaching the history of science and technology at universities. Furthermore, since the book addresses fundamental aspects of the significance emergence and development of modern science has for the self-image of the West, it can be expected that it will attract the attention and interest of a wider readership than professional historians.

This book reconnects health and thought, as the two were treated together in the seventeenth century, and by reuniting them, it adds a significant dimension to our historical understanding. Indeed, there is hardly a single early modern figure who took a serious interest in one but not the other, with their attitudes toward body-mind interaction often revealed in acts of self-diagnosis and experimentation. The essays collected here specifically reveal the way experiment and especially self-experiment, combined with careful attention to the states of mind which accompany states of body, provide a new means of assessing attitudes to body-mind interactions just as they show the abiding interest and relevance of source material typically ignored by historians of science and historians of philosophy. In the surviving records of such experimenting on one¿s own body, we can observe leading figures like Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, deliberately setting out to repeatpleasurable, or intellectually productive moods and states of mind, by applying the same medicine on successive occasions. In this way we can witness theories of the working of the human mind being developed by key members of an urban culture (London; interregnum Oxford) who based those theories in part on their own regular, long-term use of self-administered, mind-altering substances. It is hardly an overstatement to claim that there was a significant drug culture in the early modern period linked to self-experimentation, new medicines, and the new science. This is one of the many things this volume has to teach us.

This book offers a comprehensive study and account of the co-evolution of technological and scientific literature in the early modern period (1450-1750). It examines the various relationships of these literatures in six areas of knowledge ¿ Architecture, Chemistry, Gunnery, Mechanical Engineering, Mining, and Practical Mathematics ¿ which represent the main types of advanced technological and scientific knowledge of the era. These six fields of technologically advanced knowledge and their interrelations and interactions with learned knowledge are investigated and discussed through a specific lens: by focusing on the technological literature.Among present-day historians of science, it hardly remains controversial that contact and exchange between educated and practical knowledge played a significant role in the development of the natural sciences and technology in early modern Europe. Several paths for such exchange arose from the late Middle Ages onward due to the formation of an economy of knowledge that fostered contacts and exchange between the two worlds. How can this development be adequately described and how, on the basis of such a description, can the significance of this process for the early modern history of knowledge in the West be assessed? These are the overarching questions this book tries to answer.There exists a considerable amount of literature concerning several stations and events in the course of this long development process as well as its various aspects. As meritorious and indispensable as many of these studies are, none of them tried to portray this process as a whole with its most essential branches. What is more, many of them implicitly or explicitly took physics as a model of science, and thus highlighted mechanics and mechanical engineering as the model of all interrelations of practical and learned knowledge. By contrast, this book aims at a more complete portrait of the early modern interrelations and interactions between learned and practical knowledge. It tries to convey a new idea of the variety and disunity of these relations by discussing and comparing altogether six widely different fields of knowledge and practice.The targeted audience of this book is first of all the historians of science and technology. As one of the peer reviewers suggested ¿ the book could very well become a textbook used for teaching the history of science and technology at universities. Furthermore, since the book addresses fundamental aspects of the significance emergence and development of modern science has for the self-image of the West, it can be expected that it will attract the attention and interest of a wider readership than professional historians.

These chapters analyze texts from Isaac Newton's work to shed new light on scientific understanding at his time. Newton used the concept of "sensorium" in writings intended for a public audience, in relation to both humans and God, but even today there is no consensus about the meaning of his term. The literal definition of the Latin term 'sensorium', or its English equivalent 'sensory', is 'thing that feels' but this is a theoretical construct.The book takes readers on a process of discovery, through inquiry into both Newton's concept and its underlying model. It begins with the human sensorium. This part of his concept is situated in the context of the aforesaid writings but also in the context of the writings of two of Newton's contemporaries, the physicians William Briggs and Thomas Willis, both of whom were at the forefront of their respective specialties of ophthalmology and neurology. Only once the human sensorium has been explored is it possible to generalize to the unobservable divine sensorium, because Newton's method of reasoning from experience requires that the second part of his concept is last in the order of knowledge. And the reason for this sequence is that his method, the short-hand term for which is 'analogy of nature', proceeds from that which has been observed to be universally true to that which is beyond the limits of observation. Consequently, generalization passes insensibly into reasoning by analogy.Readers will see how certain widespread assumptions can be called into question, such as that Newton was a theological voluntarist for whom the will is superior to the intellect, or that, for Newton, not only the world or universe but also God occupies the whole extent of infinite space. The insights afforded through this book will appeal to scholars of the philosophy of science, human physiology, philosophy of mind and epistemology, among others.

This book presents essays by eminent scholars from across the history of medicine, early science and European history, including those expert on the history of the book. Those with an interest in the history of science, the history of medicine and all related fields will find this work a stimulating and rewarding read.

This volume contains essays that examine the optical works of Giambattista Della Porta, an Italian natural philosopher during the Scientific Revolution.

This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact on the history and practice of mathematics, and the ways in which his legacy has been preserved or transformed in recent decades, looking ahead to the directions in which the study of the history of science will head in the twenty-first century.

Through recent volumes of the scientific letters and mathematical papers series of the Academy Edition scholars have obtained a much richer textual basis on which to conduct their studies - material which allows readers to see interconnections between his philosophical and mathematical ideas which have not previously been manifested.

The Romance of Science pays tribute to the wide-ranging and highly influential work of Trevor Levere, historian of science and author of Poetry Realised in Nature, Transforming Matter, Science and the Canadian Arctic, Affinity and Matter and other significant inquiries in the history of modern science.

This book presents essays by eminent scholars from across the history of medicine, early science and European history, including those expert on the history of the book. Those with an interest in the history of science, the history of medicine and all related fields will find this work a stimulating and rewarding read.

These chapters analyze texts from Isaac Newton¿s work to shed new light on scientific understanding at his time. Newton used the concept of ¿sensorium¿ in writings intended for a public audience, in relation to both humans and God, but even today there is no consensus about the meaning of his term. The literal definition of the Latin term 'sensorium', or its English equivalent 'sensory', is 'thing that feels¿ but this is a theoretical construct.The book takes readers on a process of discovery, through inquiry into both Newton¿s concept and its underlying model. It begins with the human sensorium. This part of his concept is situated in the context of the aforesaid writings but also in the context of the writings of two of Newton's contemporaries, the physicians William Briggs and Thomas Willis, both of whom were at the forefront of their respective specialties of ophthalmology and neurology. Only once the human sensorium has been explored is it possible to generalize to the unobservable divine sensorium, because Newton's method of reasoning from experience requires that the second part of his concept is last in the order of knowledge. And the reason for this sequence is that his method, the short-hand term for which is 'analogy of nature', proceeds from that which has been observed to be universally true to that which is beyond the limits of observation. Consequently, generalization passes insensibly into reasoning by analogy.Readers will see how certain widespread assumptions can be called into question, such as that Newton was a theological voluntarist for whom the will is superior to the intellect, or that, for Newton, not only the world or universe but also God occupies the whole extent of infinite space. The insights afforded through this book will appeal to scholars of the philosophy of science, human physiology, philosophy of mind and epistemology, among others.

This monograph investigates the development of hydrostatics as a science.

The authors explain the nature of the work of theoretical physics with many examples, taking care always to locate the research within the workplace.The book is a revised and shortened version of Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, a two-volume work by the same authors.

However, such later scientific developments as non-Euclidean geometries and Einstein's general theory of relativity called into question the certainty of Euclidean geometry and posed the problem of reconsidering space as an open question for empirical research.

As a contribution to architectural history, the volume contextualizes design and construction in terms of contemporary mathematical knowledge, attendant forms of mathematical practice, and relevant social distinctions between the mathematical professions.

This book explores the 18th century natural philosopher Henry Cavendish, best known for his work in chemistry and physics. It traces aspects of his personality, views and interpretations of him, and explores notions of eccentricity and autism.

This book offers a novel approach to the life and work of Vittorino Rambaldoni da Feltre (c. 1378 - 1446), teacher of princes and educationalist of Italian Renaissance humanism. The authors examine perspectives created by his students and contemporaries.

This book examines the Lysenko controversy. It covers the interwar eugenics movement, the Scopes Trial, the popularity of Lamarckism as a theory of heredity prior to the synthesis of genetics and Natural Selection, and the Cold War.

Why should mathematics, the purest of sciences, have a history? Medieval mathematicians took little interest in the history of their discipline. Yet in the Renaissance the history of mathematics flourished. This book explores how Renaissance scholars recovered and reconstructed the origins of mathematics.

This volume makes an important contribution toward a nuanced appreciation of the Jesuits' interaction with "modernity", and a greater recognition of their contribution to the mathematization of natural philosophy and experimental science.

This book reconnects health and thought, as the two were treated together in the seventeenth century, and by reuniting them, it adds a significant dimension to our historical understanding. Indeed, there is hardly a single early modern figure who took a serious interest in one but not the other, with their attitudes toward body-mind interaction often revealed in acts of self-diagnosis and experimentation. The essays collected here specifically reveal the way experiment and especially self-experiment, combined with careful attention to the states of mind which accompany states of body, provide a new means of assessing attitudes to body-mind interactions just as they show the abiding interest and relevance of source material typically ignored by historians of science and historians of philosophy. In the surviving records of such experimenting on one¿s own body, we can observe leading figures like Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, deliberately setting out to repeat pleasurable, or intellectually productive moods and states of mind, by applying the same medicine on successive occasions. In this way we can witness theories of the working of the human mind being developed by key members of an urban culture (London; interregnum Oxford) who based those theories in part on their own regular, long-term use of self-administered, mind-altering substances. It is hardly an overstatement to claim that there was a significant drug culture in the early modern period linked to self-experimentation, new medicines, and the new science. This is one of the many things this volume has to teach us.

Presents a fresh and comprehensive picture of David Hilbert's intense, original, and influential involvement with physics, that spanned his career and that constituted a main focus of interest in his scientific horizon. This book is of interest to historians of physics and of mathematics, and to historically-minded physicists and mathematicians.