Argument

During the early modern period, European naturalists were confronted with a rapidly growing body of new objects due to the recent geographic discoveries. According to Bruno Latour's model of “action at a distance” naturalists managed this situation by mobilizing and stabilizing specimens and inscriptions at the periphery of the known world, as well as accumulating, reshuffling, and processing that material in “centers of calculation.” This paper tries to resolve an ambiguity that lies in this model: While the work of naturalists was clearly dependent on local institutions, collections, and botanical gardens in particular, they nevertheless claimed universality for the interpretations of the natural world they propounded. Analysis will be based on a case study: In the 1730s Carl Linnaeus produced a series of manuscripts and printed books that allow us to reconstruct the sequence of translations which led from the first encounter with a “new” plant at the periphery of the known world (in the case of Linnaeus, Lapland, which he visited in 1732) to a major botanical center (the botanical garden of George Clifford, former director of the Dutch East India Company, who employed Linnaeus in 1736 and 1737 to catalog his collection). I will argue generally that the abstraction process that was constitutive of Linnaeus' universal plant taxonomy – the separation of “constant” species and genera from local “varieties”- did not take place exclusively in the centers of knowledge production. This abstraction process was rather coextensive with the global network of translation and exchange that connected such centers with each other and with their peripheries. The “map” of the plant world outlined by Linnaeus did not represent “things drawn together,” but rather “things being exchanged,” and the global circulation of specimens and inscriptions was the foundation on which its claim to universality rested.

Argument

This paper addresses the complex process of inscribing the names of the American natural world – both the natural species and the territories – in the records of the Spanish Empire as undertaken by its official chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557). Fernandez de Oviedo's ambitious attempt to identify all natural phenomena in the Historia general y natural de las Indias provides a very clear instance of the parallel developments of science and imperial discourse in the Early Modern period. As we shall see, however, Fernández de Oviedo's point of view in this regard was by no means the same as the point of view developed in Spain by the imperial administration; on the contrary, Fernandez de Oviedo's criteria for identifying and naming reveal an effort to displace any external assumption and prejudice and call for a distinctly local view of American reality. In Fernández de Oviedo's text, the traditional notions of identity and difference as well as the relative positions of center and periphery were put into question in order to propose new ways to frame and control reality in an expanding world.

Argument

Until the fifteenth century, celibacy was the rule among Christian scholars of northwestern Europe. Celibacy was a major element of the codified cultural representation of the scholar and his specific way of life, sustained by peculiar institutional arrangements and daily routines. Founding family households implied therefore a major reorganization of the scholar’s way of life. Broadly speaking, this involved refashioning the scholarly habitus (understood as a system of durable and transposable social dispositions), redefining social relations, and developing the necessary material infrastructure. The paper focuses on three aspects of this process during a period characterized by uncertainty and experimentation. It discusses the structure of scholars’ families, arguing that at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, received models still persisted, while new viable models for articulating family reproduction with the transmission of scholarly dispositions had not yet crystallized. It then turns to the reorganization of domestic space, focusing on the different uses of the study to manage social distance and regulate domestic relations. Finally, among the different manifestations of the scholarly habitus, it argues that the emotional detachment of learned men was itself a learned habit. The well-documented discussion of competing options for organizing scholars’ family households and cultivating an acquired nature in academic settings provides an exceptional occasion to examine the way a group habitus is reshaped and, explore the cultural work involved in this process.

Argument

This article describes from a constructivist perspective a Natural History expedition put together by the Spanish government and navy to visit territories in the Pacific in the 1860s. Right from the start the expedition ran into problems and barely made it back. However, it managed to compile an admiringly large assortment of specimens: extensive collections of shells, mammals, skulls, and photographs. The expedition was rooted in colonialism. Patrons and organizers of the expedition sought to recreate in Spain discourses and practices then dominant in France, particularly the colonial agenda of the Société Impériale Zoologique d'Acclimatation. The collection assembled by the Comisión Científica del Pacífico had a life of its own. Years after the expedition folded, the collection kept on circulating and inspiring local and foreign scientists to identify new species and draw lessons from anthropology to history. The study of this collection was always discontinuous, a fact that proves the guadianización of science in Spain. The collection has been revived after a number of serendipitous discoveries in various Spanish archives, particularly caches of old photographs. Presently, the website www.pacifico.csic.es is expected to contribute to the circulation of the inscriptions generated by this scientific expedition.

Argument

In this paper I offer some reflections on the thirty-second proposition of Book I of Euclid’s Elements, the assertion that the three interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, reflections relating to the character of the theorem and the reasoning involved in it, and especially on its historical background. I reject a common view according to which there was at some time a petitio principii in the theory of parallels and argue that certain kinds of skepticism about Proclus’ historical reports are excessive. The evidence we have makes it reasonable to suppose that the so-called common notions were made explicit in the earlier fourth century BCE and the postulates, including the parallel postulate, somewhat later than that. On the other hand, it seems clear that some proof of I,32 was available by the mid-fifth century. I attempt to describe what such a proof would have been like and reflect on its significance for our understanding of early Greek geometry.

Argument

Much recent research has established the importance of visualization in modern science. This essay treats, instead, of the continued importance of the aural and oral: the professorial voice. The professor remains important for science since so many scientists still instantiate this persona and, as is here argued, a “voice” constitutes an essential feature of it. The form of the essay reflects its contents. From the Middle Ages until well into the modern era, the archetypal professorial genre was the disputation, an oral event recast in written form. Apropos of the traditional disputation, this essay begins with a disquisition more or less to the point. It concerns Nietzsche’s first major publication, which violated norms for the proper professorial voice, thus accelerated the destruction of his academic career. The essay then presents six theses on the professorial voice. The theses treat relevant aspects of the professorial voice from the Sophists onward. It is argued, in Weberian terms, that the professorial voice or persona embodies elements of charismatic and traditional authority which coexist with and condition the rational authority or “objectivity” of science.

Argument

My purpose in this paper is to venture an explanation for how the peculiar Greek idiom “application of area” came into being, and why Greek mathematicians preferred this idiom to one which seems more straightforward and is undoubtedly older. To those conversant with the Greek theory of , especially Elements VI.28–29, there is little new in my exposition, and they may want to skip sections 1 and 2. I present them nevertheless, partly to initiate newcomers, partly in order to show that Elements II.5 works as a maximum condition (analogous to VI.27) besides being, like II.6, a useful lemma in the solution of the problem. My main point is the shifting of focus from one rectangle to another in problems 3a and 4a, which may have given rise to the esoteric – and more general – wording of problems 3b and 4b.

Argument

The life and work of the Russian scholar Ivan E. Orlov (September 1, 1886 – October 13, 1936) is described here in detail for the first time. Orlov is well known as one of the pioneers of relevant logic, but he was also interested in a wide variety of other topics including philosophy, chemistry, and music theory. This article shows that the sociopolitical climate of the1920s and 1930s exerted a significant influence on the style and content of Orlov's work. It theorizes that this climate determined to a considerable degree the evolution of Orlov's interests and also his fate.

The Wolfhound Era hurls itself against my shoulders,But I am not by nature a wolf.Osip Mandel'shtam (1931)

Argument

This essay explores how and why women involved themselves in the sciences in eighteenth-century Italy. Using the case study of Diamante Medaglia Faini, a poet who attempted to become a mathematician, it argues that the image of the woman natural philosopher was shaped by the visible presence of woman in scientific institutions in the mid-eighteenth century and by the tradition of popular scientific writing, best embodied in the works of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Francesco Algarotti, that made the woman natural philosopher an important literary protagonist. Becoming a scientist, in other words, was both a reality and a fiction. The tensions between these two different images shaped the terrain in which women pursued science.

Argument

This article attempts to show that the cultural-historical psychological theory of Aleksandr R. Luria (Luriya)When the spelling of Russian names diverges from the transliteration system used by Science in Context, the transliteration is given in parentheses on the first occurrence. See editors' note in the Summer 2002 issue. and his colleagues is based on the philosophical foundations of historical materialism. It argues in particular that Luria's psychology, neuropsychology, and brain theory are integrated in the same scientific research program and are based on the same philosophical premises, and that his theories must be interpreted in the Marxist context in which they are embedded. Luria's research program asserts that the development of higher mental functions depends on the appropriation of cultural means, particularly language, within social practice. Moreover, the brain structures underlying mental functions are also dependent on the appropriation of cultural means. Luria's clinical diagnosis and his program for rehabilitation of patients with brain lesions are based on his psychological theory and brain theory. The following analysis of Luria's comprehensive program will show that a socio-cultural non-reductive explanation of mental functions and their underlying brain structures may have implications for the philosophical discussion of the mind-brain problem.

Argument

Within the Republic of Letters the art of experiment led to immense reorientation and an extensive redrawing of the enlightened map of natural knowledge. This paper will investigate the formative period of the exact sciences from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth century when the persona of the experimentalist as a scientific expert was shaped. The paper focuses on Moritz Hermann Jacobi’s experimental knowledge derived from his modeling of an electro-magnetic self-acting machine and the social and epistemological problems of its integration into traditional academic life. His struggle to achieve academic recognition and credibility for his experimental work reflects not just his individual quandary, but important structural problems of the historical development of experimental knowledge traditions and science in what has been called the “second scientific revolution.”

Argument

The past five years have seen revisions of what had been regarded as the single definitive reconstruction of Eudoxus’ homocentric sphere theory. Crucial to these revisions, which present alternative constructions for the moon (Mendell 1998a, 1998b) and the five planets (Yavetz 1998), is a careful assessment of Simplicius’ testimony regarding the Eudoxan theory. The purpose of this paper is to show that even though we can account for lunar motion by means of two distinct homocentric models, both models involve forced and ambiguous readings of Simplicius’ account. Both reconstructions adequately accommodate the lunar month and the 18.5-year precession of the lunar nodes in a homocentric model that fits the general spirit of Eudoxus’ approach to the problem. Both are also in full accord with Aristotle’s short, general account of the Eudoxan system. However, since neither of them can be naturally reconciled with Simplicius’ text, and since we know of no other appropriate alternatives, it seems to follow that Simplicius’ account may suffer from serious technical inadequacies, and that only limited historical weight can be given to his testimony regarding the details of the system.

Argument

During the early nineteenth century, the German Association of Investigators of Nature and Physicians (Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte) drew upon the cultural resource of choral-society songs as a way to promote male camaraderie and intellectual collaboration. Investigators of nature and physicians wished to forge a unified, scientific identity in the absence of a national one, and music played a critical role in its establishment. During the 1820s and 30s, Liedertafel and folk songs formed a crucial component of their annual meetings. The lyrics of these tunes, whose melodies were famous folk songs, were rewritten to reflect the lives of investigators of nature and physicians. Indeed, the singing of these Liedertafel songs played an important part in the cultivation of the Naturforschers’ persona well into the twentieth century.

Argument

This paper proposes an alternative view to Becker’s reconstruction of pre-Eudoxean theory of proportion. No extant document explicitly demonstrates the alleged alternation of theories of proportion before Book V of the Elements. Books V and VI of the Elements are not so complete as a theory of proportion in the abstract, and can be interpreted better as a collection of propositions useful in geometry. It follows then that older theories, if they existed at all, must have been less complete. Prevailing interest in geometry on the part of Greek mathematicians is also visible in some expressions in Book VI for specific ratio and proportion used only in definite geometric context. It is therefore more fruitful to consider the “theory” of proportion before Eudoxus as an aggregate of techniques about proportion that are useful in geometry, rather than as the result of a conscious effort to build a logically consistent set of propositions based on a definition.

Argument

This paper examines the effort that was involved in sustaining the nineteenth-century middle-class ideological fabrication of the image of the working-class scientific autodidact. The construction and reception of Samuel Smiles’ biography of the Scottish cobbler and naturalist Thomas Edward provides a way to investigate this process in detail and to show how Smiles’ conception of the scientific persona related to the “politics of character” in mid-Victorian Britain. Edward’s own response to the biography offers an unusual opportunity to analyze the making of a Victorian scientific hero, who, in the process of being fitted to Smiles’ notion of a scientific persona, came to feel that he had been robbed of his life.

Argument

Apollonius of Perga’s Conica, like almost all Greek mathematical works, relies heavily on the use of proportion, of analogia. Analogy as the assertion of a resemblance, however, also plays a role in the Conica. The homologue, which Apollonius introduces in Book VII, is a striking example of analogia in both senses. On the one hand, the homologue is defined by means of a precise proportion relating the diameter and latus rectum of a conic section to fixed segments along the diameter. On the other hand, Apollonius’ use of the homologue in Book VII makes it clear that he meant it truly to evoke the latus rectum in the reader’s mind; in this way, Apollonius treats the homologue as an image of the latus rectum. The example of the homologue thus suggests the possibility that, in Greek mathematics, proportion was not only a vital manipulatory tool but also a means of making images.

Argument

The extant sources for ancient Egyptian mathematics are extremely limited. It is therefore necessary to read the few sources carefully and use additional information from further Egyptian sources in order to achieve the most detailed picture possible. Traditional approaches to Egyptian mathematics have provided only a superficial account of mathematical practices and almost no information about the role of mathematics within Egyptian culture. To enlarge our knowledge it is crucial to use a different methodological approach in the analysis of ancient mathematical techniques. In addition, it is indispensable to contextualize the mathematical problems with sources that are not specifically mathematical per se. In this article I discuss several possibilities for these additional sources, such as administrative texts, reliefs found in tombs, and other archaeological evidence. I exemplify the use of these sources with two problems from the Moscow mathematical papyrus.