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13588 results in History of science and technology

Page 490 of 680

  • Niels Hugh de Vaudrey Heathcote: 22 January 1895–23 June 1985

  • W. A. Smeaton
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 20 / Issue 3 / July 1987
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. 350-351
    Print publication:
    July 1987
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  • The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution’

  • Maurice Crosland
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 20 / Issue 3 / July 1987
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. 277-307
    Print publication:
    July 1987

  • So much of the history of science has been written from the point of view of the scientist or the proto-scientist that it may be salutary for the modern reader occasionally to consider how science and its early practitioners were viewed from the outside. We must not be too surprised if a pioneering activity performed by controversial agents was misunderstood or misrepresented and if what emerges is, therefore, sometimes less of a portrait than a caricature. We are concerned here much less with what natural philosophers actually did than what they were thought to have done, or what they were thought to stand for. The image is sometimes more influential than the reality. Considering that the period to be studied is one of major political and social unrest and that the principal spokesman, Edmund Burke (1729–1797), had made his reputation mainly in the arena of parliamentary politics, we can anticipate rather more polemic than dispassionate argument. In the formation of public opinion a colourful exaggeration or even an occasional sneer are often more effective than the objective exposition of a case. The spectacles through which Burke looked at his world sometimes magnified and often distorted, but they produced a view of knowledge and society shared by many of his contemporaries and of considerable subsequent influence.

  • BJH volume 20 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 20 / Issue 3 / July 1987
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. f1-f2
    Print publication:
    July 1987
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  • Ampère's Invention of Equilibrium Apparatus: A Response to Experimental Anomaly

  • James R. Hofmann
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 20 / Issue 3 / July 1987
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. 309-341
    Print publication:
    July 1987

  • André-Marie Ampère's contributions to electrodynamics came at a late stage in an unconventional career. In 1820, he had reached the age of forty-five and had not as yet done any systematic research in physics. As a member of the mathematics section of the Académie des Sciences, his only significant contributions to the physical sciences had been some constructive criticisms of Fresnel's wave theory of light and three memoirs on chemical classification and gas theory. Meanwhile, his longstanding interests in metaphysics and epistemology had resulted in pointed methodological and philosophical attitudes which both motivated and structured his subsequent work in electrodynamics. Not surprisingly, events during the first few months of Ampère's research included many unplanned and unexpected encounters as this wildly enthusiastic theoretician grappled for the first time with the recalcitrant complexity of actual experimentation in an uncharted new domain.

  • 14 - Experimental history of science

  • Helge S. Kragh
  • Book:
    An Introduction to the Historiography of Science
    Published online:
    30 November 2009
    Print publication:
    09 April 1987, pp 159-167

  • Summary

    In spite of the fact that the past cannot be revoked, in one sense at least it can be investigated by experimental methods. Experimental history of science has not been used extensively or systematically and there are divided opinions about it. On the one hand, one might mention the Italian historian L.Belloni who has developed the experimental method in the history of medicine and biology in particular. According to Belloni, the reconstruction of historical experiments is of special value as a supplementary method for the interpretation of texts:

    When we set to work on the study and reconstruction of the thought of an author, the analysis of his writings obviously cannot be undertaken apart from the general framework of the culture of his time. If then observations and experiments are described which in arrangement and technique are as distant from our habits and mentality as the cultural climate in which the author lived, the best and sometimes the only way of arriving at an exact interpretation of the text being considered lies in repeating the experiments under the same conditions under which they were originally performed.

    On the other hand, there are historians who reject the experimental method on principle:

    If we were to discover Dalton's thought, we could, it may be supposed, help ourselves by performing once again Dalton's experiments, which would put us in the situation in which he found himself thinking. We have only to assert this about Dalton to realise how unsound it is, … The activity of John Dalton shows us quite clearly the uniqueness of scientific acts of thought. […]

Page 490 of 680