‘Poor Borelli!’ exclaimed Alexandre Koyre at the end of his wonderful and by now classic study of Borelli's ‘celestial mechanics’. Koyre frankly admitted that Borelli lacked Newton's genius and intellectual audacity. However, in his story Borelli deserved a place between Kepler and Newton for his ‘imperfect but decisive’ unification of terrestrial and celestial physics. This framework finds a powerful justification in Borelli's extensive usage of Keplerian astronomy and in Newton's references to Borelli's work on the Medicean planets, Theoricae mediceorum planetarum (Florence, 1666), both in his correspondence with Edmond Halley, with regard to a controversy with Robert Hooke, and in Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London, 1687). Newton's own copy of Borelli's work with signs of his reading – the famous dog-earings – is preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The magnitude of Newton's achievement has haunted Borelli's work ever since Principia mathematica appeared in print. For example, although Christiaan Huygens was sent a copy of Borelli's book by Prince Leopold in 1666, his marginal annotations in his own copy of the book were written after he had read Newton's masterpiece, as if Huygens had felt the need to read the book again after 1687. From then onwards Borelli's work has almost inevitably appeared in a new light that has coloured its subsequent readings.

My ambition in this paper is to provide a fresh reading of Borelli's work by reconstructing its circumstances of composition, establishing a comparison with a relevant strictly contemporary source, and attending to the immediate reception of Theoricae. Borelli's work was written with an eye to a composite audience including Roman Jesuits, Sicilian intellectual circles and Leopold de' Medici's correspondents across the Alps, such as the Copernican astronomer Ismael Boulliau in Paris. Borelli was aware that his Sicilian readers were likely to have different concerns from those of Roman Jesuits or the Medici. Thus the task of charting the reception of his work is a formidable one. For a variety of reasons, including availability of sources, limitations of space, taste and competence, my analysis of Borelli's work on the Medicean planets is limited to a few themes and is not only no less partial than Koyre's, but in many respects it relies on it. If readers feel stimulated to re-read Koyre's text, one of the aims of this paper will have been fulfilled.

Compared with other scientists of the nineteenth century, the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–73) was a complex figure. In part, this was because Liebig established such broad borders for his science. Chemical methods, popular and professional publications about chemistry, technological applications, promoting the car and even politics – all were central concerns stemming from Liebig's notion of chemistry as the central science.

When Liebig discovered John Stuart Mill's Logic, a work on the philosophy of science, it struck a deep chord within him. Mill's high praise for Liebig's chemistry certainly provided Liebig with a means to promote his own reputation. In addition, Mill's Logic presented science as a central method for the general reform of society, a goal Liebig was himself struggling to define in the early 1840s. In the scientific method, Mill discovered a ‘rule by the elite’, which he could never find nor justify in his political philosophy. This was a rule that greatly appealed to Liebig, and he set out to ensure that Mill's work was translated and published in German. Though many details of this transaction are known, this paper seeks to investigate the relationship between Liebig and Mill's book, and the significance of this relationship for understanding Liebig's role as a gatekeeper and inter-relations between science and politics.

Stargazing Knight Errant, beware of the day When the Hottentots catch thee observing away! Be sure they will pluck thy eyes out of their sockets To prevent thee from stuffing the stars in thy pockets

If Herschel should find a new star at the Cape, His perils no longer would pain us He will salt the star's tail to prevent its escape And call it ‘The Hottentot Venus’.

Astronomy has long been recognized as a tool of empire. Its service to navigation and geography have made it indispensable to European expansion. Britain in particular excelled at this brand of control; each day when the sun set on the British empire, its telescopes continued to enhance imperial power.

While the above claims are no longer controversial, we have hardly begun to understand the extent to which imperialism subsequently changed the nature of the physical sciences.

A Metaphysical Subject © Martha Fleming

The bitterness and protracted character of the biometrician–Mendelian debate has long aroused the interest of historians of biology. In this paper, we focus on another and much less discussed facet of the controversy: competing interpretations of the inheritance of mental defect. Today, the views of the early Mendelians, such as Charles B. Davenport and Henry H. Goddard, are universally seen to be mistaken. Some historians assume that the Mendelians' errors were exposed by advances in the science of genetics. Others believe that their mistakes could have been identified by contemporaries. Neither interpretation takes account of the fact that the lapses for which the Mendelian eugenicists are now notorious were, in fact, mostly identified at the time by the biometricians David Heron and Karl Pearson. In this paper we ask why their objections had so little impact. We think the answer illustrates an important general point about the social prerequisites for effective scientific critique.

Accounts of the religious debates sparked by the theory of evolution tend, almost inevitably, to focus on the late nineteenth century. Darwinism is treated as a symbol of the scientific naturalism that so traumatized Victorian thought. Modern accounts have shown, however, that religious thinkers were in the end able to take on board an evolutionism purged of its most materialistic tendencies. We tend to assume that in Britain, at least, the arguments had largely died down by the end of the nineteenth century. Led by Aubrey Moore, the Anglican Church made its accommodation, and Moore's contribution of an essay to the volume Lux mundi, edited by Charles Gore in 1889, symbolized the ability of even the conservative Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church to move in the direction of modernization. In America, of course, the compromise broke down with the rise of Fundamentalism in the early twentieth century, but most British commentators saw the ‘Scopes trial’ of 1925 as a strange transatlantic phenomenon that was unlikely to have a parallel in their own country.