Martin Folkes (1690-1754)

Martin Folkes (1690-1754)
Author: Anna Marie Roos
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2021-04-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192565656

Martin Folkes (1690-1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur is a cultural and intellectual biography of the only President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Sir Isaac Newton's protégé, astronomer, mathematician, freemason, art connoisseur, Voltaire's friend and Hogarth's patron, his was an intellectually vibrant world. Folkes was possibly the best-connected natural philosopher and antiquary of his age, an epitome of Enlightenment sociability, and yet he was a surprisingly neglected figure, the long shadow of Newton eclipsing his brilliant disciple. A complex figure, Folkes edited Newton's posthumous works in biblical chronology, yet was a religious skeptic and one of the first members of the gentry to marry an actress. His interests were multidisciplinary, from his authorship of the first complete history of the English coinage, to works concerning ancient architecture, statistical probability, and astronomy. Rich archival material, including Folkes's travel diary, correspondence, and his library and art collections permit reconstruction through Folkes's eyes of what it was like to be a collector and patron, a Masonic freethinker, and antiquarian and virtuoso in the days before 'science' became sub-specialised. Folkes's virtuosic sensibility and possible role in the unification of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society tells against the historiographical assumption that this was the age in which the 'two cultures' of the humanities and sciences split apart, never to be reunited. In Georgian England, antiquarianism and 'science' were considered largely part of the same endeavour.

Epistemology and Natural Philosophy in the 18th Century

Epistemology and Natural Philosophy in the 18th Century
Author: Danilo Capecchi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030528529

This book documents the process of transformation from natural philosophy, which was considered the most important of the sciences until the early modern era, into modern disciplines such as mathematics, physics, natural history, chemistry, medicine and engineering. It focuses on the 18th century, which has often been considered uninteresting for the history of science, representing the transition from the age of genius and the birth of modern science (the 17th century) to the age of prodigious development in the 19th century. Yet the 18th century, the century of Enlightenment, as will be demonstrated here, was in fact characterized by substantial ferment and novelty. To make the text more accessible, little emphasis has been placed on the precise genesis of the various concepts and methods developed in scientific enterprises, except when doing so was necessary to make them clear. For the sake of simplicity, in several situations reference is made to the authors who are famous today, such as Newton, the Bernoullis, Euler, d’Alembert, Lagrange, Lambert, Volta et al. – not necessarily because they were the most creative and original minds, but mainly because their writings represent a synthesis of contemporary and past studies. The above names should, therefore, be considered more labels of a period than references to real historical characters.

The Collected Letters of Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek -

The Collected Letters of Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek -
Author: A Committee of Dutch Scientists
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 1996-06-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9789026514500

This volume (the 14th of a series of 19) contains 21 letters written between August 1701 and March 1704. At least half of these letters were addressed to Fellows of the Royal Society in London. Every volume in the series contains the texts in the original Dutch and an English translation. The great range of subjects studied by Van Leeuwenhoek is reflected in these letters: instruments to measure water; pulmonary diseases; experiments relating to the solution of gold and silver; salt crystals and grains of sand; botanical work, such as duckweed and germination of orange pips; descriptions on protozoa; blood; spermatozoa; and health and hygiene, for example and harmfulness of tea and coffee and the benefits of cleaning teeth.;Volumes One to 13 are available at a reduced price from Swets and Zeitlinger.