The first complete and detailed catalogue of Lavoisier’s collection of instruments preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The story of the collection is carefully reconstructed and its instruments (all illustrated) are described in detail.

The first complete and detailed catalogue of Lavoisier's collection of instruments preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The story of the collection is carefully reconstructed and its instruments (all illustrated) are described in detail. Set publication of 2 volumes.

Essays analyze the connections between science and technology and military power in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods. The integration of scientific knowledge and military power began long before the Manhattan Project. In the third century BC, Archimedes was renowned for his research in mechanics and mathematics as well as for his design and coordination of defensive siegecraft for Syracuse during the Second Punic War. This collection of essays examines the emergence during the early modern era of mathematicians, chemists, and natural philosophers who, along with military engineers, navigators, and artillery officers, followed in the footsteps of Archimedes and synthesized scientific theory and military practice. It is the first collaborative scholarly assessment of these early military-scientific relationships, which have been long neglected by scholars both in the history of science and technology and in military history. From a historical perspective, this volume investigates the deep connections between two central manifestations of Western power, examining the military context of the Scientific Revolution and the scientific context of the Military Revolution. Unlike the classic narratives of the Scientific Revolution that focus on the theories of, and conflicts between, Aristotelian and Platonic worldviews, this volume highlights the emergence of the Archimedean ideal--in which a symbiosis exists between the supply of mechanistic science and the demand for military capability. From a security-studies perspective, this work presents an in-depth study of the central components of military power as well as their dynamic interactions in the political, acquisitional, operational, and tactical domains. The essays in this volume reveal the intellectual and cultural struggles to enhance the capabilities of these components--an exercise in transforming military power that remains relevant for today's armed forces. The volume sets the stage by examining the innovation of gunpowder weaponry in both the Christian and the Islamic states of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. It then explores such topics as the cultural resistance to scientific techniques and the relationship between early modern science and naval power--particularly the intersecting developments in mathematics and oceanic navigation. Other essays address the efforts of early practitioners and theorists of chemistry to increase the power and consistency of gunpowder. The final essays analyze the application of advanced scientific knowledge and Enlightenment ideals to the military engineering and artillery organizations of the eighteenth century. The volume concludes by noting the global spread of the Archimedean ideal during the nineteenth century as an essential means for resisting Western imperialism.

The history of science, the history of women, and gender history – Gendered Touch offers new perspectives on the intersections between the textual and the embodied nature of scientific knowledge in early modern Europe.

In this history of materials, the authors link chemical science with chemical technology, challenging our current understandings of objects in the history of science and the distinction between scientific and technological objects. They further show that chemits' experimental production and understanding of materials changed over time, first in the decades around 1700 and then around 1830, when mundane materials became clearly distinguished from true chemical substances.

It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences’ systematic observation and experimentation get their starts? In Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe, the laboratories, workshops, and marketplaces emerge as arenas where hands-on experience united with higher learning. In an age when chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and botany intersected with mining, metallurgy, pharmacy, and gardening, materials were objects that crossed disciplines. Here, the contributors tell the stories of metals, clay, gunpowder, pigments, and foods, and thereby demonstrate the innovative practices of technical experts, the development of the consumer market, and the formation of the observational and experimental sciences in the early modern period. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe showcases a broad variety of forms of knowledge, from ineffable bodily skills and technical competence to articulated know-how and connoisseurship, from methods of measuring, data gathering, and classification to analytical and theoretical knowledge. By exploring the hybrid expertise involved in the making, consumption, and promotion of various materials, and the fluid boundaries they traversed, the book offers an original perspective on important issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology.

Early Modern Fire offers new perspectives on the history of fire in early modern Europe (ca. 1600–1800). Far from the background role that scholarship has traditionally assigned to fire, the essays in this volume demonstrate its centrality to understanding the entangled histories of science, technology, and society in the pre-industrial period. Analysing case studies ranging from alchemy to cooking and from firefighting to fireworks, the contributors show that the history of fire is not only one of change and progress, but also of continuity, characterised by the persistence of traditional know-how, small-scale innovation, and the coexistence of different paradigms. Contributors: Gianenrico Bernasconi, Catherine Denys, Hannah Elmer, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Olivier Jandot, Cyril Lacheze, Andrew M.A. Morris, Cornelia Müller, Bérengère Pinaud, Stefano Salvia, Marco Storni, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, and Simon Werrett.

This book examines the life and works of Santorio Santori and his impact on the history of medicine and natural philosophy. Reputed as the father of experimental medicine and procedures, he is also known for his invention of numerous scientific instruments, including early precision medical devices (pulsimeters, hygrometers, thermometers, anemometers), as well as clinical and surgical tools. The chapters in this volume explore Santorio’s legacy through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They highlight the role played by medical practitioners such as Santorio in the development of corpuscularian ideas, central to the ‘new science’ of the period, and place new emphasis on the role of the life sciences, chemistry and medicine in encouraging new forms of experimentation and instrument-making. Chapters 1 and 2 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

In a scholarly career spanning five decades, Rhoda Rappaport published perceptive analyses of science in the culture of early Modern Europe, France in particular, with strong emphasis on geology's early development. Of the sixteen papers in this volume, most focus on aspects of geology's cultivation during the 'long' 18th century, from the times of Hooke, Leibniz, and Fontenelle to those of Lavoisier, Werner, and Cuvier. Among the topics most closely treated here are the French mineralogical mapping project initiated by Guettard; contemporary efforts to interpret the earth historically (such as through Noah's Flood); and difficulties presented by the vocabulary often used in traditional histories of geology. Much of Rappaport's research addressed two problems prevalent within 18th-century earth science: the proper understanding of petrifactions, or fossil objects; and struggles to establish reliable knowledge of the earth's past. She also examined the chemistry of G.-F. Rouelle, which she saw as effectively an attempt at systematic comprehension of the entire mineral realm; trans-national features of scientific pursuits as illustrated in the careers of the naturalist Vallisneri and the mineralogist (and philosophe) d'Holbach; and aspects of science's promotion in France through government patronage and academic privilege.

This book represents a first considered attempt to study the factors that conditioned industrial chemistry for war in 1914-18. Taking a comparative perspective, it reflects on the experience of France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Britain, Italy and Russia, and points to significant similarities and differences. It looks at changing patterns in the organisation of industry, and at the emerging symbiosis between science, industry and the military.