Produced by Charles Keller
A HISTORY OF SCIENCE
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., LL.D.
ASSISTED BY EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, M.D.
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME II.
CONTENTS
BOOK II
CHAPTER I. SCIENCE IN THE DARK AGE
CHAPTER II. MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE AMONG THE ARABIANS
CHAPTER III. MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE IN THE WEST
CHAPTER IV. THE NEW COSMOLOGY--COPERNICUS TO KEPLER AND GALILEO
CHAPTER V. GALILEO AND THE NEW PHYSICS
CHAPTER VI. TWO PSEUDO-SCIENCES--ALCHEMY AND ASTROLOGY
CHAPTER VII. FROM PARACELSUS TO HARVEY
CHAPTER VIII. MEDICINE IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
CHAPTER IX. PHILOSOPHER-SCIENTISTS AND NEW INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING
CHAPTER X. THE SUCCESSORS OF GALILEO IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE
CHAPTER XI. NEWTON AND THE COMPOSITION OF LIGHT
CHAPTER XII. NEWTON AND THE LAW OF GRAVITATION
CHAPTER XIII. INSTRUMENTS OF PRECISION IN THE AGE OF NEWTON
CHAPTER XIV. PROGRESS IN ELECTRICITY FROM GILBERT AND VON GUERICKE TO FRANKLIN
CHAPTER XV. NATURAL HISTORY TO THE TIME OF LINNAEUS
APPENDIX
A HISTORY OF SCIENCE
BOOK II. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN SCIENCE
The studies of the present book cover the progress of science from the close of the Roman period in the fifth century A.D. to about the middle of the eighteenth century. In tracing the course of events through so long a period, a difficulty becomes prominent which everywhere besets the historian in less degree--a difficulty due to the conflict between the strictly chronological and the topical method of treatment. We must hold as closely as possible to the actual sequence of events, since, as already pointed out, one discovery leads on to another. But, on the other hand, progressive steps are taken contemporaneously in the various fields of science, and if we were to attempt to introduce these in strict chronological order we should lose all sense of topical continuity.
Our method has been to adopt a compromise, following the course of a single science in each great epoch to a convenient stopping-point, and then turning back to bring forward the story of another science. Thus, for example, we tell the story of Copernicus and Galileo, bringing the record of cosmical and mechanical progress down to about the middle of the seventeenth century, before turning back to take up the physiological progress of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Once the latter stream is entered, however, we follow it without interruption to the time of Harvey and his contemporaries in the middle of the seventeenth century, where we leave it to return to the field of mechanics as exploited by the successors of Galileo, who were also the predecessors and contemporaries of Newton.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A History of Science — Volume 2 by Williams
- 2: The Copernican theory of the solar system
- 3: Where alone there was progress in the mediaeval epoch
- 4: Which were preserved throughout this period
- 5: Through an Arabic version translated from the Syriac
- 6: The son of the famous Harun al Rashid
- 7: Albategnius was a student of the Ptolemaic astronomy
- 8: Alhazen carried forward these studies
- 9: We find as perhaps the greatest Arabian name that of Geber
- 10: While Rhazes was still alive another Arabian
- 11: Having been cured by medicines from the Damascene hospital
- 12: Greatest among them was Trotula
- 13: Despite prayers and incantations
- 14: As demonstrated by Harvey three centuries later
- 15: A certain manuscript of the great Cornelius Celsus
- 16: Vigo laid especial stress upon treating this last condition
- 17: And discusses mirrors and lenses
- 18: Da Vinci describes this engine minutely
- 19: That Da Vinci understood the principle of this mechanism
- 20: His name was Nicholas Copernicus
- 21: Copernicus made his way to Vienna to study medicine
- 22: Contrary to the accepted opinion of mathematicians nay
- 23: Mercury's orbit would be included within that of Venus
- 24: The author of the Prutenic tables
- 25: Tycho rejected the Copernican theory of the earth's motion
- 26: But if Tycho propounded no great generalizations
- 27: As also to oppose the Gregorian reform of the calendar
- 28: Kepler was led to a very fanciful theory
- 29: That the planetary orbits are not circular
- 30: Hitherto urged in opposition to the Copernican theory
- 31: Almost simultaneously with Galileo
- 32: Illustrating the vigorous assault of Salviati
- 33: The motion of which is indubitable
- 34: Are their orbits so arranged that
- 35: Galileo qualified his renunciation by muttering to himself
- 36: As taught by the Aristotelian philosopher
- 37: And that this propulsive motion was transmitted to the stone
- 38: As Descartes expressed it in his Principia Philosophiae
- 39: Regarding the motion of the pendulum
- 40: These men are the Dutchman Stevinus
- 41: Exercised the ingenuity of Galileo
- 42: But a compound of ebony and air
- 43: 3 It will be seen that Galileo
- 44: To the end of that noble substance of that great loadstone
- 45: Convinced him that the earth is a magnet and a loadstone
- 46: Kepler repeated their experiments
- 47: Evangelista Torricelli 1608 1647
- 48: During which Torricelli was seized with a fever
- 49: Alchemists believed that most of the antediluvians
- 50: Were interested in these alchemists
- 51: Were calcined in an open crucible
- 52: And to be confined in various substances
- 53: The fate of a certain indiscreet alchemist
- 54: Sometimes an alchemist practised both
- 55: When the alchemist wished to demonstrate his power
- 56: Alchemy finally evolved into modern chemistry
- 57: Throughout the dark age the astrologers flourished
- 58: Killeth Canutus Sueno is himself slain
- 59: According to a believer in astrology
- 60: A nineteenth century astrologer
- 61: In which the ambitious astrologer
- 62: Better known as Paracelsus 1493 1541
- 63: As my adversaries followers of Galen have done
- 64: In the stomach was an archaeus
- 65: Was Andrew Vesalius 1514 1564
- 66: They showed conclusively that Eustachius was equal
- 67: Servetus rejected the doctrine of natural
- 68: Easily permeable membrane of the foetus
- 69: The vena cava enters the heart at an inferior portion
- 70: And returns from it by the veins
- 71: In connection with the tight ligature
- 72: By Antonius von Leeuwenhoek 1632 1723
- 73: Contrary to the teachings of Paracelsus
- 74: He modified the archaeus of Paracelsus
- 75: The Iatrophysical school also called iatromathematical
- 76: And the German Gottfried Leibnitz 1646 1716
- 77: He both sounded the clarion and entered into the fight
- 78: It is encroached upon by neighboring vortices
- 79: Galileo himself being a member
- 80: Pensionnaires in various branches of science
- 81: As with the mercurial barometer
- 82: 7304 pounds to the square inch
- 83: And cause the sensation we call color
- 84: That animals cannot live in a vacuum
- 85: Even expulsive virtue is seen in this globe
- 86: Usually invented the mechanical devices for doing so
- 87: Even in this age of microscopy
- 88: Huygens was completely victorious
- 89: After which the air was readmitted
- 90: In 1681 he returned to Holland
- 91: According to the received laws of refraction
- 92: And the vertical angle of the prism
- 93: After their trajection through the prism
- 94: And therefore Minium reflecteth rays of any color
- 95: With Anaxagoras this was scarcely more than a guess
- 96: Simple though the computation was
- 97: In the syzygies in semi diameters of the earth
- 98: The circumsolar towards the sun
- 99: But the orbits of the satellites are concentric to Jupiter
- 100: If those aphelions are also quiescent
- 101: The story is told that Lippershey
- 102: Together with Malvasia and Auzout
- 103: Invented by John Hadley in 1731
- 104: Hauksbee tried various experiments
- 105: One with the air exhausted and the other unexhausted
- 106: As a guest at the Wheler house
- 107: Dufay was a highly educated savant
- 108: The gauzes and ribbons being wetted
- 109: On making the experiment related by Otto von Guericke
- 110: Though rendered electrical likewise
- 111: Bose then presented a beautiful young lady
- 112: The discharge causing the wheel to rotate
- 113: When it is electrified strongly
- 114: Musschenbroek held in one hand this jar
- 115: Among these writers was the English scientist William Watson
- 116: Be electrified so as to give a spark
- 117: And in consequence is POSITIVELY electrified
- 118: The French scientists were not
- 119: Vitreous or positive electricity was produced
- 120: Andreas Caesalpinus 1579 1603
- 121: Was equally distinguished as botanist and as zoologist
- 122: The name Felis leo designates the lion
- 123: The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus
- 124: For notes and bibliography to vol