Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis

Reading up on the Opticks. Refashioning Newton's Theories of Light and Colors in Eighteenth-Century Textbooks

Robert Smiths A Compleat System of Opticks (1738) was the most prominent eighteenth-century text-book account of Newtons optics. By rearranging the findings and conclusions of Opticks, it made them accessible to a wider public and at the same time refashioned Newtons optics into a renewed science of optics. In this process, the optical parts of Principia were integrated, thus blending the experimental inferences and mechanistic hypotheses that Newton had carefully separated. The Compleat System was not isolated in its refashioning of Newtons optics. Dutch and English promoters of the new philosophy had preceded Smith by giving Opticks a text-book treatment, and they too integrated experimental and mechanistic inferences. In this way eighteenth-century text-books produced a natural philosophical discourse of light, colors and matter. This paper traces the refashioning of Newtons optics in Dutch and English text-books of natural philosophy during the first half of the eighteenth century. It concludes with the Dutch translation of A Compleat System of Opticks and its reception among innovators of telescope manufacture.

Duytsche Mathematique and the Building of a New Society: Pursuits of Mathematics in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic

In the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic mathematicians and mathematics acquired notable social and intellectual prestige. They contributed to the establishment of a new state, first through practical projects of fortification, navigation, land management, and later also through learned pursuits in academia and cultural circles. It can be said that the Republic provided particularly fertile grounds for academic pursuits, through its make-up of distributed wealth and power and its economic characteristics. The various towns and provinces provided various settings and opportunities to aspiring mathematicians. This chapter compares two notable sites, the provinces of Holland and Friesland, whose parallels and particularities put into perspective the interactions between mathematics and society in the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic.

Magi from the North: Instruments of Fire and Light in the Early Seventeenth Century

The telescope emerged from a setting of natural magic, in the first place Della Porta’s writings on light and lenses. This paper aims a reconsidering the nature and meaning of the telescope as an optical instrument by taking this context seriously. It broadens the term ‘optics’ beyond the usual dioptrics, to a more general sense of controlling and manipulating light, sight and perception. In addition to historicizing the concept of optical instrument, it reflects upon the epistemic features of natural magic. Della Porta explained the properties of lenses in terms of the effects of artefacts on the images as they are perceived. This paper juxtaposes this ‘thinking with objects’ with practices of natural magic in the Low Countries. The central figure is Cornelis Drebbel, a resourceful inventor of optical instruments and in many ways comparable to Della Porta. In the course of this paper the reception of Della Porta in the Low Countries is also discussed. There was a prominent tradition natural magic in the North in which the work of Della Porta also found a modest place.

Jeu de Paume & Jeux de la Raison in Seventeenth-Century Optics

In La Dioptrique (1637) Rene Descartes elucidated his derivation of the sine law of refraction by means of a comparison of light rays with the motion of tennis balls. In terms of a mathematical-physical model this comparison was quite problematic, as his critics then and now did not hesitate to point out. However, they misread Descartes’ intention, which was to appeal in a clarifying way to the imagination of his readers in order to render his discoveries comprehensible. These readers were in the first place the circle of supporters around Constantijn Huygens. In his comparisons Descartes drew directly on the cultural meanings and the practice of tennis in the urban culture of the Dutch Republic. The tennis metaphor entered Descartes’ writing in this cultural setting, providing him with a clue to understanding the rainbow. Later, however, in the Meteores it figured much less prominently than in La Dioptrique.

Materials and expertise in early modern Europe. Between market and laboratory

but is also deeply indebted to ideas originating in kalam (kalām). He acknowledges that while the influential role of Maimonides and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) on European thought is well documented, the contribution of kalam atomism, on which they both wrote, has not been given its appropriate place in mainstream history of science. Bala discusses the important role of Arabic sciences in integrating Greek and Indian traditions (Chapter 10). Although he overemphasises the importance of the school of Jundishapur (on the recent scholarship on Jundishapur/Gondešapur, see for example Peter Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, Edinburgh, 2006, pp. 20 21), he presents an overview of Arabic achievements in philosophy, mathematics and medicine as synthesis of Hellenic and Indian ideas. The broad scope Bala has taken, as well as the thoughtful methodological sections will be of great inspiration to any historian of science. The implications of Bala’s main thesis are many*and go well beyond the fields of history and philosophy of science into current economic and political spheres. In essence, his argument refutes the underlying basis of both Fukuyama’s hegemonic narrative and Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’. The book is based primarily on secondary sources*this is quite understandable given the scope of the areas covered. Bala’s important work is a reminder of how much more work is yet to be done in many of the areas he discusses. There is still much we need to find out about transmissions of knowledge in and across Asia in periods prior to those discussed by Bala. Work on those early primary sources across cultures in the history of science and medicine is often painfully difficult and slow, but is essential for important overviews such as this one, to continue to erode the Eurocentric illusions that still mark the history of science and medicine as a whole. Happily, the dialogical approach for which Bala is calling, is on the rise. With more works taking similar approaches, Arun Bala’s book is bound to remain an important pioneer in the history of science for years to come.