W.R. Shea

Trevor H. Levere

This collection of essays is a tribute to Stillman Drake by some of his friends and colleagues, and by others on whom his work has had a formative influence. It is difficult to know him without succumbing to his combination of discipline and enthusiasm, even in fields remote from Renaissance physics and natural philosophy; and so he should not be surprised in this volume to see emphases and methods congenial to him, even on topics as remote as Darwin or the chemical revolution. Therein lies whatever unity the discerning reader may find in this book, beyond the natural focus and coherence of the largest section, on Galileo, and the final section on Drake's collection of books, a major and now accessible resource for research in the field that he has made his own. We have chosen, as the occasion for presenting the volume to Stillman Drake, Galileo's birthday; Galileo has had more than one birthday party in Toronto since Drake came to the University of Toronto. As for the title, it reflects a shared conviction that experiment is the key to science; it is what scientists do. Drake has already asserted that emphasis in the title of his magisterial Galileo at Work, and we echo it here. Those who have had the privilege and pleasure of working and arguing with Stillman over the years know his tenacity, penetration, and vigour. They also know his generosity and humility. We owe him much.

Essays on Galileo and the History of Science in Honour of Stillman Drake

Nature, Experiment, and the Sciences

Frederic Lawrence Holmes

Trevor Harvey Levere

From the days of the alchemists through the creation of the modern laboratory, chemistry has been defined by its instruments and experimental techniques. Historians, however, have tended to focus on the course of chemical theory rather than on the tools and experiments that drove the theory. This volume moves chemical instruments and experiments into the foreground of historical concern, in line with the emphasis on practice that characterizes current work on other fields of science and engineering. The principal themes are: change and stability, precision, the construction and transformation of apparatus, the dissemination of instruments, and the bridging of disciplines through instruments.The essays are divided into three chronological sections: The Practice of Alchemy (reviewing the material and iconographic evidence as well as the written record and the issue of reproducibility of alchemical experiments), From Hales to the Chemical Revolution (discussing significant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century innovations as well as smaller innovations that cumulatively extended the reach and improved the quality of chemical experimentation), and The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (discussing the increasingly important role of innovative apparatus as chemistry grew into the first large-scale modern scientific discipline).Contributors : R. G. W. Anderson, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Maurice Crosland, Jan Golinski, Frederic L. Holmes, Trevor H. Levere, Seymour H. Mauskopf, William R. Newman, Mary Jo Nye, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan J. Rocke, Colin A. Russell, William A. Smeaton, Melvyn Usselman.

Trevor H. Levere

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