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MA Coursework

Patricia Fara – Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Englightenment
Patricia Fara, Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Englightenment (London: Pimlico, 2004). Notes 16 – “Because experimental [...]
3 February, 2018
“English Baconianism suited men who aimed to govern. ‘For knowledge itself is power,’ Bacon had declared, a memorable slogan that was often repeated during the following centuries. For the scientific programme that he launched, knowledge meant not only power over nature, but also power over people — including aristocrats exploiting their workers, England ruling her […]
1 February, 2018
Kim Todd – Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis
Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis (Orlando: Harcourt, 2007). Notes 2 – “Conches, plump beetles, limp birds [...]
28 January, 2018
Geology Participatory Museum Exhibits
Response Geologic “Antiquities” Participatory Exhibit I have to assume there are many lazy persons who, like myself, often pass under a tree and wonder [...]
4 December, 2017
Nick Wilding – Reviews of Galileo’s O (3 Volumes)
Response For this week, in addition to the “Making of a (Forged) Book” video, the Anatomy of a Book exercise, and the introduction to A Galileo Forgery: [...]
1 December, 2017
Andrew Cunningham and Katharine Park Comparative Interpretation of Vesalius’s De Fabrica Title-page
Andrew Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1997). Katharine [...]
14 November, 2017
Ali ibn Rijal’s Treatise on the Significance of Comets in the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac
12 November, 2017
John Bainbridge’s Astrology
Setting John Bainbridge’s An Astronomicall Description of the Late Comet in its historiographic context is less a matter of recounting an obvious and [...]
12 November, 2017
Katharine Park – Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection || Shigehisa Kuriyama – “Muscularity and Identity” in Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine
Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books, 2006). Shigehisa Kuriyama, “Muscularity [...]
12 November, 2017
Simon Schaffer – Authorized Prophets: Comets and Astronomers after 1759
Simon Schaffer, “Authorized Prophets: Comets and Astronomers after 1759,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 17 (1987): 45-74. Response [...]
2 November, 2017
Rene Descartes – Principles of Philosophy
Rene Descartes, A Discourse on Method, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Principles of Philosophy, trans. John Veitch (New York: Dutton, 1975). Response [...]
30 October, 2017
Description of John Gadbury – De Cometis (1665)
John Gadbury, De Cometis, 1665. John Gadbury’s 1665 publication De Cometis, written in response to the three comets that appeared between 1664 and 1665, [...]
18 October, 2017
John Bainbridge Historiography
Setting John Bainbridge’s An Astronomicall Description of the Late Comet in its historiographic context is less a matter of recounting an obvious and [...]
16 October, 2017
John Bainbridge – An Astronomicall Description of the late Comet
The 1619 Edward Griffin-published version of John Bainbridge’s An Astronomicall Description of the late Comet’s paratext is composed of a title page, a [...]
6 October, 2017
Mario Biagioli – Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism
Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, U. of Chgo. Press, 1993). Response [At the onset: I have [...]
29 September, 2017
Monica Azzolini – The Duke and the Stars
Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013). Response It should be noted at the [...]
28 September, 2017
Robert S. Westman – “The Copernican Question Revisited: A Reply to Noel Swerdlow and John Heilbron”
Robert S. Westman, “The Copernican Question Revisited: A Reply to Noel Swerdlow and John Heilbron,” Perspectives on Science 21, no. 1 (2013). Response It [...]
26 September, 2017
Peter Barker – “Constructing Copernicus”
Peter Barker, “Constructing Copernicus,” Perspectives on Science 10, no. 2 (Summer 2002). Notes 208 – “This paper . . . examines Kepler’s [...]
25 September, 2017
Rienk Vermij – Johannes Phocylides Holwarda and the Interpretation of New Stars in the Dutch Republic
Rienk Vermij, “Johannes Phocylides Holwarda and the Interpretation of New Stars in the Dutch Republic,” in Change and Continuity in Early Modern Cosmology, [...]
21 September, 2017
John Murdoch – The Analytical Character of Late Medieval Learning
John E. Murdoch, “The Analytic Character of Late Medieval Learning: Natural Philosophy without Nature,” in Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages, ed. [...]
18 September, 2017
Rienk Vermij – “A Science of Signs:
Rienk Vermij, “A Science of Signs: Aristotelian Meteorology in Reformation Germany,” Early Science and Medicine 15, no. 6 (2010). Response In “A Science of [...]
15 September, 2017
C. Scott Dixon – Popular Astrology and Lutheran Propaganda in Reformation Germany
C. Scott Dixon, “Popular Astrology and Lutheran Propaganda in Reformation Germany,” History 84, no. 275 (July 1999). Response In his “Popular Astrology and [...]
15 September, 2017
Lynn Thorndike – Latin Treatises on Comets Between 1238 and 1368 A.D. – Albertus Magnus
Lynn Thorndike, Latin Treatises on Comets Between 1238 and 1368 A.D. (Chicago: Chgo UP, 1950). Response Here in the third tractatus of his first book of [...]
8 September, 2017
G.E.R. Lloyd – “Saving the Appearances”
G.E.R. Lloyd, “Saving the Appearances, Classical Quarterly, n.s. 28 (1978): 202-222. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/638722 Response In this [...]
8 September, 2017
Richard Sorabji – “The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle”
Richard Sorabji, “The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle,” in Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, ed. Richard [...]
8 September, 2017
Richard Sorabji – “Aristotle on Colour, Light, and Imperceptibles”
Richard Sorabji, “Aristotle on Colour, Light, and Imperceptibles,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London [...]
8 September, 2017







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