[ { "id": "authors:3kgxy-6p791", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "3kgxy-6p791", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20171212-145502020", "type": "book_section", "title": "Politics, Morality, Innovation, and Misrepresentation in Physical Science and Technology", "book_title": "The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Stewart", "given_name": "Larry", "clpid": "Stewart-L" } ], "abstract": "The pressures of politics, the desire to be first in innovation, moral convictions, and the potential dangers of error are all factors that have long been at work in the history of science and technology. And every so often, the need to reach a result may require leaving out a few steps here and there. Historians think and argue best through stories, so what follows are several tales, each of which exemplifies one or more of these aspects, though some reach back nearly 200 years. The first concerns the depletion of the ozone layer; the second involves the discovery of electric waves by Heinrich Hertz in 1888; the third concerns the controlled production of electromagnetic radiation by Guglielmo Marconi and John Ambrose Fleming in the early 1900s; the fourth portrays the circumstances surrounding Joseph von Fraunhofer's discovery and use of the spectral lines in the 1810s; our final case involves a bitter controversy between the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the astronomer Friedrich Z\u00f6llner in the 1890s.", "doi": "10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2_12", "isbn": "978-3-319-58435-5", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Cham, Switzerland", "publication_date": "2017-07-06", "pages": "201-217" }, { "id": "authors:6ntkq-6g548", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "6ntkq-6g548", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20171214-074230254", "type": "book", "title": "The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere", "book_title": "The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Stewart", "given_name": "Larry", "clpid": "Stewart-L" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Stewart", "given_name": "Larry", "clpid": "Stewart-L" } ], "abstract": "The Romance of Science pays tribute to the wide-ranging and highly influential work of Trevor Levere, historian of science and author of Poetry Realised in Nature, Transforming Matter, Science and the Canadian Arctic, Affinity and Matter and other significant inquiries in the history of modern science. Expanding on Levere's many themes and interests, The Romance of Science assembles historians of science -- all influenced by Levere's work -- to explore such matters as the place and space of instruments in science, the role and meaning of science museums, poetry in nature, chemical warfare and warfare in nature, science in Canada and the Arctic, Romanticism, aesthetics and morals in natural philosophy, and the \"dismal science\" of economics. The Romance of Science explores the interactions between science's romantic, material, institutional and economic engagements with Nature.", "doi": "10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2", "isbn": "978-3-319-58435-5", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Cham, Switzerland", "publication_date": "2017" }, { "id": "authors:sv6at-3da74", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "sv6at-3da74", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-135426075", "type": "book", "title": "A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "abstract": "New essays in science history ranging across the entire field and related in most instance to the works of Charles Gillispie, one of the field's founders.", "doi": "10.1007/978-94-007-2627-7", "isbn": "978-94-007-2626-0", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2012" }, { "id": "authors:2zz5m-59n26", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "2zz5m-59n26", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-141406988", "type": "book_section", "title": "Cauchy's Theory of Dispersion Anticipated by Fresnel", "book_title": "A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "abstract": "In 1836 Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789\u20131857), having left Paris and settled in Prague following the July Revolution, published a memoir on the dispersion of light under the auspices of Prague's Royal Society of Sciences. In it he produced an equation that is even today known as Cauchy's formula for dispersion. It works reasonably well for normally dispersive bodies and was only replaced towards the end of the 19th century following the discovery of anomalous dispersion in Denmark by C. Christiansen in 1870 and consequent changes in theory by Wolfgang Sellmeier and Hermann von Helmholtz (1821\u20131894) in Germany. In his publication Cauchy nowhere referred for inspiration to Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788\u20131827), the originator in France of wave optics. Instead, he wrote that Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis (1792\u20131843), having read Cauchy's earlier work on the equations of motion that govern a system of material points, suggested that terms which Cauchy had there neglected might account for dispersion \u2013 assuming that the medium, or ether, that was presumed to carry optical radiation is itself so constituted.", "doi": "10.1007/978-94-007-2627-7_22", "isbn": "978-94-007-2626-0", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2011-12-08", "pages": "399-416" }, { "id": "authors:wzv42-1q340", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "wzv42-1q340", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-140427453", "type": "book_section", "title": "Publications by Charles Coulston Gillispie", "book_title": "A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "abstract": "1. Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790\u20131850. Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. LVIII. Harvard University Press, 1951, xv + 315 pp., 2nd printing, 1969; Harper Torch Book Edition, 1959. New edition, with forward by Nicolaas Rupke and new preface, Harvard University Press, 1996. Chinese translation, 1999. 2. A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry: Manufacturing and the Technical Arts in Plates Selected from L'Encyclop\u00e8die of Denis Diderot. Dover Publications, New York, 1959, 2 volumes; 485 plates; xxx + 920 pp. 3. The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. Princeton University Press, 1960, 562 pp. Oxford University Press edition, 1960. Translations: Japanese, 1966; Greek, 1975; Korean, 1981; Italian, II Mulino, Bologna, 1981; Rumanian, 2010. Reissued with a new preface, Princeton University Press, 1990.", "doi": "10.1007/978-94-007-2627-7_1", "isbn": "978-94-007-2626-0", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2011-12-08", "pages": "3-13" }, { "id": "authors:3bq76-jhg86", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "3bq76-jhg86", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-141028459", "type": "book_section", "title": "Urania Propitia, Tabulae Rudophinae faciles redditae a Maria Cunitia Beneficent Urania, the Adaptation of the Rudolphine Tables by Maria Cunitz", "book_title": "A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie", "author": [ { "family_name": "Swerdlow", "given_name": "N. M.", "clpid": "Swerdlow-N-M" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "abstract": "Maria Cunitz's Beneficent Urania, published in 1650, has the distinction of being the earliest surviving scientific work by a woman on the highest technical level of its age, for its purpose was to provide solutions to difficulties in the most advanced science of the age, the mathematical astronomy of Kepler's Rudolphine Tables. Her work is at once original and the product of a long history. In 1577 Tycho Brahe began his program of observations while constructing the Castle of Uraniborg on the island of Hven in the Danish Sound, granted him by King Frederick II, with the object of a complete reform of astronomy, to produce new and accurate tables of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, which he had envisioned years earlier. The observations, by Tycho and his many assistants, with the finest and largest new instruments, exceeding all previous observations in quality and quantity, many, many thousands, continued through twenty years on Hven, two years of travel through Germany, and, after Tycho entered the service of Rudolph II in 1599, at Prague and the estate of Benatky granted him by the Emperor.", "doi": "10.1007/978-94-007-2627-7_7", "isbn": "978-94-007-2626-0", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2011-12-08", "pages": "81-121" }, { "id": "authors:3wc96-fry13", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "3wc96-fry13", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-145510428", "type": "book_section", "title": "Ptolemy's Theories of the Latitude of the Planets in the Almagest, Handy Tables, and Planetary Hypotheses", "book_title": "Wrong for the Right Reasons", "author": [ { "family_name": "Swerdlow", "given_name": "N. M.", "clpid": "Swerdlow-N-M" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Franklin", "given_name": "Allan", "clpid": "Franklin-A" } ], "abstract": "The theory of planetary latitude in Book 13 of the Almagest is known, if at all, for its complexity. This has the pleasant result that there is only a small literature on it and that literature is on a high level of technical competence. The same, by the way, is true of latitude theory in general. There are recent expositions by Pedersen and Neugebauer, earlier ones by Delambre and Herz, and a few briefer treatments. \n\nParadoxically, the complexity of Ptolemy's theory is both its strength and its weakness, its strength because he reached it by doing everything right, at least in principle, its weakness because it is ultimately wrong, as was later recognized by Ptolemy himself, who went on to remedy its deficiencies. It is, as we may say, wrong for the right reasons. And since being wrong for the right reasons is more or less the subject of this collection \u2013 for is not most interesting older science wrong for the right reasons? \u2013 Ptolemy's latitude theory seems quite appropriate. Our object here is to explain the latitude theory, first its original form in the Almagest, then its later modifications in the Handy Tables and Planetary Hypotheses, each of which shows improvements, and to investigate its observational foundation, for it is the observations that are the cause of both its strength and its weakness. It is unusual to find any revisions in the work of an ancient scientist, but in the case of Ptolemy's latitude theory three distinct stages are known, which may be unique, showing that he himself knew something was wrong and twice set out to correct it.", "doi": "10.1007/1-4020-3048-7_3", "isbn": "978-1-4020-3047-5", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2005-07-13", "pages": "41-71" }, { "id": "authors:z5hn9-14581", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "z5hn9-14581", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-150109648", "type": "book_section", "title": "Introduction: Beyond Disunity and Historicism", "book_title": "Wrong for the Right Reasons", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Franklin", "given_name": "Allan", "clpid": "Franklin-A" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Franklin", "given_name": "Allan", "clpid": "Franklin-A" } ], "abstract": "One of the recent trends in the history of science, or \"science studies\" in general, has been the tendency to regard science as purely local and contextual. Perhaps this was a needed remedy for the universal claims prevalent in much of the late 20th century. Nevertheless we believe that the pendulum has swung too far. To say that everything in science is local and contextual implicitly downplays the importance of understanding the arguments that scientists use, and have used, to support their hypotheses or experimental results in any manner that breaches locality. It also suggests that we should not look for similarities in method between scientific disciplines or within a single discipline at different times. Many contemporary historians of science think that such attempts are doomed to inevitable failure. There would on this account be no point in investigating, for example, the similarities and differences between the experiments that demonstrated the nonconservation of parity in weak interactions and the experiment that decided between three different proposed mechanisms of DNA replication. Although they were performed at the same time, they were in different scientific fields, which on the recent view have nothing worth remarking in common.", "doi": "10.1007/1-4020-3048-7_1", "isbn": "978-1-4020-3047-5", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2005-07-13", "pages": "1-16" }, { "id": "authors:kvkah-71g51", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "kvkah-71g51", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200203-145005654", "type": "book_section", "title": "An Error within a Mistake?", "book_title": "Wrong for the Right Reasons", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Franklin", "given_name": "Allan", "clpid": "Franklin-A" } ], "abstract": "In recent years much work has been done on the system of electrodynamics that was developed by the German polymath Hermann Helmholtz in the late 1860s and throughout the 1870s. In 1874 Helmholtz used this new electrodynamics briefly to examine a situation that seems to be quite similar to one analyzed half a decade later by his student Heinrich Hertz in a manuscript written for Helmholtz's eyes. \n\nThough Hertz did not refer explicitly to Helmholtz's previous considerations of 1874, his analysis was based unequivocally on equations that were unique to Helmholtz. Yet in this particular application of the master's system, its creator in 1874 and his student in 1879 seem to have arrived at markedly different, indeed at conflicting, results.", "doi": "10.1007/1-4020-3048-7_9", "isbn": "978-1-4020-3047-5", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2005-07-13", "pages": "185-208" }, { "id": "authors:wvbqg-pqz81", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "wvbqg-pqz81", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200130-083214164", "type": "book", "title": "Wrong for the Right Reasons", "author": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "orcid": "0009-0002-9957-3783", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Franklin", "given_name": "Allan", "clpid": "Franklin-A" } ], "contributor": [ { "family_name": "Buchwald", "given_name": "Jed Z.", "clpid": "Buchwald-J-Z" }, { "family_name": "Franklin", "given_name": "Allan", "clpid": "Franklin-A" } ], "abstract": "The rapidity with which knowledge changes makes much of past science obsolete, and often just wrong, from the present's point of view. We no longer think, for example, that heat is a material substance transferred from hot to cold bodies. But is wrong science always or even usually bad science? The essays in this volume argue by example that much of the past's rejected science, wrong in retrospect though it may be - and sometimes markedly so - was nevertheless sound and exemplary of enduring standards that transcend the particularities of culture and locale.", "doi": "10.1007/1-4020-3048-7", "isbn": "978-1-4020-3047-5", "publisher": "Springer", "place_of_publication": "Dordrecht", "publication_date": "2005" } ]