History of Science

This article presents four detailed case studies of sixteenth-century vernacular translations of Sacrobosco's De sphaera. Previous scholarship has highlighted the important role of Sacrobosco's Sphere in medieval and early modern universities, where it served as an introductory astronomy text. We argue that the Sphere was more than a university teaching text. It was translated many times and was accessible to a wide range of people. The popularity of the Sphere suggests widespread interest in cosmological questions. We suggest that the text was a profitable one for early modern printers, who strove to identify books that would be reliable sellers. We also argue that the Sphere was not a static text. Rather, translators and editors added commentaries and other supplemental material that corrected and updated Sacrobosco's original text and

This paper analyzes sixteenth-century commentaries on Johannes de Sacrobosco's Sphaera in Portuguese and Spanish. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were more translations of the Sphaera into Castilian and Portuguese than into all other European vernaculars combined. A major reason for the interest in Sphaera translations in Spain and Portugal was that the basic astronomical and geographical knowledge contained in this text could be used for navigation. Because of their enormous interests in overseas exploration and colonization, Iberian monarchs supported the development of cosmography, a subject that combined mathematics, astronomy, and geography. The astronomical information in the Sphaera was also valued on the Iberian Peninsula for its applications to astrology. Finally, the Sphaera was critical to a Christian education because it taught readers to appreciate the wonders of God's creation. Spanish and Portuguese commentaries on Sacrobosco's Sphaera reflect this mix of practical, political, and spiritual concerns.

der 2004 schon mit einem Buch über das Sakrament der Beichte hervorgetreten ist, bildet die "Reformation des Leidens" ein weiteres Hauptanliegen der evangelischen Geistlichkeit. In dieser epochenübergreifenden Studie schöpft er aus einer beeindruckenden Quellenkenntnis, um Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten in der Trostliteratur des christlichen Abendlandes zu verdeutlichen. Zu Ersteren gehört die Ermahnung, Anfechtungen und Schicksalsschläge als Wille Gottes geduldig zu ertragen; zu Letzteren die Ablehnung ihres heilsfördernden Po

der 2004 schon mit einem Buch über das Sakrament der Beichte hervorgetreten ist, bildet die "Reformation des Leidens" ein weiteres Hauptanliegen der evangelischen Geistlichkeit. In dieser epochenübergreifenden Studie schöpft er aus einer beeindruckenden Quellenkenntnis, um Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten in der Trostliteratur des christlichen Abendlandes zu verdeutlichen. Zu Ersteren gehört die Ermahnung, Anfechtungen und Schicksalsschläge als Wille Gottes geduldig zu ertragen; zu Letzteren die Ablehnung ihres heilsfördernden Po

For several years I have collaborated with Hanne Andersen of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and Xiang Chen of California Lutheran University, on studies of conceptual change in the history of science drawing on ideas from cognitive science, and especially drawing on theories of concepts developed recently in cognitive psychology. Much previous work in the history and philosophy of science talks about conceptual structures. The great advantage of these ideas from cognitive psychology is that they allow us, perhaps for the first time, to say in an empirically defensible way exactly what a conceptual structure looks like, and to make possible detailed comparisons of conceptual structures. We have presented our ideas most fully in The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
In this brief paper I will sketch a cognitive account of the Copernican revolution, a subject treated at length in our book.
I will focus on one aspect of the revolution: the nature of the equant problem in Ptolemaic astronomy and Copernicus‟s response to it. I will extend our presentation slightly by giving historically defensible numerical values for some key parameters. I will begin by giving a cognitive summary of the revolution. This way of presenting familiar historical material may seem rather strange at first, but perhaps I can explain enough to make at least some of it intelligible, and to connect it to several key historical questions.

The view that Islamicate science went into decline while European science was getting started is still commonly held among historians of science and almost universal in general history and popular presentations. Different versions of the decline thesis make it start in the 11th century with the work of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Ghazālī; in the 13th century with the sack of Baghdad, or at latest with the beginning of the "Scientific Revolution" in Europe. However, it is now increasingly apparent that Islamicate science was healthy well into the period of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. There are many reasons for the continued attraction of the decline theses. In addition to the inaccessibility of sources, these include mistaking the nature of credentialing in Islamicate science, and mistaking the nature of the sources in which original science was appearing. In this paper, I will sketch a more appropriate social structure for understanding Islamicate science by describing t...

Our recent research, much of it conducted with Hanne Andersen of Aarhus University in Denmark, has developed an approach to conceptual change in the history of science based on theories of concepts created by cognitive psychologists (Andersen, Barker, Chen, 2006). By using an empirical theory our work stands apart from that of most philosophers and historians of science, with the conspicuous exceptions of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Thomas S. Kuhn. The theories we have adopted are in fact direct empirical vindications of the accounts of concepts offered by Wittgenstein and Kuhn (Barker, Chen, Andersen, 2002). In the present paper we sketch our general position and indicate some of the cases to which it has been successfully applied. Perhaps the most consequential result of our earlier work was the recognition that the cases we had treated successfully all employed a single type of conceptual structure, called an object concept. But one of the main cases we considered, Kepler's innovations in astronomy, could only be adequately analyzed using a second and distinct type of conceptual structure known as a process concept. After introducing these ideas, we indicate their possible application to episodes from the history of science that we have not yet explored, including cognitive obstacles to the acceptance of Darwinism and climate change. We therefore offer these techniques as both a perspective on history and an approach to contemporary problems in public policy connected with science.