Astronomy history

The Vestnik of the Leningrad University appears in six series—physics and chemistry biology geology and geography mathematics, engineering, and astronomy history, language, and literature and economics, philosophy, and law-each of which appears four times a year. 

Pendergrast, Mark. Mirror Mirror A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection. New York Basic Books, 2003. An exhaustive examination of mirrors and their influence on science, astronomy, history, religion, art, literature, psychology, and advertising, with an abundance of biographical material, supported by photographs, about scientists and mirror innovators. 

Malphrus, Benjamin K. The History of Radio Astronomy and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Evolution Toward Big Science. Malabar, Fla. Krieger, 1996. A chronicle of radio astronomy history from the early days to the development of large national radio astronomy laboratories. 

Article included in a special issue devoted to History of science and technology a sampler of centres and collections of distinctions. Presents a history of the development of the history of science collections at Wisconsin University at Madison since 1946, with descriptions of the Chester Thordarson Collection, Denis Duveen Collection, and the William Cole Collection. The Library s holdings are especially strong in the history of chemistry, alchemy, botany, astronomy, and physics... 

Bolton, Henry Carrington. History of chemical notation, Part I., Metallurgic astronomy and its symbols. Trans NY Acad Sci 2, no. 5 (11 Dec 1882) 53-57. 

As an example of the insufficiency of present usefulness and self-consistency as grounds for belief in a scientific construct, it may be in order to recall some scientific history. In our own field we have the familiar example of phlogiston and in astronomy the example of epicycles. By the use of epicycle superimposed on epicycle, the geocentric theory was able to give a self-consistent, popular, and accurate description of apparent planetary motions. The epicycle treatment is analogous to a Fourier analysis of the motions and its accuracy did not guarantee the physical reality of epicycles. 

The nonspecialized scientific tradition that was pursued until the 1840s at the Royal Society was characteristic of many British and American scientific academies and societies in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Edinburgh Philosophical Society (founded in 1737) set up two broad divisions, for example. There was a section for chemistry, anatomy, botany, medicine, metals and minerals, natural history, and "what is of a more particular nature" and a section for "the general parts" of science, namely, geometry, astronomy, mechanics, optics, and geography. 3 8... 

We are now in a position to sketch a brief recent history of astronomy, concentrating on the mainly spectroscopic concerns and highlighting the very real dialectic that has sprung up between Earth- and space-based astronomy, between Europe and the rest of the world. 

Pliny the Elder, 23-79 A.D. Roman philosopher. Author of a Natural History in 37 books, in which he discussed the astronomy, geology, zoology, botany, agriculture, mineralogy, and medicine of his time. 

For the history of science in the middle ages Roger Bacon is a more interesting personality than Vincent or Albertus, for while the latter were mainly recorders and interpreters of the natural science of this time, Bacon was more passionately interested in the accomplishments of scientific discoveries and aims. He possessed the fervor of a missionary in presenting the claims of science to the attention of his contemporaries, and an imagination which enabled him to look beyond the state of experimental science in his own time to a future of greater possibilities. It is evident that he was a zealous student of several branches of science especially of mathematics, physics (notably of optics), astronomy and the chemistry of his time. 

The discovery that shows, beyond all others, that Hipparchus possessed one of the masterminds of all time was the detection of that remarkable celestial movement known as the precession of the equinoxes. The inquiry that led to this discovery involved a most profound investigation, especially when it is remembered that in the days of Hipparchus, the means of (5) observation of the heavenly bodies were only of the rudest description, and the available observations of earlier dates were extremely scanty. We can but look with astonishment on the genius of the man who, in spite of such difficulties, was able to detect such a phenomenon as the precession, and to exhibit its actual magnitude. I shall endeavor to explain the nature of this singular celestial movement, for it may be said to offer the first instance in the (10) history of science in which we find that combination of accurate observation with skillful interpretation, of which, in the subsequent development of astronomy, we have so many splendid examples. 

Astronomy and chemistry are usually considered very different sciences, with very different historical paths. Whereas astronomy is observational and based on the exact laws of celestial dynamics, chemistry is the archetypical experimental science. Yet speculations about interconnections between the two fields can be found far back in time. To mention but one example, in his 1807 lectures on the history of chemistry, Hans Christian 0rsted prophesied that some day chemistry will have just as much influence on astronomy as mechanics so far. He added that Then it will be necessary to regard external motion as a product of internal forces, and all natural science will finally become a cosmogony. [4] 0rsted s prophecy eventually became reality, but the path followed from chemistry to astronomy took a different direction than imagined by the Danish scientist. To become useful in the science of the heavens, chemistry first had to prove its worth in the study of the earth. 

R. C. Kenat and D. H. DeVorkin, Quantum physics and the stars III Towards a rational theory of stellar spectra, Journal for the History of Astronomy 21 (1990) ... 

H.C. Urey, The origin and development of the earth and other terrestrial planets, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 1 (1951) 209-277, 263-268. H.C. Urey, The Planets Their Origin and Development (New Haven, 1952). On Urey and chemical cosmogony, see Brush, A History of Modem Planetary Physics, 144-159 and Doel, Solar System Astronomy in America, 92-108. See also the contributions in H. Craig, S. L. Miller, and G. J. Wasserburg (eds.), Isotopic and Cosmic Chemistry. Dedicated to Harold C. Urey on his Seventieth Birthday (Amsterdam, 1964). Urey, The origin and development of the earth and other terrestrial planets, 232. 

There were critics who thought that chemistry could never be more than a combination of laboratory practice, which they viewed as a kind of cookery, and classification, which they saw as the essence of natural history, including botany and zoology. Those same critics regarded natural history as unscientific, lacking the rigor of mathematical physics or astronomy. Chemistry was indeed far from Newtonian physics. We have already seen the failure of attempts to assimilate chemistry to Newton s program. But to dismiss chemistry for this reason was to adopt too narrow a definition of science and to undervalue the role of classification in the scientific enterprise as a whole. Natural historians have to classify what they observe or collect so do chemists. 

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