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  1. Pondering the Imponderable: John Robison and Magnetic Theory in Britain.Robinson M. Yost - 1999 - Annals of Science 56 (2):143-174.
    Important shifts took place in the areas investigated by British experimental philosophers during the late eighteenth century. In particular, the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, and magnetism shifted from largely qualitative, non-mathematical subjects to increasingly quantitative, mathematically based subjects. Emphasizing the Scottish context of Edinburgh natural philosopher, John Robison, this paper traces developments in magnetic theory in Britain from the latter quarter of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Robison is an important transitional figure who practiced (...)
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  • ‘Mechanical philosophy’ and the emergence of physics in Britain: 1800–1850.Crosbie Smith - 1976 - Annals of Science 33 (1):3-29.
    In the late eighteenth century Newton's Principia was studied in the Scottish universities under the influence of the local school of ‘Common Sense’ philosophy. John Robison, holding the key chair of natural philosophy at Edinburgh from 1774 to 1805, provided a new conception of ‘mechanical philosophy’ which proved crucial to the emergence of physics in nineteenth century Britain. At Cambridge the emphasis on ‘mixed mathematics’ was taken to a new level of refinement and application by the introduction of analytical methods (...)
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  • The Audience for Science in Eighteenth Century Edinburgh.Steven Shapin - 1974 - History of Science 12 (2):95-121.
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  • Herschel in Bedlam: Natural History and Stellar Astronomy.Simon Schaffer - 1980 - British Journal for the History of Science 13 (3):211-239.
    In his comprehensive survey of the work of William Herschel, published in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes for 1842, Dominique Arago argued that the life of the great astronomer ‘had the rare privilege of forming an epoch in an extended branch of astronomy’. Arago also noted, however, that Herschel's ideas were often taken as ‘the conceptions of a madman’, even if they were subsequently accepted. This fact, commented Arago, ‘seems to me one that deserves to appear in the history (...)
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  • Joseph black and the absolute levity of phlogiston.Carleton E. Perrin - 1983 - Annals of Science 40 (2):109-137.
    For some fifteen years in his chemistry lectures in Edinburgh, Joseph Black taught that phlogiston possesses absolute levity. It was not an aberration on Black's part: he justified the notion on experimental grounds. Moreover, the existence of a nongravitating substance capable of entering the composition of bodies raised intriguing possibilities for uniting physical and chemical phenomena. The doctrine became something of a tradition in Edinburgh, but was subject to growing criticism, particulary with the growth of pneumatic chemistry. By the early (...)
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  • Demonstrative induction: Its significant role in the history of physics.Jon Dorling - 1973 - Philosophy of Science 40 (3):360-372.
    It is argued in this paper that the valid argument forms coming under the general heading of Demonstrative Induction have played a highly significant role in the history of theoretical physics. This situation was thoroughly appreciated by several earlier philosophers of science and deserves to be more widely known and understood.
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  • The Transmission of Science.R. G. A. Dolby - 1977 - History of Science 15 (1):1-43.
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  • Institutional Individualism and the Emergence of Scientific Rationality.Ronald Curtis - 1989 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 20 (1):77.
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  • The Historiography of ‘Georgian’ Optics.G. N. Cantor - 1978 - History of Science 16 (1):1-21.
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  • The hypothesis of ether and Reid's interpretation of Newton's first rule of philosophizing.Robert Callergård - 1999 - Synthese 120 (1):19-26.
    My object is to question a recurrent claim made to the point that Thomas Reid (1710–1796) was hostile to ether theories and that this hostility had its source in his distinctive interpretation of the first of Newton's regulæ philosophandi. Against this view I will argue that Reid did not have any quarrel at all with unobservable or theoretical entities as such, and that his objections against actual theories concerning ether were scientific rather than philosophical, even when based on Newton's first (...)
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  • Natural theology and the plurality of worlds: Observations on the Brewster-Whewell debate.John Hedley Brooke - 1977 - Annals of Science 34 (3):221-286.
    Summary The object of this study is to analyse certain aspects of the debate between David Brewster and William Whewell concerning the probability of extra-terrestrial life, in order to illustrate the nature, constitution and condition of natural theology in the decades immediately preceding the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's Origin of species. The argument is directed against a stylised picture of natural theology which has been drawn from a backward projection of the Darwinian antithesis between natural selection and certain (...)
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