Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences

Astronomers before Newton in the 17^th century attempted to find the best world system in the light of the new data and the novel observations that had been provided by the telescope but were not sufficient to prove that Copernicus was right. Using the new information, the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli developed a geo-heliocentric system that he considered a satisfactory alternative to heliocentrism. He argued that physical causes are difficult to generalize, but that nonetheless astronomers could formulate well-founded hypotheses. He skillfully combined the empirical data to articulate a deductive system, organized into elements such as definitions, arguments, theorems, corollaries, hypotheses, and so on. This system allowed him to avoid some of the errors of competing theories, and to obtain what he considered criteria to choose the best (hypothesis absoluta) using the so-called epic-epicycles.

This article examines the conceptual and technical background of the Jesuit’s hypothesis and discusses how he was cautious yet bold in the way he formulated it.

This article takes advantage of the systematic exploration of the archives of the Academy of Sciences made within the framework of the critical edition in progress of the complete works of Jean Le Rond D’Alembert (CNRS éditions). The large amount of data collected makes it possible to better understand the different facets of the work of the science academician in the time of Enlightenment. Unlike the current era, not all academics have the same rights and duties. It is therefore important to specify the different types of academicians before studying their activity. It is about personal research, academic expertise and interaction with the scientific world. Expertise relates both to theoretical results and to technical inventions (processes or machines). In addition to the scientific watch in his field of research, the academician must also favor the collection of data of observations necessary for the validation of the theories. An emblematic figure, D’Alembert also shows other poorly understood academic functions such as director or price commissioner; but also to highlight the uses and sociability within the institution.

Apart from his doctoral thesis in law and the commissioned work on the history of the House of Welf, Leibniz published almost exclusively under his name during his lifetime contributions in learned journals. He became, therefore, a renowned mathematician and philosopher for his articles in scholarly periodicals. Scholarly journals were a new literary genre, founded in 1665 with the publication of the Journal desSçavans in Paris and two months later of the PhilosophicalTransactions in London. The Journal des Sçavans, which became a standard reference, distinguished two categories of articles: reviews of new books (always published anonymously) and scholarly news (original contributions, reports about scientific discoveries and projects, as well as news from scholars and scholarly institutions). By using in particular digitised periodicals and databases, I have been able to identify 192 scholarly news and 100 book reviews written by Leibniz. Leibniz did not use journals only for reputation considerations, but also for scientific and methodical purposes. He conceived book reviews as milestones in a dynamic history of the sciences (historia literaria). His scholarly news relied on a conception of the scientific method as an open process, which allowed reactions and corrections by addressees and readers. This is the context in which scientific discussions were held.

Age, before being a number, is the symbolic indication, rich in history and subjectivity, of a stage of life, the last of these stages being death. The first attempts at describing mortality naturally imply a concern to clarify these stages, each of which has its own characteristics, in particular its own vital force and its own risks of dying. Moreover, these ages of life are described in very different ways by authors belonging to the long tradition which evokes or studies them. A quick overview of the main elements of this tradition will show the slow transition that leads from the qualification of ages and their relationship with the duration and limit of life to the quantification of these durations and these limits.

The pastor Süssmilch, main character of this study is resolutely at odds with traditional arithmology, linked in particular to the number 7. Physical theology, here ancestor of the science of the populations and, in particular, studies on the human mortality, is not a mystique of numbers but the very opposite, namely a scientific approach based on experience and calculation. The pastor’s analysis shows, once superstition is eliminated, that a regularity reigns no less in the phenomena and that there can be no chance. It is thus the same attempt at “putting in order" that underlies these reflexions on the course of human life.

Évelyne Samama, La médecine de guerre en Grèce ancienne, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017 (Armelle Debru)

Ruth Glasner, Gersonides: A Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century, Philosopher Scientist, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015 (Jean Celeyrette)

John S. Rowlinson, Sir James Dewar, 1842-1923. A Ruthless Chemist, Farnham, Ashgate, 2012 (Pierre Laszlo)

Gerhardt Stenger, Œuvres complètes de Voltaire. Tome 65B : Les Singularités de la nature, Oxford, Oxford Voltaire Foundation, 2017 (Chantal Grell)