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Deciphering economic futures: Electricity, calculation, and the power economy, 1880–1930 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Daniela Russ
More than other energy industries, the electric power industry relied on calculating practices and codifications like load management to handle and develop their technical systems. Scholars have approached these practices largely from the point of view of the history of electricity. While it is true that these practices facilitated the expansion of the industry, this paper argues that electrical systems
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Visible winds: The production of new visibilities of wind energy in West Germany, 1973–1991 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Nicole Hesse
The use of energy from wind has a multi-faceted relationship to visibility. Between 1973 and 1991, various actors in the West German environmental movement made assertions about the visibility of renewable sources of power, but wind energy took on a particular prominence. In this article, the question of how different actors have used knowledge and the materiality of wind turbines for competing purposes
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40 years of history of physics in Italy Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Fabio Bevilacqua, Salvatore Esposito
In 2021, the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy (SISFA) celebrates its 40th birthday. The Society, today an institutional member of the ESHS, was founded as the Gruppo Nazionale di Storia della Fisica (GNSF) during two conferences in 1981 (in April and October) at the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia, and later (1999) became the Società Italiana degli Storici della Fisica e dell'Astronomia
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Historiographical reflections on sciences in Europe: Perspectives from Centaurus* Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Ana Simões, Maria Paula Diogo
Contributions of a historiographical bent have been a regular presence in Centaurus. However, from 2007 onwards, when Centaurus became associated with the European Society for the History of Science, a number of papers and thematic special issues that chose to tackle specifically historiographical reflections on sciences in Europe made their appearance. Our long-lasting interest in this problematic
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Closure and the Critical Epidemic Ending. Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Arthur Rose
"An epidemic has a dramaturgic form," wrote Charles Rosenberg in 1989, "Epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing and revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift towards closure." Rosenberg's dramaturgic description has become an important starting point for critical studies
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Making power visible: Codifications, infrastructures, and representations of energy Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-11-11 Felix Frey, Jonas Schädler
The concept and material manifestations of energy are often considered elusive and invisible per se. In most historical, sociological, and anthropological studies, the idea prevails that processes of energy conversion and transmission have become more and more invisible to humans since the industrial revolution, although worldwide energy consumption has increased massively since the 19th century. This
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Oil media: Changing portraits of petroleum in visual culture between the US, Kuwait, and Switzerland Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-11-11 Laura Hindelang
This article examines three cases of mid-20th-century oil media—oil-related imagery, iconographies, and media—in visual culture: a series of popular science books entitled The Story of Oil published in the US, an oil-themed set of Kuwaiti postage stamps (1959), and an art exhibition in Zurich (1956) titled Welt des Erdöls: Junge Maler sehen eine Industrie (World of Petroleum: Young Artists See an Industry)
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Measuring progress in megawatt: Colonialism, development, and the “unseeing” electricity grid in East Africa Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-11-08 Jonas van der Straeten
The electrification of East Africa followed an exceptionally uneven path. After about 50 years of relative neglect under colonial rule, the construction of hydroelectric dams moved electricity generation into the focus of late colonial development policy and became the major field of intervention for foreign donors after independence. The metrics of electricity attained a role as indicator and driver
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The Earth's eccentricity in Kepler's refutation of the Tychonic approach to the problem of Mars Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-11-05 Gonzalo Luis Recio
In this paper I explain Kepler's procedure for refuting the Ptolemaic-Tychonic approach to the problem of Mars, by using latitudinal observations at Mars's opposition, from Chapter 19 of the Astronomia Nova. This critique is fundamental to his reformation of the foundations of astronomy with his first two laws. Moreover, as I argue, the strategy he follows is deeply rooted in certain rhetorical considerations
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Trepidation spheres: Variant representations of the eighth sphere and the debate about the movement of the apogees and the fixed stars in Alfonsine astronomy Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-10-13 Samuel Gessner
In what way does the construction of three-dimensional spherical models in the early modern period reflect the search for an appropriate representation of subtle, slow changes perceived in the firmament of the fixed stars? The present paper analyses some of the preserved models and assesses the potential they held to stimulate contemporary thinking on this question, termed the “motion of the eighth
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The American Society for the Control of Cancer in the Portuguese Institute of Oncology's Bulletin: Rethinking nationalism Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-09-21 Beatriz Medori
The purpose of this paper is to trace the American Society for the Control of Cancer's (ASCC) influence on the Portuguese Institute of Oncology's (IPO) Bulletin. The time period featured is from 1934 to 1940, which spans the first two decades of the newly formed Portuguese dictatorship, known as the Estado Novo (1933–1974). The analysis of the ASCC's “imprint” on the IPO's Bulletin aims to shed new
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Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851–1916): An introduction to the spotlight section Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Graeme Gooday
The extraordinary career of the British Quaker polymath, Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851–1916), encompassed fame in physics, electrical engineering, mathematics, history of science, educational method, painting, music, textbooks, X-rays, popular lectures, the promotion of women's rights, book-collecting, and not least his leadership in encouraging fellow Quakers to embrace the challenging results
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“A many-sided crystal”: Understanding the manifold legacy of Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851–1916) Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Graeme Gooday
Was Silvanus Phillips Thompson primarily a physicist, electrical engineer, biographer, or teacher? His obituarists could not agree. I argue Thompson was in fact a polymathic generalist who, as a philanthropic Quaker, worked not to promote his own expertise but rather to ensure the public was swiftly informed of the most important techno-scientific research and applications of his contemporaries. I
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Thompson, Biographer Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Geoffrey Cantor
This paper addresses the role of religion in the construction of scientific biographies. As a devout Quaker, Silvanus Phillips Thompson believed that biographical writing was a serious endeavour and considered that it had a moral purpose. His short biographies of Philipp Reis and William Sturgeon sought to do justice to the achievements of these two little-known inventors. Likewise, in his longer biographies
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No slaves to words: S. P. Thompson's theory of history Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-06-23 Matthew Stanley
S. P. Thompson developed a detailed theory of history in order to understand and explain changes in both science and religion over the centuries. This theory tried to take science and religion seriously as categories based on genuine aspects of human experience, and to understand trends that both brought them together and separated them. For him, the most important element of the practice of history
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Living in between: The commercial side of Silvanus P. Thompson's engineering Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Stathis Arapostathis, Anna Guagnini
Historians have hitherto lacked an integrated account of the commercial activities, practices, and entrepreneurial strategies of S. P. Thompson during his career from the 1870s until his death in 1916. This article demonstrates the practical, financial, and moral dimensions and intricacies of his passage from the academic to the industrial and commercial world. We highlight the different patterns of
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“The joint labours of ingenious men”: John Smeaton's Royal Society network and the Eddystone Lighthouse Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-06-14 Andrew M. A. Morris
The Industrial Enlightenment is widely thought to have been a period when “science” and “technology” became intimately intertwined. In his 1791 book on the building of the Eddystone lighthouse (completed in 1759), the English engineer John Smeaton praised the Royal Society for being more than a group of abstract theoreticians. This article looks at the fellows of Smeaton's Royal Society network who
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Simon Stevin through the lens of his dedications Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Rienk Vermij
The article studies the dedicatory letters the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin (1548–1620) included in his works. Dedicatory letters gave authors the opportunity to create a persona or scholarly identity for themselves and thereby also to define their field, at a time when these were still in full flux. Stevin, in his dedications, ignored or even mocked the common rhetoric of patronage. He deliberately
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History of science in Central and Eastern Europe: Studies from Poland, Hungary, and Croatia Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Mitchell G. Ash
The article introduces a special section about history of science in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the fall of Communism, and sketches a conceptual framework within which the three papers in the section can be understood together. This introduction provides information about the workshop from which the papers were recruited, and continues with more general considerations on the nationalization
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Productive marginalities: The history of science in/about Poland since 1989 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Jan Surman
While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institutional, it became less visible internationally following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This article looks into the institutional state of history-of-science writing in Poland, and discusses several key focal points that emerged in recent years. By distinguishing between the core history of science, written
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History of science in Hungary: Stewardship and audience in periods of institutional and political change Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Gábor Á. Zemplén
The paper introduces the development of history of science in Hungary, focusing on the status of the field in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, universities, and scientific societies, and the “local” output in Hungarian. The genres associated with the field became popular in the early 20th century, and the institutional framework was created in the 1970s. After 1990, constructivist methodologies for
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Ana Simões, Ana Matilde SousaThe global adventure of science: Einstein, Eddington and the eclipse. Lisbon, Portugal: Chili com Carne, 2019, 245 pp. ISBN: 9789898363411 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-08-01 Jürgen Renn
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SachaStern. The Jewish calendar controversy of 921/2 CE . Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019, xxii, 576 pp. ISBN: 9789004388666 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-07-30 Ilana Wartenberg
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The dissemination of mesmerism in Germany (1784–1815): Some patterns of the circulation of knowledge Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-07-30 Claire Gantet
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), a physician who graduated from the University of Vienna, invented a therapy based on the concept of a universal fluid, similar to electricity, that flowed through all living things. By restoring the circulation of this fluid in the nerves of human bodies, he believed he could cure illness without resorting to medication. Few medical theories have enjoyed as great success
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The material culture and politics of artifacts in nuclear diplomacy Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-06-09 Maria Rentetzi, Kenji Ito
This special issue stresses the importance of material culture in diplomatic studies of science and technology. In our studies, objects are considered powerful tokens of complexity in diplomatic encounters and of asymmetry in international relations. The contributors are committed to theorizing about the role of objects in diplomatic exchanges during the postwar period and, at the same time, the role
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The seismograph as a diplomatic object: The Soviet–American exchange of instruments, 1958–1964 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Lif Lund Jacobsen, Irina Fedorova, Julia Lajus
Scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain met in Geneva in 1958 and 1959 to create the technical basis for monitoring a future nuclear test ban treaty. Despite their scientific veneer, these meetings were politically motivated and the scientists tried to forward U.S. or Soviet objectives through their technical discussions. Seismographic data was a cornerstone of the proposed monitoring regime
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The Sphere of Anthony Ascham: Sources for the earliest-known English-language cosmography based on Sacrobosco's De Sphaera Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-05-18 James Brannon
Anthony Ascham's Sphere is historically significant since it appeared a generation earlier than William Thomas's 1553 work, which historians had considered the earliest English-language rendering of De Sphaera. Ascham completed his folio-sized manuscript in 1527 at St. John's College, Cambridge. Suffused with color, diagrams, maps, and volvelles, The Sphere prompts the modern scholar to wonder which
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AnneLawrence‐MathersMedieval meteorology: Forecasting the weather from Aristotle to the Almanac. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781108406000 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-06-25 Charles Burnett
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Recent trends in the history of science in Croatia Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-05-19 Vedran Duančić
The essay outlines the development of the history of science and medicine in Croatia since the first half of the 20th century, addressing in more detail some recent research trends that seem to have the potential to reshape and reposition this relatively marginal field within the national academic landscape. It examines the origins and implication of the “historicization” of the history of science
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Adler Antony. Neptune's laboratory: Fantasy, fear, and science at sea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019, 256 pp. ISBN: 9780674972018 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Margaret Schotte
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Geoff Rayner‐Canham. The periodic table: Past, present, and future. Singapore: World Scientific, 2020, 312 pp. ISBN : 9789811218484 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-05-04 Annette Lykknes
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Mapping the ESHS community: A brief summary Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-05-01 Ana Simões,Maria Paula Diogo
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A nuclear monument the size of a football field: The diplomatic construction of soil nuclearity in the Palomares accident (Spain, 1966) Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-04-14 Clara Florensa
On April 8, 1966, 4,808 barrels—208.2 L each—were buried at Savannah River nuclear cemetery in Aiken, South Carolina. They contained about 1,100 tons of radioactive contaminated soil and vegetation from Palomares, a village on the South Coast of Spain. Earlier that year, about 9 kg of plutonium had been scattered over Palomares due to a U.S. Air Force accident involving four nuclear bombs. In this
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Edited by Francesco Paolo de Ceglia. The body of evidence: Corpses and proofs in Early Modern European medicine. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020, x + 355 pp. ISBN: 9789004284814 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Katherine D. Watson
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Scientific interactions in colonial, multilinguistic, and interreligious contexts: Venetian Crete and the manuscript Marcianus latinus VIII.31 (2614). A preliminary study Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Alberto Bardi
This paper is a preliminary study focused on the astronomical manuscript Marcianus latinus VIII.31 (2614) and its socio-historical context of use and production, the Venetian colony of Crete in the 15th century. It is a relevant source for the study of scientific interactions in colonial, multilinguistic, and interreligious contexts in the Eastern Mediterranean for at least two reasons: (a) it contains
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The scientific object and material diplomacy: The shipment of radioisotopes from the United States to Japan in 1950 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Kenji Ito
This paper asks how a scientific object functions in a diplomatic context by examining the distribution of radioisotopes by the United States to Japan in 1950. In particular, it aims to shed light on some material dimensions of the diplomatic roles that a scientific object can play. With diplomacy as its main focus, this study centers on those who received the radioisotopes (Japanese scientists) as
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Dirk De Bock& Geert Vanpaemel. Rods, sets and arrows: The rise and fall of modern mathematics in Belgium. New York, NY: Springer, 2019, xxii +293 pp. ISBN : 9783030205980; 9783030205997 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-04-11 Jean Paul Van Bendegem
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Readers of the first edition of Newton's Principia on the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation: British public debates, 1687–1713 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-03-25 Steffen Ducheyne, Jip van Besouw
In this article, we document how, in the public arena, British readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687) tried to make sense of the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation—an issue on which Newton had remained entirely silent in the first edition of the Principia. We show that readers attached new meanings to the Principia
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Global perspectives on science diplomacy: Exploring the diplomacy‐knowledge nexus in contemporary histories of science Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-02-22 Matthew Adamson, Roberto Lalli
Contemporary scholarship concerning science diplomacy is increasingly taking a historical approach. In our introduction to this special issue, we argue that this approach promises insight into science diplomacy because of the tools historians of science bring to their work. In particular, we observe that not only are historians of science currently poised to chart the diplomatic aspects involved in
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Scientists as political experts: Atomic scientists and their claims for expertise on international relations, 1945–1947 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-01-18 S. Waqar H. Zaidi
This paper explores the construction of scientists' expertise on international affairs through a study of the rhetoric of U.S. atomic scientists during public and policy‐making debates on the international control of atomic energy between 1945 and 1947. It explores the claims scientists made about the nature of their expertise on issues of diplomacy and international relations and how their expertise
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How epidemics end Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-02-22 Erica Charters, Kristin Heitman
As COVID‐19 drags on and new vaccines promise widespread immunity, the world's attention has turned to predicting how the present pandemic will end. How do societies know when an epidemic is over and normal life can resume? What criteria and markers indicate such an end? Who has the insight, authority, and credibility to decipher these signs? Detailed research on past epidemics has demonstrated that
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CORRIGENDUM Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-01-12
In the following article,1 the authors would like to add UID/HIS/00286/2019 as a funder to their article in the Funding information section. The authors apologize for any inconvenience caused.
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CORRIGENDUM Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-01-12
In the following article,1 the authors would like to add UID/HIS/00286/2013 as a funder to their article in the Funding information section. The authors apologize for any inconvenience caused.
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ERRATUM Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-02-22
Due to a production failure, errors were introduced in the article “Giovan Battista Della Porta and Francis Bacon on the creative power of experimentation” in Centaurus Volume 62 Issue 3 (2020). The online version of the article has been corrected and can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1600-0498.12341.” We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
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Research, knowledge, and policy on goitre and iodine in Norway (1850–2016) Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-02-15 Kari Tove Elvbakken, Helle Margrete Meltzer
Our aim is to shed light on the relationships between research, knowledge, and policy in the case of goitre and the use of iodine as a preventive measure against it in Norway from the 1850s onward. Goitre was previously widespread in certain areas of Norway, but disappeared around 1950. After many decades of silence about goitre and iodine, an expert report in 2016 argued that action should be taken
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Materialized internationalism: How the IAEA made the Vinča Dosimetry Experiment, and how the experiment made the IAEA Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-02-08 Toshihiro Higuchi, Jacques E. C. Hymans
After a deadly 1958 nuclear reactor accident in Vinča, Yugoslavia, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) engaged in intensive nuclear diplomacy to assemble a major international scientific experiment on radiation dosimetry at the accident site. The 1960 Vinča Dosimetry Experiment made history as the first multinational “big science” project in this field. It was also a significant political
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Juan Pimentel. Fantasmas de la ciencia española. Madrid, Spain: Marcial Pons Historia/Fundación Jorge Juan, 2020, 418 pp. ISBN : 9788417945015 Centaurus (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-01-13 John Slater
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