The Light of Nature: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science presented to A.C. Crombie (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 110)

This volume of essays is meant as a tribute to Alistair Crombie by some of those who have studied with him. The occasion of its publication is his seven­ tieth birthday - 4 November 1985. Its contents are a reflection - or so it is hoped - of his own interests, and they indicate at the same time his influence on subjects he has pursued for some forty years. Born in Brisbane, Australia, Alistair Cameron Crombie took a first degree in zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1938, after which he moved to Je­ sus College, Cambridge. There he took a doctorate in the same subject (with a dissertation on population dynamics - foreshadowing a later interest in the history of Darwinism) in 1942. By this time he had taken up a research position with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Cambridge Zoological La­ boratory, a position he left in 1946, when he moved to a lectureship in the his­ tory and philosophy of science at University College, London. H. G. Andrewa­ ka and L. C. Birch, in a survey of the history of insect ecology (R. F. Smith, et al. , History of Entomology, 1973), recognise the importance of the works of Crombie (with which they couple the earlier work of Gause) as the principal sti­ mulus for the great interest taken in interspecific competition in the mid 194Os. Front Matter....Pages I-VIII Introduction....Pages 1-3 Front Matter....Pages 5-5 Development of Medical Education among the Arabic-speaking Peoples....Pages 7-20 Gentile da Foligno and the Via Medicorum ....Pages 21-34 Some Assumptions behind Medicine for the Poor during the Reign of Louis XIV....Pages 35-55 Buffon’s Histoire naturelle as a Work of the Enlightenment....Pages 57-65 Adam Gottlob Schirach’s Experiments on Bees....Pages 67-82 William Swainson: Types, Circles, and Affinities....Pages 83-94 A Retrospect on the Historiography of the Life Sciences....Pages 95-109 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 Two Astronomical Tractates of Abbo of Fleury....Pages 113-133 Pseudo-Euclid on the Position of the Image in Reflection: Interpretations by an Anonymous Commentator, by Pena, and by Kepler....Pages 135-144 Thomas Harriot’s Papers on the Calendar....Pages 145-174 Thomas Harriot’s Observations of Halley’s Comet in 1607....Pages 175-191 Animadversions on the Origins of the Microscopre....Pages 193-207 Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics....Pages 209-234 Front Matter....Pages 235-235 Galileians in Sicily: a Hitherto Unpublished Correspondence of Daniele Spinola with Domenico Catalano in Messina (1650–1652)....Pages 237-264 A Friend of Hobbes and an Early Translator of Galileo: Robert Payne of Oxford....Pages 265-280 Descartes and the English....Pages 281-302 From Corfu to Caledonia: The Early Travels of Charles DUPIN, 1808–1820....Pages 303-320 A Scotswoman Abroad: Mary Somerville’s 1817 Visit to France....Pages 321-362 Front Matter....Pages 363-363 Rationality and the Generalization of Scientific Style....Pages 365-381 Front Matter....Pages 363-363 The Idea of the Decay of the World in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha....Pages 383-404 Science in Antiquity: the Indian Perspective....Pages 405-420 System-Building in the Eighteenth Century....Pages 421-431 Elements in the Structure of Victorian Science or Cannon Revisited....Pages 433-449 Back Matter....Pages 451-471 This volume of essays is meant as a tribute to Alistair Crombie by some of those who have studied with him. The occasion of its publication is his sevenƯ tieth birthday - 4 November 1985. Its contents are a reflection - or so it is hoped - of his own interests, and they indicate at the same time his influence on subjects he has pursued for some forty years. Born in Brisbane, Australia, Alistair Cameron Crombie took a first degree in zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1938, after which he moved to JeƯ sus College, Cambridge. There he took a doctorate in the same subject (with a dissertation on population dynamics - foreshadowing a later interest in the history of Darwinism) in 1942. By this time he had taken up a research position with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Cambridge Zoological LaƯ boratory, a position he left in 1946, when he moved to a lectureship in the hisƯ tory and philosophy of science at University College, London. H.G. AndrewaƯ ka and L.C. Birch, in a survey of the history of insect ecology (R.F. Smith, et al., History of Entomology, 1973), recognise the importance of the works of Crombie (with which they couple the earlier work of Gause) as the principal stiƯ mulus for the great interest taken in interspecific competition in the mid 194Os