Listing of Sessions and Abstracts of Papers - History of Science ...

cal science, mainly mechanics, and its interdependence with the development of ancient societies.
Schuster, John
E-mail Address: j.a.schuster@unsw.edu.au
Hydrostatics, Physico-Mathematics and the Origins of Micro-Mechanism: Or, What René and
Isaac Did in 1619
In 1619 the twenty-three year old René Descartes and his thirty-one year old mentor, Isaac
Beeckman, were trying to invent, and practice, a discipline they called hings, they spent a week trying to
reduce to corpuscular-mechanical terms Simon Stevin’s recent remarkable findings concerning the
hydrostatic paradox. This paper, based on research pursued with Stephen Gaukroger, argues that this
little studied, and less understood episode opens for us a unique window on the beginnings of Descartes’
long term agenda in micro-mechanism, and its attendant dynamical concepts, its promise and its pitfalls.
Additionally, we argue that Descartes and Beeckman’s precocious posturing is a particular instance of
the more general early 17th century phenomenon of alternative natural philosophers variously striving to
appropriate and command the findings and tools of the so-called ‘mixed mathematical sciences.’ The
paper also throws light on some larger Scientific Revolution narratives, from Duhem to Dear, which
partially misjudge the relations between the traditional mixed mathematical sciences and natural philosophical
novelty in the 17th century.
Secord, Anne
E-mail Address: pas6@hermes.cam.ac.uk
"Be what you would seem to be": Samuel Smiles, Thomas Edward, and the Making of a Working-class
Scientific Hero
Samuel Smiles is best known for his ideology of self-help, which he promoted as the basis of individual
and national progress. His biographies of engineers and industrial entrepreneurs represent the
conception of one culture expressed through shared moral values, and throw light on the function of
heroes for fostering progress. Less familiar are Smiles's biographies of working-class naturalists, which
emphasise that progress, ensured primarily through soundness of character, was not always accompanied
by commercial success or social mobility. By writing about the selfless devotion of poverty-stricken
men to the pursuit of science, Smiles hoped to challenge accusations that his ideology valued only
material success. I suggest, however, that working-class autodidacts who did not escape their own
culture presented Smiles with especially acute problems as there was no guarantee that the values encapsulated
by self-help were fully internalised and shared across class lines. Smiles's 1876 biography of the
impoverished Scottish naturalist and shoemaker Thomas Edward allows us to explore this in unexpected
ways. My paper will discuss the making of a Victorian scientific hero, who, in the process, came to feel
that he had been robbed of his life.
Secord, James
E-mail Address: jas1010@hermes.cam.ac.uk
Crowds and Celebrities: Faces of Knowledge in the Pictorial Press
The rise of the large-format illustrated newspaper press in Europe, America, and Australia during the
1840s and 1850s transformed perceptions of politicians, religious leaders, criminals, actors, singers, and
other 'men and women of the time'. The layouts for these journals juxtaposed pictures of massed urban
crowds with finely detailed portraits of individuals. In this paper, I examine a number of crucial cases,
ranging from accounts of the funeral of the chemist John Dalton to reports of national and international
scientific meetings, to discuss the role of this new form of graphic journalism in creating the figure of
the scientist.