2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
nineteenth century. Few historians, however, have explored the intellectual origins
of the table that is, to the set of resources upon which Mendeleev had to draw in
order to construct the theory. These sources are chiefly two, both of which not
usually seen as contributing to the periodic table: Gerhardt’s organic type theory
and concerns about hyper-light elements, including the chemical ether. This paper
situates the intellectual construction of the periodic table in between these two
disconnected (and discarded) traditions of chemical reasoning. Initiated by the
Karlsruhe chemical congress of 1860, Mendeleev’s speculations about the nature
of atomic weight and the different types of organic and inorganic chemical
organization were refined during his construction of a series of chemical textbooks:
Organic Chemistry (1861, 1863), and the famous Principles of Chemistry (first
edition, 1869-1871). Only by fusing the pedagogical functions of these textbooks
with the twin intellectual origins can one come to an understanding of how this
theory of classification emerged in post-Emancipation St. Petersburg.
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Michael␣ John Gorman Dibner Institute for the History of Science and
Technology
A Microcosm of Mathematical Knowledge:
Johannes Kepler and the Death of Painting
A new pictorial genre emerged in early seventeenth-century Antwerp—the gallery
painting. Painted representations of Kunstkammern, executed in meticulous
detail, depicting overflowing collections of artificialia and naturalia were
themselves transformed into the objects of cultivated curiosity and displayed
prominently to visitors to the collections that they depicted. Commonly painted
on portable copper-plates, these representations could also permit virtual viewing
of a gallery, when sent to distant friends and relations. The minute detail in
which these paintings were executed encouraged the use of magnifying lenses
in their examination, further reinforcing the analogy between the pictorial
representation of the gallery and the curiosities contained within its walls. In
addition to their representational function of providing a faithful depiction of a
particular collection, such works commonly had an extremely strong allegorical
function. They encoded a model of the virtuous patron by situating him or her in
relation to an idealised ordering of nature and artifice. They also encoded models
of natural investigation, frequently depicting the debates between natural
philosophers, the use of astronomical instruments and maps. Artists such as Jan
Brueghel I, Frans Francken II, Rubens and Willem van Haecht used this genre
to deliver increasingly complex messages about the relationship between the
natural world and the various available techniques available for its representation.
This paper will analyse one such painting in detail, comparing it with other
examples of the genre. I identify the subject of the painting as Johannes Kepler,
and explore the relationship between graphical representation and instrumentally
produced astronomical knowledge that it describes.