DOCSLIB.ORG

Failure, Fraud and Instrument Cabinets: Academic Involvement in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Water Crisis

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Failure, Fraud and Instrument Cabinets: Academic Involvement in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Water Crisis FAILURE, FRAUD AND INSTRUMENT CABINETS: ACADEMIC INVOLVEMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH WATER CRISIS Tiemen Cocquyt In 1788, the newly appointed professor of physics and mathematics, Chris- tiaan H. Damen, was granted permission from the Leiden University Board to dispose of those instruments that were of use “neither for the study of the history of machines, nor for the instruction of physics”.1 If it was Damen’s goal to maintain a well-equipped academic cabinet for physics instruction, he was at the right place. A setting for vacuum and mechani- cal experiments since the 1670s, Leiden University had been among the earliest academic institutions to introduce instruments into its philosophy curriculum.2 This tradition was brought to further heights when, in the first half of the eighteenth century, the professors Willem J. ’s Gravesande and Pieter van Musschenbroek systematized empirical demonstration in their natural philosophy textbooks, and thereby provided a means for the diffusion of Newtonian philosophy on the Continent.3 The canon of demonstration apparatus they had brought together, enlarged with acqui- sitions by their successors, was an enviable collection for anyone wish- ing to enrich their lectures with experimental demonstration. Why was it, then, that Damen felt the urge to clean out parts of this cabinet which had been formed, as he stated himself, “in the cradle and nursery of exper- imental physics”?4 As Peter de Clercq has shown, Damen’s move can be understood by taking into account the declining position the Leiden Cabi- net of Physics was in during the decades following its “highlight period” 1 Peter de Clercq, “The ’s Gravesande Collection in the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden”, Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza 3 (1988), pp. 127–137: 133. 2 Edward G. Ruestow, Physics at Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Leiden, The Hague, 1973, pp. 96–112; Gerhard Wiesenfeldt, Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus: experimentelle Natur- lehre an der Universität Leiden, Amsterdam, 2002. 3 Ruestow, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 113–139. Also see the article of Hans Hooijmaijers and Ad Maas, infra, pp. 27 ff. 4 P. de Clercq, “In de schaduw van ’s Gravesande. Het Leids Physisch Kabinet in de tweede helft van de 18de eeuw”, Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde, Natuur- wetenschappen, Wiskunde en Techniek 10 (1987), pp. 149–173: 149. 80 tiemen cocquyt under ’s Gravesande.5 In trying to keep up with new developments, there were strategic reasons for Damen to stress the need for innovation to the University Board, while at the same time emphasizing the significance of his predecessors’ achievements. What Damen was doing was shaping the history of his predecessors’ research, and – at a material level – the cabinet and the objects they had brought together. In this article, I want to sketch some events that preceded Damen’s actions, and investigate how, already during the formation of the his- toric cabinet, Leiden professors disseminated their activities along a well- considered strategy. I will set out how the academic authority of the Leiden professors, in an era of growing public awareness for experimental philosophy, was not an immutable achievement, but instead was some- thing that needed to be maintained actively. In keeping up – particularly in their hydraulic investigations – the professors involved themselves in the complex interplay of state affairs, politics, invention and entrepre- neurship. Yet the risks and vulnerabilities, intrinsic to such interplay, are not always included in the textbooks and publications the professors authored. The shaping of stable, systematized experimental philosophy from risky enterprises was a process that was already going on in the times before Damen made a clean sweep of the Physics Cabinet. In the second part of this article I want to illustrate what repercussions this has for instrument cabinets. It will be argued how a more dynamic view of the interaction between public and academy, rather than a one-way model of science dissemination, gives us a different understanding of some of the Physics Cabinet’s “demonstration” instruments. ’s Gravesande and the Wheel of Wonder In 1721 ’s Gravesande spent the summer at the court of the Landgrave Carl of Hessen-Kassel. Contacts between rulers of the German lands and the Leiden experimental community had existed for a longer time; at least since the 1680s, visits of rulers and professors to the Musschenbroek workshop had enriched the German knowledge centres with philosophi- cal instruments and references to them.6 The court of Hessen-Kassel had been particularly active in such exchange of knowledge and technology. 5 Ibid., pp. 171–172. 6 P. de Clercq, At the Sign of the Oriental Lamp: The Musschenbroek Workshop in Leiden. 1660–1750, Rotterdam, 1997, pp. 152–163..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Discovering Electricity
    THE LEYDEN JAR 0. THE LEYDEN JAR - Story Preface 1. EARLY PIONEERS 2. EARLY EXPERIMENTS 3. THE LEYDEN JAR 4. LIGHTNING in a BOTTLE 5. ELECTRICITY and the TORPEDO FISH 6. MEET GALVANI and VOLTA 7. WHAT MAKES a FROG'S LEG TWITCH? 8. THE WORLD'S FIRST BATTERY 9. THE END and BEGINNING of an ERA In 1746, while visiting Professor Pieter van Musschenbroek’s lab in Leiden (The Netherlands), Andreas Cuneus (a Dutch lawyer, scientist and erstwhile Professor’s assistant) received an extremely powerful shock. This artist’s conception depicts Cuneus, in the lab, attempting to condense electricity in a glass of water. When he tried to pull the wire out of the water, Cuneus was stunned by the magnitude of the shock he received (since it was much worse than that produced by an electrostatic generator, seen on the right side of the drawing). It took him two days to recover. The illustration is Figure 382, at page 570 of Elementary Treatise on Natural Philosophy, Part 3: Electricity and Magnetism, by Augustin Privat Deschanel (translated and edited by J. D. Everett), published in New York, during 1876, by D. Appleton and Co. Online via Google Books. Early experimenters, trying to understand electricity, wondered about its properties: If electricity flows (like water), could it be stored (like water)? Since glass is an insulator, could electricity be stored in a glass jar? If we pour water into a glass jar, then we position a metal wire into the water-containing jar - hooked, at the top, to a Hauksbee electrostatic generator - what would happen? Pieter Van Musschenbroek (a Professor working at Leiden University, in The Netherlands) was particularly keen to store electricity.
    [Show full text]
  • Newton.Indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 16-11-12 / 14:45 | Pag
    omslag Newton.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 16-11-12 / 14:45 | Pag. 1 e Dutch Republic proved ‘A new light on several to be extremely receptive to major gures involved in the groundbreaking ideas of Newton Isaac Newton (–). the reception of Newton’s Dutch scholars such as Willem work.’ and the Netherlands Jacob ’s Gravesande and Petrus Prof. Bert Theunissen, Newton the Netherlands and van Musschenbroek played a Utrecht University crucial role in the adaption and How Isaac Newton was Fashioned dissemination of Newton’s work, ‘is book provides an in the Dutch Republic not only in the Netherlands important contribution to but also in the rest of Europe. EDITED BY ERIC JORINK In the course of the eighteenth the study of the European AND AD MAAS century, Newton’s ideas (in Enlightenment with new dierent guises and interpre- insights in the circulation tations) became a veritable hype in Dutch society. In Newton of knowledge.’ and the Netherlands Newton’s Prof. Frans van Lunteren, sudden success is analyzed in Leiden University great depth and put into a new perspective. Ad Maas is curator at the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands. Eric Jorink is researcher at the Huygens Institute for Netherlands History (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences). / www.lup.nl LUP Newton and the Netherlands.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 16-11-12 / 16:47 | Pag. 1 Newton and the Netherlands Newton and the Netherlands.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 16-11-12 / 16:47 | Pag. 2 Newton and the Netherlands.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 16-11-12 / 16:47 | Pag.
    [Show full text]
  • Lorentz – Function Follows Form and Theory Leads to Experiment
    Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/22522 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Weiss, Martin Paul Michael Title: The masses and the muses : a history of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century Issue Date: 2013-11-27 The Masses and the Muses A History of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century Front cover: The Oval Room, drawing by Johan Conrad Greive, 1862 (Teylers Museum, Haarlem, DD042b) Back cover: The First Art Gallery, drawing by Johan Conrad Greive, 1862 (Teylers Museum, Haarlem, DD042d) The Masses and the Muses A History of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op woensdag 27 november 2013 klokke 15.00 uur door Martin Paul Michael Weiss geboren te Hannover in 1985 Promotiecommissie Prof. Dr. F.H. van Lunteren (promotor, Universiteit Leiden) Prof. Dr. D. van Delft (Universiteit Leiden) Prof. Dr. P.J. ter Keurs (Universiteit Leiden) Dr. D.J. Meijers (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Prof. dr. W.W. Mijnhardt (Universiteit Utrecht) Prof. Dr. H.J.A. Röttgering (Universiteit Leiden) Prof. Dr. L.T.G. Theunissen (Universiteit Utrecht) Dr. H.J. Zuidervaart (Huygens Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis) Prof. Dr. R. Zwijnenberg (Universiteit Leiden) Acknowledgements This PhD was not written in isolation. Throughout the course of this project I received an unquantifiable amount of support – intellectual, financial and moral – from innumerable colleagues and friends. Some of them I hope to be able to acknowledge here.
    [Show full text]
  • – by Julia Cipo, Holger Kersten –
    THE GAS DISCHARGE PHYSICS IN THE 18th CENTURY – by Julia Cipo, Holger Kersten – Francis Edmond Hauksbee Halley * 1666 in Colchester, Great Britain † April/ May 1713 in London * November 8th, 1656 in Haggerston, London † January 25th, 1742 in Greenwich Francis Hauksbee was a british scientist, lab assistant of Isaac Newton *4 and an elected member of the Royal Society for researches in science. Edmond Halley was a british astro- ric (height) formula. In 1716 a bright physicist, meteorologist, mathemati- Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) ing from the North Pole to the South Inspired by Picard’s and Bernoulli’s results on the luminosity of mercu- cian and member of the Royal So- was sighted in Germany, England, Pole. Even though this wasn’t correct, ry in barometric tubes, Hauksbee continued experimenting with mercu- ciety. As the earth’s magnetic fi eld France and Holland. Halley began he determined that the aurora’s arc ry with one difference: he examined the probe in a vacuum vessel. In fascinated him, he worked on this searching for a scientifi c explana- did not course along the geographic his 1709 publicated work topic during the years 1683-1710 tion of this phenomena. He suggest- pole, but along the magnetic pole. *1 called “Physio-mechanical and discovered the line profi le of the ed that the aurora was caused by an experiments on various Hauksbee’s generator magnetic fi eld as well as the baromet- evaporation of magnetic liquid mov- subjects touching light and electricity” he described that after placing mercu- ry in the glass vessel and then evacuating the air, a bright glow could be sight- ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Jean-Baptiste Sarlandie`Re's Mechanical Leeches (1817–1825): an Early Response in the Netherlands to a Shortage of Leeches
    Medical History, 2009, 53: 253–270 Jean-Baptiste Sarlandie`re’s Mechanical Leeches (1817–1825): An Early Response in the Netherlands to a Shortage of Leeches TEUNIS WILLEM VAN HEININGEN* Introduction At the end of the eighteenth century there was a rapidly growing demand for leeches in Europe. Western European and Central European freshwater species had been mainly used until then but now more and more different species were introduced.1 England imported large numbers from Eastern Europe and the Levant, and Pondicherry in Southern India was an important centre for the shipment of these animals whose application was considered a mild form of bloodletting.2 In the autumn of 1825 the Algemeene Konst- en Letterbode, a Dutch weekly journal, drew attention to a shortage, informing its readers that large numbers, kept for medical purposes, had died without an apparent cause,3 possibly through an unknown infective agent. It also printed information by a German pharmacist from Kassel on the proper method of keeping leeches alive as long as possible in large aquaria, by including water plants.4 One solution to the problem had already been invented—the artificial leech of Jean- Baptiste Sarlandie`re. At their annual general meeting, held on 21 May 1821, the officers of the Dutch Society of Sciences (Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen, founded in 1752), on learning of Sarlandie`re’s invention through Martinus van Marum, the Society’s secretary, decided to hold a competition on its serviceability.5 They were persuaded by the increasing demand for leeches, as well as by the fascinating and pro- mising aspects and originality of Sarlandie`re’s invention.
    [Show full text]
  • Cover Page the Handle
    Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/22522 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Weiss, Martin Paul Michael Title: The masses and the muses : a history of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century Issue Date: 2013-11-27 Chapter II: The Birth of a Musaeum I The Museum’s Pre-History 1. Martinus van Marum & the Beginning of the Age of Museums In a letter to the Dutch minister of the interior Anton Reinhard Falck posted in July 1819, the ornithologist and collector Coenraad Jacob Temminck left no doubt as to what he thought two of his colleagues really wanted to do to him, if the opportunity ever presented itself: “Both”, he wrote, “would stop at nothing to clear me out of the way”.1 He was referring to Sebald Justinus Brugmans, professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens in Leiden, and Martinus van Marum, the director of Teylers Museum and secretary of the Holland Society of Sciences in Haarlem. This was more than just a letter of complaint. Temminck himself was no angel, and at the time was in fact pursuing his own political agenda. He had dined with Falck just a few days earlier, and the two men had discussed the establishment of a national museum of natural history in the Netherlands – of which Temminck was to be handed the directorship. Just 13 months later, Temminck’s highly valuable and widely recognised personal ornithological collection, consisting of more than 4000 stuffed birds, had indeed been merged with both the University of Leiden’s natural history collections and the former Royal Cabinet of Natural History in Amsterdam, to form the new National Museum of Natural History (Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie) based in Leiden.
    [Show full text]
  • The Case of Atwood's Machine
    Advances in Historical Studies 2014. Vol.3, No.1, 68-81 Published Online February 2014 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ahs) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ahs.2014.31007 Spreading Newtonian Philosophy with Instruments: The Case of Atwood’s Machine Salvatore Esposito1, Edvige Schettino2 1I.N.F.N., Naples Unit, Naples, Italy 2Department of Physics, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy Email: [email protected], [email protected] Received June 13th, 2013; revised July 20th, 2013; accepted July 29th, 2013 Copyright © 2014 Salvatore Esposito, Edvige Schettino. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In accordance of the Creative Commons Attribution Li- cense all Copyrights © 2014 are reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual property Salvatore Esposito, Edvige Schettino. All Copyright © 2014 are guarded by law and by SCIRP as a guardian. We study how the paradigm of Newton’s science, based on the organization of scientific knowledge as a series of mathematical laws, was definitively accepted in science courses—in the last decades of the XVIII century, in England as well as in the Continent—by means of the “universal” dynamical machine invented by George Atwood in late 1770s just for this purpose. The spreading of such machine, occurring well before the appearance of Atwood’s treatise where he described the novel machine and the experi- ments to be performed with it, is a quite interesting historical case, which we consider in some detail.
    [Show full text]
  • Cum Ferme Omnes Ante Cartesium Arbitrarentur, Primam Humanae
    General Theses from Physics As Taught in the Clementine College Don Alexandro Malaspina of the Imperial Marquisate of Mulazzo, Member of the said College. Facta cuilibet singulas impugnandi facultate. [Great deeds are achieved by attacking them singly.] ____________________________________________________________________ Rome 1771 From the Press of Lorenzo Capponi. ___________________________________________ With the Sanction of the Higher Authorities. 1 Of the Principles of Education in Physics Since the serious study of a philosophical man looks above all to this end, that he might achieve certainty and clear knowledge of things, we ourselves have taken pains at the outset to render an account according to reason, so that through our careful investigation of physics, the mind might thus be drawn towards Nature. Of physicists, we consider, with John Keill,a,1 four schools to be pre-eminent among the rest, the first being the Pythagoreans and Platonists; another has its origin in the Peripatetic School;2 the third tribe of Philosophisers pursues the experimental method; and the final class of physicists is commonly known as the Mechanists. While not all that is propounded by these schools is worthy of assent, yet in each there are certain things of which we approve, abhorring as we do the fault with which Leibniz charges the Cartesians,b,3 namely that of judging the ancient authors with contempt, punishing them, as it were, according to one’s own law. And since Those things last long, and are fixed firmly in the mind, Which we, once born, have imbibed from our earliest years, we select what will be of most use in the future, and of all this we present to our scholars an ordered account: no one would think it suitable for us to hear or read anything contrary to method,c,4 for in general it is through habit, and especially through philosophical habit, that youth is first instructed in the colleges.
    [Show full text]
  • Physics English Final
    General Theses from Physics As Taught in the Clementine College Don Alexandro Malaspina of the Imperial Marquisate of Mulazzo, Member of the said College. Facta cuilibet singulas impugnandi facultate. [Great deeds are achieved by attacking them singly.] ____________________________________________________________________ Rome 1771 From the Press of Lorenzo Capponi. ___________________________________________ With the Sanction of the Higher Authorities. 1 Of the Principles of Education in Physics Since the serious study of a philosophical man looks above all to this end, that he might achieve certainty and clear knowledge of things, we ourselves have taken pains at the outset to render an account according to reason, so that through our careful investigation of physics, the mind might thus be drawn towards Nature. Of physicists, we consider, with John Keill,a,1 four schools to be pre-eminent among the rest, the first being the Pythagoreans and Platonists; another has its origin in the Peripatetic School;2 the third tribe of Philosophisers pursues the experimental method; and the final class of physicists is commonly known as the Mechanists. While not all that is propounded by these schools is worthy of assent, yet in each there are certain things of which we approve, abhorring as we do the fault with which Leibniz charges the Cartesians,b,3 namely that of judging the ancient authors with contempt, punishing them, as it were, according to one’s own law. And since Those things last long, and are fixed firmly in the mind, Which we, once born, have imbibed from our earliest years, we select what will be of most use in the future, and of all this we present to our scholars an ordered account: no one would think it suitable for us to hear or read anything contrary to method,c,4 for in general it is through habit, and especially through philosophical habit, that youth is first instructed in the colleges.
    [Show full text]
  • The Physics Cabinet of the University of Padua. at the Crossroads Between Veneto and Europe
    OPUSCULA MUSEALIA 26 2019 doi:10.4467/20843852.OM.18.010.11003 s. 157–172 FANNY MARCON https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9361-157X GIULIO PERUZZI https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8331-1864 SOFIA TALAS https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1971-8680 University of Padua The Physics Cabinet of the University of Padua. At the crossroads between Veneto and Europe ABSTRACT At the beginning of the eighteenth century, new lectures in natural philosophy based on direct and immediate demonstrations began to spread through Europe. Within this context, a chair of experimental philosophy was created at the University of Padua in 1738, and the new pro- fessor, Giovanni Poleni, established a Cabinet of Physics, which became very well known in eighteenth-century Europe. In the following two centuries, Poleni’s successors continued to acquire thousands of instruments used for teaching and research, which today are held at the Museum of the History of Physics of the University of Padua. The present paper describes the main peculiarities of the collection, comprising instruments from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. We also discuss the current acquisition policy of the museum, aimed at collecting material evidence of the research and teaching activities in physics that are carried out in Padua today. We will outline both the local peculiarities of the collection and its inter- national dimension, based on the contacts that have been established throughout the centuries between Padua and the international scientific community. Some aspects of the circulation of scientific
    [Show full text]
  • Kant's Dynamic Theory of Matter in 1755
    Kant’s dynamic theory of matter in 1755, and its debt to speculative Newtonian experimentalism Michela Massimi Dept. of Science and Technology Studies University College London Abstract This paper explores the scientific sources behind Kant’s early dynamic theory of matter in 1755, with a focus on two main Kant’s writings: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens and On Fire. The year 1755 has often been portrayed by Kantian scholars as a turning point in the intellectual career of the young Kant, with his much debated conversion to Newton. Via a careful analysis of some salient themes in the two aforementioned works, and a reconstruction of the scientific sources behind them, this paper shows Kant’s debt to an often overlooked scientific tradition, i.e. speculative Newtonian experimentalism. The paper argues that more than the Principia, it was the speculative experimentalism that goes from Newton’s Opticks to Herman Boerhaave’s Elementa chemiae via Stephen Hales’ Vegetable Staticks that played a central role in the elaboration of Kant’s early dynamic theory of matter in 1755. Keywords: Kant, repulsive force, ether, Newton, Hales, Boerhaave 1. Introduction In 1786, in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant famously introduced attraction and repulsion as two fundamental forces in nature, within the context of his own defence of a “dynamical natural philosophy”. The purpose of a “dynamical natural philosophy” is to explain natural phenomena in terms of “moving forces of attraction and repulsion originally inherent in them”,1 by contrast with the “mechanical natural philosophy” which “under the name of atomism or the 1 Kant (1786); English translation (2004), p.
    [Show full text]
  • Spreading Scientific Philosophies with Instruments: the Case of Atwood's
    SPREADING SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHIES WITH INSTRUMENTS: THE CASE OF ATWOOD'S MACHINE S. ESPOSITO AND E. SCHETTINO Abstract. We study how the paradigm of Newton's science, based on the or- ganization of scientific knowledge as a series of mathematical laws, was defini- tively accepted in science courses - in the last decades of the XVIII century, in England as well as in the Continent - by means of the \universal" dynamical machine invented by George Atwood in late 1770s just for this purpose. The spreading of such machine, occurred well before the appearance of Atwood's treatise where he described the novel machine and the experiments to be performed with it, is a quite interesting historical case, which we consider in some detail. In particular, we focus on the \improvement" introduced by the Italian Giuseppe Saverio Poli and the subsequent “simplifications” of the machine, underlying the ongoing change of perspective after the definitive success of Newtonianism. The case studied here allows to recognize the relevant role played by a prop- erly devised instrument in the acceptance of a new paradigm by non-erudite scholars, in addition to the traditional ways involving erudite scientists, and thus the complementary role of machine philosophy with respect to mathe- matical, philosophical or even physical reasoning. 1. Introduction The XVIII century was characterized by a widespread interest for natural phi- losophy, driven by public lecture courses and the publication of popular texts in addition to the traditional forms of transmission of knowledge. The scientific soci- eties and academies created during the scientific revolution played an increasingly larger role than universities, thus becoming the cornerstone of organized science [1].
    [Show full text]