Almost traditionally, it seems, accounts of the development of the concepts of work and energy have tended to describe them within the classical framework of Newtonian mechanics. They are seen as the end products of the celebratedvis-vivadispute in the eighteenth century: the outcome of a debate within the confines of the science of rational mechanics. I would like to suggest that this may be to take too narrow a view of the case. It is to project backwards our present specialist (...) arrangement of scientific knowledge, our present divisions between the sciences, and to assume that past development was strictly guided by these divisions. And this is to make questionable historical and sociological assumptions. (shrink)

A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionar is a unique sourcebook for historians of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. It is Charles Hutton's most well-known work and widely considered to be the successor to John Harris's great Lexicon Technicum, or an Universal English Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences (1704). Originally published in two volumes in 1795-6, this expansive scientific encyclopedia contains thousands of explanations of terms and a wealth of biographical information on the major British and European scientists and philosophers. Among the (...) biographical entries, which include detailed bibliographical descriptions, are Berkeley, Huygens, Boyle, Bacon, Gassendi, Flamsteed, Hooke, Brahe, Newton, Galileo and Halley. The many scientific terms are concisely explained and illuminated by examples and illustrations. (shrink)