This article provides, for the first time, an overview of all images (drawings and prints) sent by the Dutch microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) to the Royal Society during their fifty-year long correspondence. Analyses of the images and close reading of the letters have led to an identification of three periods in which Leeuwenhoek worked together with artists. The first period (1673–1689) is characterized by the work of several draughtsmen as well as Leeuwenhoek’s own improving attempts to depict his observations. (...) In the second period (1692–1712) Leeuwenhoek worked together with one unknown draughtsman, while the work in the third period (1713–1723) can now be attributed to the young draughtsman Willem vander Wilt. This article also shows how Leeuwenhoek did not only rely on draughtsmen for the depiction of his own observations, but rather, how he worked together with them in his workshop to observe, confirm, and witness microscopic experiments, replicating the collaborative working methods of the Royal Society in Delft. (shrink)

Performative methods have been part of history of science research and education for at least three decades. Understood broadly, they cover every methodology in which a historian or philosopher of science engages in embodied interaction with sources, tools and materials that do not traditionally belong to historical research, with the aim of answering a historical research question. The question no longer appears to be whether performative methods have a place within history and philosophy of science research, but what their place (...) is, could, or should be; when and how they can and cannot be used. Because although performative methods are seen as an enrichment of the field by many, their growing popularity also raises questions: what new insights and challenges has the increased use of performative methods in the history of science brought us? How has it changed the field? Should performative research methods become a mandatory part of the training of new generations of historians of science? In this special issue, historians and philosophers of science for whom performative methods play an important role in their work reflect on these questions from their own research and teaching practices. (shrink)

In many areas the eighteenth century was a starting point for the quantification of science. It was a period in which the mania for collecting led to the first attempts in systematization and classification. This penchant for collecting was not limited to natural history specimens or curiosities. Due in part to the development of mathematical and physical instruments, which became more widely available, scholars were confronted with the informative value of numbers. On the one hand, sequences of measurements appeared to (...) be the key to the advancement of scientific knowledge, yet on the other hand the mathematical apparatus to deal with these data was still largely lacking. As a result of this the first meteorological networks organized in the eighteenth century all became bogged down in the large amount of information that was collected but could not be processed properly. This development is illustrated in a case study of an early Dutch meteorological society, the Natuur- en Geneeskundige Correspondentie Sociëteit . What were the factors that triggered this interest in the weather in the Netherlands? What were the goals and expectations of the contributors? What were their methodological strategies? Which instruments were used to measure which meteorological parameters? How was the stream of numbers generated by these measurements organized, collected and interpreted? An analysis of this process reveals that limits on the advancement of meteorology were not only imposed by instrumentation and organization. The financing, the scientific infrastructure of the old eighteenth-century Dutch Republic and the lack of a proper theoretical insight were also crucial factors that eventually frustrated the breakthrough of meteorology as an academic science in the Netherlands. This breakthrough was only achieved in the second half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

... and signs and the signs of signs are used only when we are lacking things.Brother William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose by Umberto EcoRecreating, as part of doing history, can be a way of reflecting what creating is as part of science. Discussions revolving around historical understanding of the scientific enterprise have recently included strong commitments to turn scientific practice into one of the main objectives of historical study. One specific methodological approach to face up to (...) this assignment is integrating the reconstruction and reperformance of past experiments into the historical analysis of the doing-part in science. This paper deals with the doing-part in history, that is, with the historiographical consequences that might stem from this reconstruction and reperformance of past experimentation. In the course of a four-month period of research I worked with a replica of the so-called ‘actinometer’, an instrument to measure the intensity of solar radiation, which was invented by John Herschel in 1824. On the basis of this example, I try to trace how recent performances of experimental activities can contribute to historical understanding of human agency in scientific practice. (shrink)

Solar microscopes and their techniques attracted particular attention in the second half of the eighteenth century. This paper investigates the grounds for this interest. After a general introduction to the solar microscope, it discusses the use of original instruments to gain access to the visual culture of solar microscopes and the issues raised by these re-enactments. Experiences involved in this process serve as a basis for reassessing the original source materials. Thence emerges a different account of the meaning of the (...) solar microscope in the eighteenth century and possible reasons for its popularity. (shrink)