The Permanent ‘Becoming’ of the Cosmos: On Experiencing the Time Dimension of Astronomical Entities in the 18th Century. ‐ This paper deals with two of the initial stages through which the dimension of time, in the sense of an irreversible development, found its way into astronomical‐cosmological thinking. The one resulted from the first consequental application of Newtonian principles and laws to cosmic entities outside of our solar system found in the General Natural History or Theory of the Heavens of Immanuel (...) Kant (1755): Endeavoring to explain through natural causes first the peculiarities of the solar system, no longer naturally explainable through the celestial mechanics of Isaac Newton (such as the common orbital plane and rotational direction of all the members of the solar system and the distribution of the masses) ‐ which, however, had been deducible in Johannes Keplers Weltharmonik ‐, and endeavoring secondly to explain above all the beginning of the inertial movement of all discrete heavenly bodies ‐ which, however, could have been derived from René Descartes's vortex theory ‐ without using arbitrary acts of God as Newton had done, Kant had to introduce an initial state in which matter in the form of atoms was equally and almost homogeneously distributed over the whole space (similar to the permanent state in Descartes's theory). Thereupon, according to Kant, the initial movements of the slowly growing masses resulted from the effect of gravitational forces. The parameters within the solar system which had to be explained, could then be easily deduced from the process of mass concentration at different points and from the resulting vortex movements. ‐ The other initial stage is found in the classification of ‘nebulae’ by William Herschel who introduced the historical time factor, in the above‐mentioned sense, as a principle of order in addition to the outward shape, which had become common for all the different elements in natural history during the second half of the 18th century. Thereupon the different shapes of the nebulae could be interpreted as stages of development from the primordial nebular state to multiple or single stars. (Herschel had not yet considered them to be accumulations of stars for lack of a suitable telescope.)Both initial stages, which arose out of the thinking of the second half of the 18th century, were still premature for astronomy and cosmology; they have only been taken up again since the end of the 19th century as a result of the emergence of astrophysics, which provided the empirical data for the earlier speculations and conclusions from analogy. (shrink)

(1938). The radiant heat spectrum from herschel to melloni.—I. The work of herschel and his contemporaries. Annals of Science: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 119-137.

This essay examines the role of amateurs in founding the astronomical subdiscipline of astrophysics. During 1840–1870, they initiated many of the observing programs that came to comprise the new specialty. And during 1870–1910, they participated both in the ongoing research of the field and the campaign to provide it with an institutional base. These general trends are illustrated by examples from the lives of ten prominent amateur solar physicists.

[Astrophysics contra astronomy] means the displacement of astrometry and stellar astronomy as the main and solely conceded branches of astronomy by the new astrophysics. This displacement started with the introduction of spectroscopic and photometric methods of observation in astronomy founded by J. C. F. Zoellner and W. Huggins in the late 1850s. It was Zoellner, too, who gave the methodical and intrumental foundations of the new branch called consciously [Astrophysik] by him, because it gives insight into the [physical constitution] of (...) the celestial bodies - whereas the traditional astronomy had been studying only the motions of the stars and other celestial bodies and refusing searches for the [physical constitution] as speculations not being proper to a member of the guild of astronomers. Until the middle of the nineteenth century this guild was led by F. W. Bessel who together with other members of his school brought forth the fundamental results of celestial mechanics and observational astronomy based on Newtonian physics extended to objects outside the solar system. Therefore already in the end of the 18th century, J. Chr. Lichtenberg had called astronomy the [paradigmatic] branch of all natural sciences; and therefore, Zoellner had to confirm the extension of the possibilities of experience through the same methodical certainty. The new methods, however, made their way only tardily , but later on, indeed, they pushed back the traditional branches of astronomy into the background - resuscitated only by new astrophysical formulations of old questions previously refused by traditional astronomy. (shrink)

In this paper the psychological and historical problems of the german philosophy of nature at the time about 1800 are described. During this time the romantic philosopher and scientist of nature Ritter developed a new scientific branch of knowledge: the electrochemistry. Ritter represents exemplarily the type of a romantic dilettante. In this period, the problem of dilettantism got a new validity, especially by Goethe and Schiller: it was recognized as a positive power of human.In the romantic dilettantism of Ritter three (...) aspects are shown: 1st, romantic dilettantes are intellectual flaneurs; 2nd, romantic dilettantes confront facts and general provisions, which up to this moment are supposed to be paradox, and obtain by this method a synthesis; 3rd, romantic dilettantes favour the intuitive power. (shrink)