The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study

‘Mathematics Made No Contribution to the Public Weal’: Why Jean Fernel (1497-1558) Became a Physician

“…The most famous (or, as it is seen in the standard historiography of science, infamous) illustration of the gulf between mathematics and natural philosophy, of course, is the preface added to Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Andreas Osiander, the Lutheran minister who had been delegated to supervise it through the press. As Robert S. Westman has pointed out, Osiander's wording reveals that he was not so much concerned that the nature of the physical world might be thrown into confusion by Copernicus's heliocentric astronomy; rather he was concerned that ‘the liberal arts, established long ago on a correct basis, should not be thrown into confusion’ (Westman, 1980, pp. 108–109, quoting Osiander).…”

“…Attempts to challenge this view by pointing to mathematicians who were realists, do not invalidate the distinction but, rather, add to our understanding of how mathematicians moved into the realm of natural philosophy (by becoming realists, in spite of being mathematicians). See Westman (1980)Jardine (1984)Jardine (1988). Similarly, the recent attempt to claim that instrumentalism was not a genuine position but should be seen, rather, as ‘frustrated realism’ (frustrated by inability to come up with an astronomically satisfactory realist model of the cosmos) (Barker and Goldstein, 1998), has been countered by Michael H. Shank's claim that instrumentalism (or fictionalism) was ‘an actor's category in Osiander and 16th‐century astronomy’ (Shank, 2002, p. 179).…”

Faith and Science: Religious or Rational?

“…54 Humanism also had a considerable influence on Renaissance medicine. Was he an innovator or a conservative?…”

On the Frontlines of the Scientific Revolution: How Mersenne Learned to Love Galileo

“…But also relevant here is how Mersenne and his contemporaries understood the intellectual structure of the disciplines. While the distinction between mixed mathematics (the middle sciences) and philosophy had its social dimensions (Westman 1980;Biagioli 1989;Biagioli 1993), it also had an intellectual dimension in the world in which Mersenne and his contemporaries lived. For Mersenne and his contemporaries, mechanics and physics could be regarded not as competing programs, but as complementary programs that dealt with different aspects of 158…”

“…On the relations between physics and mechanics, see, e.g., Gabbey (1993); Laird (1986). Robert Westman, treats the parallel question with respect to astronomy, another middle science in (Westman 1980). Much of the evidence he cites pertains as much to mechanics (and the other mixed mathematical sciences) as it does to astronomy.…”