![[nifty glyphs]](/ai/timeline/porta.gif)
[more] [orig][Up: science] [Robot Wisdom home page]
This is a 'magnified' subsection of my knowledge-representation timeline.
pre-1500
universities choose math professors based on public contests (techniques kept secret) [cite]
1436: Regiomontanus born [bio]
1462: Trithemius born [etexts]
1464: Ficino translates Corpus Hermeticum [etext]
1473: 19Feb: Copernicus born in Poland (rich and well-connected) [bio]
1484: 23Aug: Scaliger born in Padua [bio] [bio]
1486: 14Sep: Agrippa born in Germany [bio] [etexts]
Copernicus studies Euclid, Ptolemy, Aristotle at Krakow; law in Bologna (assists astronomy professor)
1493: Paracelsus born in Switzerland [bio]
1494: 24Mar: Agricola born in Germany [bio]
1497: 24yo Copernicus gets lifetime sinecure
Agrippa studies 'magic sciences' at Cologne
1500: Tartaglia born in Italy [bio] [bio]
1501: 24Sep: Cardan (Cardano) born in Milan (father knew da Vinci) [bio] [bio]
1501: Copernicus studies astronomy in Padua
1503: Copernicus studies medicine, law
1505: Horapollo's 4thC fantasia of hieroglyphic symbolism published (will help inspire universal-language fad) [cite]
vulture = "mother, sight, the end of a thing, knowledge of the future, year, sky, mercy, Minerva, Juno, or two drachmas" [cite]
1506: Commandino born in Italy [bio]
1506: Agrippa founds secret magic society in Paris
1509: Agrippa teaches kabbalah; alchemical lab for gold
1509: Erasmus's "Praise of Folly" international best-seller
1514: Pope seeks Copernicus's advice on calendar reform
1514: 41yo Copernicus privately circulates heliocentric theory [info]
1514: 31Dec: Vesalius born in Brussels [bio]
1515: 15yo Tartaglia learns math at abacus school
1515: Peter Ramus born in France [bio] [bio]
1516: 26Mar: Conrad Gesner born in Zurich [bio]
1517: 31Oct: Luther's 95 theses
1520: Ferro's method of solving cubic equations [cite]
1522: Copernicus proposes currency-reforms
1522: 02Feb: Ferrari born [bio] [bio]
1524: Agrippa is court physician, astrologer, maybe artillery-expert at Lyons
Tartaglia teaches math to 'practical' men (non-academics) [cite]
Rabelais and Nostradamus study with Scaliger
1525: Durer explains conics for artists
1527: Erasmus promotes Paracelsus as physician
1527: 13Jul: John Dee born in London [bio] [bio] [etexts]
1530: 14Aug: Benedetti born in Venice [bio]
1531: Scaliger ineptly critiques Erasmus
McLuhan posits an eternal conflict between rhetoric-oriented Ciceronians (Cicero, Augustine, Erasmus, Francis Bacon) and dialectic-oriented anti-Ciceronians (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Ramus, Montaigne) [cite]
1532: 20yo Mercator has doubts about Aristotle [bio]
1533: mapmaker Frisius predicts technique for finding longitude at sea; triangulation for surveying; turns down offer to work with Copernicus [bio]
Gesner follows Zwingli
1534: Jesuits founded
1534: Mercator studies math (w/apps to geog and astron) with Frisius; they make high quality instruments
1535: 15Nov: Giambattista della Porta born near Naples [bio] [bio]
1536: Frisius and Vesalius dissect corpse
1536: 21yo Peter Ramus shocks the University of Paris [passim]
"Everything Aristotle said was wrong!"
Paracelsus proposes 3 elements are salt, sulfur, and mercury; doctrine of signatures [info]
"The stars in heaven must be taken together in order that we may read the sentence in the firmament. It is like a letter that has been sent to us from a hundred miles off, and in which the writer's mind speaks to us."
Cardan builds reputation as skillful doctor; teaches math to Ferrari
1537: Tartaglia's gunner's quadrant for aiming cannon, 1st firing tables [bio]
1538: 25Mar: Clavius born [bio] [bio]
1539: Cardan's math text
1539: Rheticus advocates unpublished Copernican theory
1540: Vieta born [bio]
1540: Scaliger Jr born
1540: Ricci born in Italy [bio]
1540: Toriano's mandolin-playing automaton
1541: Mercator's globe [javascript]
1542: Roman Inquisition re-established
1543: Tartaglia translates Archimedes, non-corrupt edition of Euclid into italian
1543: Cardan's popular theory of astrology
1543: Ramus forbidden to teach philosophy after publishing critique of Aristotle
1543: Vesalius's atlas "On the Structure of the Human Body"
1543: Copernicus's "On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies" [bio] [extract]
"If the motion of the other planets be carried over to the rotation of the earth and this is made the basis for the rotation of every star, not only will the phenomena of the planets be explained thereby, but also the laws and the size of the stars; all their spheres and the heavens themselves will appear so harmoniously connected that nothing could be changed in any part of them without confusion in the remaining parts and in the whole universe."
1544: Wm Gilbert born [bio] [bio]
1545: Digges born [bio]
1545: Cardan's "Ars Magna" innovates negative and imaginary numbers, reveals Tartaglia's method for cubic equations [bio]
cultural shift from secretive science to publication for prestige [cite]
1545: Gesner's "Bibliotheca Universalis" abstracts secular literature, classifies 1800 authors [cite]
1546: 14Dec: Tycho Brahe born in Denmark [bio]
1546: 19yo Dee begins making astronomical observations (admires Copernicus)
1546: inspired by Lucretius, Francastorius discovers contagious infection [cite]
1546: Ramus's theory of methods [cite]
"The organisation of different things in such a way that the whole subject may be more easily perceived and taught."
Ramus defends applied math against Platonism, studies methods of craftsmen and tradesmen, promotes quadrivium. (Ong suggests the printing press sharpened Ramus's thinking-- but McLuhan regrets this! cite)
Gesner corresponds with all Europe's leading scholars
1547: 17yo Benedetti studies Euclid with Tartaglia
1548: Bruno born in Nola [bio] [bio] [etexts]
1548: 10Aug: Ferrari bests Tartaglia in math-debate
1548: Dee studies with Mercator in Louvain
1549: Ramus's "Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian" [info]
10 topics: causes, effects, subjects, adjuncts, opposites, comparisons, names, divisions, definitions, witnesses4 tropes: metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, irony
Cardan is world's leading scientist (incl astrology, algebra, hydrodynamics, geology, cosmology, mechanics), defends Vesalius
1550: Camillo's memory theater [info]
1551: Sanchez born [bio]
1551: Cardan tours Europe incl Scotland
1551: Dee declines math-professorship in Paris
1551: Gesner's encyclopedia of zoology
1551: Thomas Wilson's logic handbook, "The Rule of Reason"
1553: Benedetti's geometry text
1554: Dee declines math-professorship at Oxford
1555: Ramus writes math book
1555: Clavius joins Jesuits
1555: 28May: Dee charged with 'calculating' as a form of magic [cite]
Commandino translates Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, Ptolemy, and Aristarchus into latin, italian
1556: Agricola's "De Re Metallica" synthesizes knowledge of metals, mining
1557: Scaliger defends Aristotle's physics against Cardan (praised later by Bacon, Leibnitz)
1558: della Porta's treatise on natural philosophy
1558-1569: Gilbert at Cambridge
1559: 15Jan: Dee chooses Elizabeth's coronation-date by astrology
1560: Thomas Harriot born in Oxford [bio]
1560: Libavius born in Germany [bio]
1560: della Porta starts Academia Secretorum Naturae in Naples
1560: Wilson's Art of Rhetoric [etext]
1560: camera obscura allows tracing of images (dellaPorta perfects)
1561: 22Jan: Francis Bacon born near London [bio]
1562: Ramus converts to Calvinism
1562: Sanchez/Sanctius's 'Minerva' (will inspire Port-Royal school) [cite]
"Latin is logical, and teaches you to think clearly."
early persecution of witches
Galileo's father studies music theory with Zarlino [info]
Benedetti explores optics and astronomy
1563: Dee visits Commandino
1563: Cardan's unpublished study of gambling probabilities
1563: della Porta's cypher-glyphs "De furtivis literarum" [info]
1564: 15Feb: Galileo born in Pisa [timeline] [bio]
1564: Dee writes on alchemy, kabbalah
1565: Commandino writes on center of gravity
1565: Bruno studies classics (esp Lucretius, but anti-Aristotle), Lully, Averroes, Paracelsus, Erasmus at Dominican monastery in Naples
Ramus advocates observational astronomy; Dee befriends Ramus
1567: Brahe loses nose in duel
1568: Dee asserts every object exerts force on every other [bio] tutors Queen Elizabeth in math
1569: Mercator map-projection
1569: da Cruz praises ideographic nature of Chinese [cite]
1570: Ortelius's world atlas
1570: Dee edits Euclid
Digges studies math with Dee
1571: Digges' theodolite for surveying and aiming
1571: Kepler born near Stuttgart [bio]
1572: Ramus dies in St Bartholomew's massacre
1572: Brahe's supernova (Brahe, Dee, and Digges compare observations)
1572: Bruno becomes priest
1574: Robert Fludd born in Kent [bio]
1574: Clavius's edition of Euclid
1574: Cardan explores music theory
1575: 11yo Galileo learns latin, greek, math at Vallombrosa monastery
Scaliger Jr innovates critical history
Bacon at Cambridge rejects Aristotle; spends time in Europe
1576: Digges promotes Copernicus in England
1576: Bruno flees monastery for Rome, 16 years of wandering
1577: Gilbert practices medicine in London
1578: 1st screw lathe
1578: della Porta forced by Inquisition to disband Academia
1579: Saxton's atlas of England
1579: Scaliger Jr surveys astronomy from ancients thru Copernicus
1580: Bruno supported by Henry III
1580: Montaigne's skeptical essays promote Lucretius
1580: della Porta makes parabolic mirror?
1580: Snel (Snell) born in Holland [bio]
1581: Sanchez's "Nothing Is Known"
1581: Norman's dip-circle measures declination
1581: Galileo studies medicine at Univ of Pisa (Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna; hebrew) dislikes Aristotle
della Porta builds optical instruments
1581-1591: Bruno writes a dozen works on the art of memory
1582: Bruno's satire "The Torchbearer"
1582: Simon Stevin's table of interest rates
1582: 11Aug: Bacon meets Dee
1582: Oct: Clavius's Gregorian calendar; 10 days skipped
1583: winter: Galileo hears Ricci lecture on math
1583: Mar: Bruno to London, meets Queen Elizabeth, Dee, Gilbert
1583: Scaliger Jr's normalised chronology of world history reveals Biblical anomalies ('Julian Day 1' is 01Jan 4713BC) [info] [bio]
3949 BC: creation 2294 BC: flood 2177 BC: Tower of Babel 1941 BC: migration of Abraham 1496 BC: exodus 1181 BC: fall of Troy 1017 BC: Solomon's temple 753 BC: foundation of Rome [table]
Bacon conceives Great Instauration (scientific renaissance)
"It was esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to inquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical."
Stevin overthrows Pythagorean model of musical intervals [info]
1583: inspired by swinging lamp, Galileo invents pendulum for measuring pulserate?
1583: Ricci tutors Galileo on Euclid, Archimedes, Alberti, military engineering (Archimedes is G's hero)
1583: Raleigh hires Harriot to apply math to navigation, ship-design, and gunnery [bio]
1584: Bruno guesses the sun is a star; ponders philosophical implications of infinity; pioneers the thought-experiment [info]
"There are countless suns and an infinity of planets which circle round their suns as our seven planets circle round ours.""Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things."
"Here are the signs and proofs whereby we see that contraries do truly concur; they are from a single origin and are in truth and substance one."
Benedetti argues that flywheel disproves Aristotle's theory of motion (Galileo will appreciate this)
1585: Harriot spends a year at Raleigh's Roanoke colony
1585: Galileo drops out of university, does tutoring
1585: Stevin popularises decimal notation for fractions [info]
1585: Bruno to Paris
1586: Bruno to Wittenberg
1586: Camden's topographic survey of Britain
1586: Galileo invents delicate balance, writes manual; explores center of gravity [pic]
1587: Galileo meets Clavius in Rome
1588? Galileo helps father explore theory of musical vibration, acoustics; memorizes Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso"
1588: 05Apr: Hobbes born [bio] [bio]
1588: Galileo finds patron in Marquis del Monte (expert on mechanics)
1588: 08Sep: Mersenne born [bio] [bio]
1588: Galileo lectures on Dante's Hell (argues Lucifer is 2000 meters tall) [cite]
1589: della Porta predicts telescope
1589: Zabarella at Padua promotes Aristotle over Aquinas but escapes Inquisition [bio]
1589: Galileo hired by Univ of Pisa, teaches Euclid
(faculty includes Aristotelian experimentalist Borro (tides, falling bodies), anti-Aristotelian Mazzoni)
Dee befriends Harriot
Brahe searches for correlation between weather and planets
1590: 18yo Kepler taught Copernican astronomy by Mastlin; K applies mystical/Christian symbolism, assumes underlying perfection/harmony
1590: Janssen's compound microscope
1590: Galileo's unpublished "De Motu" proposes experimental testing of theories of motion [cite] longshot public demo from Leaning Tower?
Galileo rewrites theory as latin dialog
Harriot explores refraction
1591: 21Feb: Desargues born [bio]
1591: Oct: Bruno risks return to Venice, associates with Uranici academy incl Galileo's friend Sarpi (probably meets G)
"He who wishes to philosophise must first of all doubt all things."
1591: Vieta writes 1st symbolic algebra; proposes vowels for unknown quantities, consonants for knowns; also 'coefficients' [bio] [cite] [history]
1592: 22Jan: Gassendi born in Provence [bio] [bio]
1592: 23May: Bruno imprisoned in Venice by Inquisition
1592: Galileo re-proposes universal uniformity of natural laws?
1592: Galileo hired by Univ of Padua, studies Ptolemy
teaches geometry, astronomy, Euclid, arithmetic, fortification, surveying, cosmography, optics
1593: 27Feb: Bruno relocated to prison in Rome
1593: della Porta writes about refraction
1593: Galileo does applied research on rowing, lamp-design, fortification, thermometer, irrigation pump [pic]
1595: Galileo investigates tides, Copernican theory
1595: Dutch introduce efficient 'fluyt' design for merchant ships
1596: Galileo improves compass/quadrant for gunnery and surveying, sells 100 [pic]
1596: 31Mar: Descartes born in Touraine [bio] [bio] [bio]
1597: May? Kepler's "Mysterium cosmographicum" promotes Copernican theory, 1st to insist on physical explanations for celestial phenomena
The Introduction to the Cosmographical Essays, Containing the Cosmographical Mystery of the Marvelous Proportion of the Celestial Spheres, and of the True and Particular Causes of the Number, Size, and Periodic Motions of the Heavens, Demonstrated by Means of the Five Regular Geometric Bodies
Vieta does cryptography for Henry IV
1597: Libavius's scientific chemistry
1597: Galileo writes Kepler after reading preface, K replies but G falls silent
Ricci does military engineering
Harriot explores alchemy
Fludd rejects Aristotle and Galen, tours Europe studying medicine, chemistry, and the occult (favors Paracelsus)
Jesuits adopt Clavius's Euclid as teaching text, advancing European standards
Kabbalah dominates most centers of Judaism [cite]
decline of latin as lingua franca (will inspire search for universal language) [cite]
1600: 19Feb: Bruno burned
1600? Samuel Hartlib born in Prussia [bio]
1600: Gilbert's "De Magnete" synthesizes knowledge of magnetism
1600: Vernier refines 'nonius' for precise measurement [bio]
1601: Aug: Fermat born
1601: Charron's systematisation of Montaigne
1601: Oct: Rudolph of Hapsburg agrees to finance Brahe and Kepler's compilation of 'Rudolfine Tables'; Brahe dies
1601-1604: Kepler in Prague wrestles with Brahe's observations of Mars, reads Gilbert, explores 'magnetic' attraction between sun and planets, discovers elliptical path
1602: Galileo experiments with pendulum
1602: Athanasius Kircher born [bio]
1602: 14yo Hobbes translates Euripides
1602: 10Aug: Roberval born [bio]
1603: 17Aug: 18yo Cesi's secret Lincean Academy in Rome
1603: Francis Bacon's unpublished "Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature" criticises 'anticipations' as blinding people to observable truths [etext]
"I call Anticipations the voluntary collections that the mind maketh of knowledge; which is every man's reason... If any have had the strength of mind generally to purge away and discharge all Anticipations, they have not had that greater and double strength and patience of mind, as well to repel new Anticipations after the view and search of particulars, as to reject old which were in their mind before"
1604: Jan: Kepler's "Optical Part of Astronomy" explains inverted image on retina, inverse-square law for light
1604: Descartes schooled by indulgent Jesuits
1604: Oct: Kepler's supernova (cosmological challenge); K rejects theory that stars are suns
1604: Galileo's experiments with acceleration on inclined planes [bio]
"Philosophy is written in the great book which never lies before our eyes-- I mean the universe-- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. The book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth."
Galileo lectures on Kepler's nova, estimates distance as beyond Moon based on lack of detectable parallax, publishes anonymous dialog in Paduan vernacular
Hobbes at Oxford rejects Aristotle
Mersenne with Jesuits studies Clavius
Fludd a successful physician; creates mechanical dragon, bull, lyre
1605: Bacon's "Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human" advocates govt-sponsored universal research-program; classifies and critiques sciences incl social science; rejects astrology, alchemy, and magic; critiques imprecision of natural languages [cite] [etext] [bio]
"The parts of human learning have reference to the three parts of man's understanding, which is the seat of learning: history to his memory, poesy to his imagination, and philosophy to his reason." [2.1.1]divisions of history: natural (creatures, marvels, arts), civil (memorials, perfect histories, antiquities), ecclesiastical (church, prophecy, providence), literary
divisions of philosophy: divine, natural (physic, metaphysic (pure math, mixed math)), human (discovery (physiognomy, dreams), impression (body (medicine, cosmetics, athletics, erotics), mind (substance (divination, fascination), faculties (reason, affection))))
"Humans, who are the servants and interpreters of nature, can act and understand no further than they have observed in either the operation or the contemplation of the method and order of nature."
"Philosophers should diligently inquire into the powers and energy of custom, exercise, habit, education, example, imitation, emulation, company, friendship, praise, reproof, exhortation, reputation, laws, books, studies, etc.; for these are the things that reign in men's morals; by these agents the mind is formed and subdued."
"Men converse by means of language, but words are formed at the will of the generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind." [essay]
1606: della Porta predicts steam engine
1606: Scaliger's thesaurus of dated-events in classical literature
1607: Galileo invents primitive thermometer, writes book on hydrostatics
1608: Clavius's Algebra (will influence Descartes)
1608: Snel translates Stevin into latin
1608: Galileo discovers parabolic path in ballistics
1608: 02Oct: Lippershey in Holland invents telescope
1609: Kepler publishes 1st two laws, intuitive concept of 'energy'
1609: Jul: Galileo hears of telescope, makes improvements by 20Aug [pix]
1609: Aug: Harriot uses telescope for astronomy
1610: della Porta's treatise on chemistry, distillation
1610: Mar: Galileo's "Starry Messenger" (moons of Jupiter, mountains on moon, Milky Way made of stars); later: rings of Saturn, phases of Venus, sunspots [bio]
1610: 19Apr: Kepler writes Galileo praising book, suggests Jupiter must have inhabitants for whom moons were created (privately criticises G for failing to credit Bruno)
Galileo proposes to write on military science: mathematics of fortification, troop movement, seiges, surveying, artillery
1610: 06Jul: della Porta joins Linceans
1610: Jul: Galileo moves to Florence
1610: Aug? G thanks K for being 1st to accept G's observations
alchemists in Bologna find luminous rocks (1st light w/o heat)
Descartes with Jesuits studies Clavius
1611: Apr: Pope Paul V welcomes Galileo; G joins Lincean Academy
1611: Kepler publishes mathematical theory of two-lens systems, designs Keplerian telescope
1611: 02Oct: Galileo wins debate against two cardinals on hydrostatics
1611: Mersenne joins Minim order
1611: Jesuit Scheiner told by superior that sunspots can't be real if Aristotle didn't know of them
1612: Aug: Galileo articulates principle of inertia (regarding sunspots)
Kepler calculates volume of winecask
1612: Sanctorius's clinical thermometer
1612: Boehme proposes reconstruction of original 'Adamic' language [cite] [links]
1613: 17yo Descartes in Paris (gambling)
1613: 21Dec: Galileo hazards theological arguments for Copernican system (copy reaches Bacon)
1614: 01Jan: John Wilkins born in England [bio] [bio] [bio]
1614: Napier's logarithms [bio]
1614: Causabon deflates Hermeticism
1614: Rosicrucian 'history' "Fama Fraternitatis" [info] [etext]
1615: Descartes studies math with Mersenne [bib]
1615: Briggs improves logarithms (base 10; log 1 = 0) [bio]
1616: 23Nov: John Wallis born [bio] [bio]
1616: Harvey discusses circulation of blood [cite]
1616: Gassendi ordained as priest
1616: 14yo Kircher joins Jesuits
1616: Fludd defends Rosicrucians
1616: Copernicus finally prohibited by Vatican
1617: Snel proposes triangulation for geodesy [cite]
1617: Napier's multiplication-device "Napier's bones" [info]
1617: Kepler reads Napier on logarithms
1617: Bacon's "New Atlantis" imagines scientific utopia [etext]
classes of researcher: Merchants of Light, Depredators, Mystery-men, Miners, Compilers, Benefactors, Lamps, Inoculators, Interpreters of Nature
Thirty Years War begins
1618: Kepler's laws of planetary motion
1618: 22yo Descartes joins army, begins search for unified science [bio]
1619: 10Nov: Descartes' vision of analytic geometry [cite]
1620: Kepler refuses James I's invitation to move to England
1620: Bacon's "Novum Organum" recommends compilation of 'natural histories' and 'tables of discovery'; emphasizes careful search for counterexamples; anticipates qualitative physics; correctly guesses heat is motion [etext]
"For we construct a History and Tables of Discovery as much of anger, fear, modesty, and the like; or of the examples of civil affairs; and no less of the mental emotions of memory, of composition and division, judgement and the rest; as of cold and heat, light, vegetation, or the like." [cite]"It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried."
"Substance, Quality, Action, Passion, Essence itself, are not sound notions; much less are Heavy, Light, Dense, Rare, Moist, Dry, Generation, Corruption, Attraction, Repulsion, Element, Matter, Form, and the like; but all are fantastical and ill defined." [cite]
"In all generations and transformations of bodies, we must inquire, what is in the act of being lost and escaping, what remains, what is being added, what is being diluted, what is being contracted, what is being united, what is being separated, what is continuous, what is broken off, what is urging forward, what impedes, what predominates, what is subservient, and many other circumstances... In all other alterations and fluctuations, we must in like manner inquire; what precedes, what succeeds, what is quick, what is slow, what produces and what governs motion, and the like." [2.6]
"We must first prepare, as a foundation for the whole, a complete and accurate natural and experimental history. We must not imagine or invent, but discover the acts and properties of nature." [2.10]
27 instances: solitary, migrating, conspicuous, clandestine, constitutive, similar, singular, deviating, bordering, power, hostile, subjunctive, alliance, cross, divorce, door, citing, itinerant (road), supplementary (refuge), lancing/twitching, completion (rod), course (water), quantity, wrestling, suggesting, useful, magical
19 motions: resistance of matter, connection, liberty, matter, continuity, acquisition, greater/lesser congregation, magnetic, avoidance, assimilation, excitement, impression, configuration, transmission, political, spontaneous revolution, trepidation, repose
1621: May: Bacon's fall
1621: Snel's sine-law of refraction [bio]
1621: Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" surveys psychological thinking [info]
Understanding is "a power of the soul, by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge, as well singulars as universals, having certain innate notices or beginnings of arts, a reflecting action, by which it judgeth of his own doings, and examines them."
Bacon speculates on finite speed of light; and on 'alphabet of nature'
van Helmont explores gases, acids and bases
1622: Descartes visits Italy for several years, but not Galileo
1622: Campanella's utopian "City of the Sun"
1622: Nov: Bacon's natural history of winds anticipates meteorology
1623: 26May: Wm Petty born [bio]
1623: Bacon (De Augmentis 6.1) 1st to propose universal characters [cite]
"We understand further that it is the use of China and the kingdoms of the high Levant to write in Characters Real, which express neither letters nor words in gross, but Things or Notions..." [cite]
1623: Pascal born
1623: Schickard's 6-digit 'Calculating Clock' 1st mechanical calculator, used by Kepler [bio] [info]
1624: Briggs' tables of logarithms and trig functions [info]
1624: submarine in London
1624: Snel explores rhumb line for navigation
1624: Gassendi meets Mersenne, attacks Aristotle and Fludd, supports Copernicus and Lucretius
1624: de Dominis links the tides to the moon
1624: Herbert postulates innate faculties in harmony with objects of perception [bio]
1625: Naude denies truth of Bible
1625: Gassendi promotes Epicurus over Aristotle
1625: 08Jun: Cassini born [bio]
Descartes builds optical instruments, emulates/plagiarises Snel
Hobbes serves briefly as Bacon's secretary
1627: 25Jan: Boyle born [bio] [bio]
1627: Kepler's logarithmic "Rudolfine Tables"
1628: 40yo Hobbes finally discovers Euclid
1628: Descartes befriends Desargues; moves to Holland
1628: 26yo Roberval joins Mersenne circle
1628: Kircher ordained
1629: 14Apr: Huygens born (father friend of Descartes and Mersenne) [bio] [bio] [bio]
1629: Cavalieri's theory of indivisibles
1629: 20Nov: Descartes discusses universal language [cite] [more] would use numbers for ideas [info]
1629: Descartes' "Rules for the Direction of the Mind" analyses the use of diagrams (especially in geometry)
Hartlib promotes Bacon
Wilkins opposes Aristotle
Fermat discovers general association of curves with equations of two unknowns (popularised by Descartes)
1630: Kepler's 'Somnium' 1st scifi story
1631: Fermat in Toulouse marries
1631: Pascal moves to Paris, father befriends Gassendi, Mersenne, Descartes, Desargues, Roberval (will form Academy of Sciences)
1631: Harriot's posthumous algebra book "Artes analyticae praxis"
1631: Descartes attacks Pappus's locus-problem, invents analytic geometry
1632: 1st sliderule, William Oughtred [cite]
1632: May: Galileo's 'Dialogue' proposes idea of inertia, uniform acceleration
1632: 20Oct: Christopher Wren born [bio]
1633: alarmed by Galileo's trial, Descartes abandons explication of 'mechanical universe' model
1634: Mersenne translates Galileo
1634: Descartes takes mistress (daughter will die at 5yo)
1635: 18Jul: Hooke born [bio] [bio]
1635: Boehme's posthumous "The Signature of All Things" [extract]
"With this signature he enters into another man's form, and awakens also in the other such a form in the signature; so that both forms mutually assimulate together in one form, and then there is one comprehension, one will, one spirit, and also one understanding... This is the language of nature, whence everything speaks out of its property, and continually manifests, declares, and sets forth itself for what it is good or profitable."
Hobbes meets Galileo, Mersenne, Gassendi, Roberval
Descartes reads Harriot? [claim]
1636: Marin Mersenne's "Harmonie Universelle" (universal language); calculates speed of sound
1636: Port-Royal promotes Jansenism
1637: Galileo's 'Dialogue' translated into latin
1637: Descartes' 'Discourse' innovates algebraic approach to geometry, coins term 'imaginary number', modern notation for exponents; also explores meteorology; method of universal doubt [info]
[pic source]
[on machines:] "They could never use words, or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For we can certainly conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words which correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs. But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give a meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do. Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they were acting not through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs." [cite]
innate ideas include ideas of oneself, of infinite perfection, of causality [cite]
Gassendi rejects Descartes' method
Pascal writes on conics
Hobbes constructs mechanistic natural philosophy
1637-1657: Ferdinand III employs mathematicians to strengthen empire, military [cite]
1638: Galileo's 'Discourses'
1638: Hobbes, Milton visit Galileo
1639: Gascoigne's micrometer
1639: Horrocks observes transit of Venus
1639: Desargues' book on conics
1640: Jansen's 'Augustinus'
1640: Kirchner's magic lantern; book on magnetism
1640: 26yo John Wilkins popularises Copernicus-Kepler-Galileo (Gilbert, Mersenne?) [bio]
1641: Wilkins writes on binary representation, cryptography, telepathy, and universal language [info] [pic]
1641: Pascal to Rouen
1641: Hartlib hosts Comenius in London
1641: Descartes has Mersenne send 'Meditations' to Gassendi, Hobbes, Huygens (theory of vortices?)
1642-1653: civil war in England
1642: 15yo Boyle studies Galileo and Copernicus
1642: 25Dec: Newton born [bio]
1644: Mersenne's "Cogitata Physico-Mathematica"
1644: Toricelli's barometer
1645: Wallis, Wilkins, Boyle, et al (Hartlib?) found Invisible College based on Bacon and Galileo [memoir]
topics: medicine, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, statics, magnetics, chemics, mechanics (no politics, religion, or current events)
authors: Oughtred, Mersenne, Gassendi
1645: Blaise Pascal's 5-digit Pascaline (adding machine) [info] [pix] [contemp] [French]
Desargues applies math to architecture
1646: 01Jul: Gottfried von Leibnitz (Leibniz) born in Saxony [bio] [bio]
1646: 19Aug: Flamsteed born [bio]
1647: Pascal predicts vacuum
1647: Wallis transformed by Oughtred's Clavis
1647: Gassendi revives atomic theory via Epicurus
1647: Francis Lodwick's "A Common Writing Whereby Two, Although Not Understanding One the Other's Language, Yet by the Helpe thereof may Communicate their Minds One to Another"
16 verbs: be, make, speak, drink, love, cleanse, come, begin, create, light, shine, live, darken, comprehend, send, name
Hobbes tutors Prince of Wales in math
1648: 13yo Hooke allowed free run at Westminster School (esp Euclid)
1648: 19Sep: discovery of barometric decline with height (Pascal, Descartes?)
1648: Grimaldi's exploration of diffraction, interference
1648: Wilkins (at Oxford) writes on mechanics of simple machines
1649: Descartes' theory of emotions (wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, sadness)
nerves as hydraulic tubes controlled by pineal body [cite]
Pascal socializes in Paris, reads Montaigne
1649-1657: Wren at Oxford (anatomical drawings, inventions for measuring; Vitruvius)
Hobbes snubbed by Invisible College/Royal Society for religious reasons
Hobbes visits Gassendi
1650: 11Feb: death of 53yo Descartes
1650: Petty gets MD from Oxford; hosts science group
1650: Guericke's vacuum pump
1651: Petty teaches music at Gresham
1651: Hobbes' 'Leviathan' predicts ultimately mathematical explanations of politics and religion; denies Moses wrote Torah [info] [extract] [etext]
"The generall use of Speech, is to transferre our Mentall Discourse, into Verbal; or the Trayne of our Thoughts, into a Trayne of Words... the Registring of the Consequences of our Thoughts to signifie what they conceive, or think of each matter; and also what they desire, feare, or have any other passion for... Truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations... Reason is nothing but Reckoning (that is, Adding and Substracting) of the Consequences of generall names agreed upon, for the marking and signifying of our thoughts... When a man Reasoneth, he does nothing else but conceive a summe total, from addition of parcels; or conceive a remainder, from Subtraction of one summe from another... Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance of one fact upon another... The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words."
Hobbes skeptical of Descartes' analytic geometry
Huygens experiments with lens-grinding
Kircher tries to read hieroglyphics as universal characters [cite]
1653: Wilkins relocates Invisible College to Oxford (Boyle, Hooke, Wallis, Wren)
1653: Thomas Urquaart's universal language
1654: theory of probability (Pascal, Fermat, Huygens) [cite]
1654: Boyle's lab at Oxford
1654: 23Nov: Pascal's vision; joins Port-Royal community
1655: Hooke becomes Boyle's assistant
1656: Huygens' pendulum clock based on Mersenne's suggestion
1656: Wallis invents interpolation, infinity-sign, 'induction' [cite] [cite]
1656: 24Jul: Spinoza excommunicated from Jewish community of Amsterdam [etext] [context] [bio]
1656: 08Nov: Halley born [bio]
1657: Wren teaches astronomy (esp Kepler)
1657: Guericke's experiments described by Schott
1657: Ferdinand II asks Kircher to develop universal language to unify empire [cite]
1657: Cave Beck's "The Universal Character, By which all the Nations in the World may Understand One Another's Conceptions, Reading out of the Common Writing Their Own Mother Tongue" [info]
"Honor thy father and mother" became 'leb2314p2477pf2477'
Oxford Puritans have to relocate to London for political reasons
1659: Van Schooten's annotated latin translation of Descartes' Geometry
1659: Wilkins briefly at Cambridge
1659: 13yo Leibnitz critiques Aristotle
1660: Paris meetings with Huygens, Pascal, Roberval, et al
1660: 28Nov: Society for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning founded at Gresham College (Brouncker, Boyle, Bruce, Moray, Neile, Wilkins, Goddard, Petty, Ball, Rooke, Wren, Hill)
1660: Kircher signs lucrative publishing contract
1660: Boyle's "New Experiments Physio-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects"
1660: Guericke's weather forecast via barometer
1660: Arnauld's "Port-Royal Grammar" argues for universal grammar [bio]
"Nothing makes a mind more sterile of just and solid thoughts than this bad fertility of commonplaces [topoi]" [cite]
1661: Huygens visits Royal Society in London
1661: Boyle's "Sceptical Chymist" builds on Descartes
1661: Becher proposes 'mechanical dictionary' for translation [cite]
1661: Dalgarno's Ars Signorum (artificial language) [info] Thing/Being, Substance, Accident, Concretion, Body, Spirit, Composition
Grammatico-Philosophical Lexicon or Table of Things and of All Simple and General Concepts Both Artificial and Natural Including Reasons and More Common Aspects Arranged by a Practical Method
1661-1665: 18yo Isaac Newton at Cambridge reads Aristotle, Descartes, Gassendi, Galileo, Boyle, Hooke, Hobbes, Oughtred, Wallis, Viete, but not Euclid; privately critiques Dalgarno's universal language
Flamsteed teaches himself astronomy
Petty designs ships
1662: Petty's Treatise on Taxes and Contributions (1st statistical economics?)
1662: 15Jul: Gresham society becomes Royal Society
1662: Graunt's mortality tables (working with Petty)
1662: Pascal invents the bus schedule [cite]
1662: Boyle's law [cite]
1663: Huygens joins Royal Society
1663: Gregory's reflecting telescope
1663: Leibnitz combining philosophy, law, and math
1663: Kircher proposes 'ark' (Arca Glottotactica; mechanical dictionary for translation) 1048 word-groups? [cite]
1665: Newton teaches himself geometry via annotated edition of Descartes
1665: Petty estimates national income
1665: Huygens to Paris
1665: Hooke's Micrographia
1665: Transactions of the Royal Society (1st science journal)
1665: Newton's calculus [cite]
1666: Newton's miracle year; risks blindness testing corpuscular theory of light with a darning needle
[pic source]
Cassini does engineering and hydraulics for pope
1666: Wren appointed to rebuild London after fire
1666: 20yo Leibnitz's "Dissertation on the combinatorial arts"; writes "Hobbes rightly stated that everything done by our mind is a computation" [cite] [memoir]
"...These signs will be a kind of alphabet. It will be convenient for the signs to be as natural as possible-- eg for one, a point; for numbers, points; for the relations of one entity to another, lines; for the variorum of angles or of extremities in lines, kinds of relations. If these are correctly and ingeniously established, this universal writing will be as easy as it is common, and will be capable of being read without any dictionary; at the same time, a fundamental knowledge of all things will be obtained." [cite]
Leibnitz explores alchemy; reads Kircher, Schott, and Becher on universal language
1668: John Wilkins' "An Essay Towards a Real Character and A Philosophical Language" proposes universal language [info] [etext]
40 classes:
transcendent relations: General, Mixed, Of Action
unclassified: Discourse, God, World, Element, Stone, Metal
plants: Herb Leaf, Herb Flower, Seedless Herb, Shrub, Tree
animals: Exsanguinous, Fish, Bird, Beast
parts: Peculiar, General
quantity: Magnitude, Space, Measure
quality: Natural Power, Habit, Manners, Sensible Quality, Sickness
action: Spiritual, Corporeal, Motion, Operation
relation: Economic, Possessions, Provisions, Civil, Judicial, Military, Naval, Ecclesiastical [page-image] [cite]"The reducing of all things and notions, to such kind of Tables, as are here proposed (were it as compleatly done as it might be) would prove the shortest and plainest way for the attainment of real Knowledge, that hath been yet offered to the World."
1668: Newton classifies cubics into 58 groups
1668? Newton rejects Descartes' relative space as atheistic
ultimate cause of atheism: "this notion of bodies having a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves"
1668: Comenius's universal language
1668: Wallis, Wren, and Huygens propose conservation of momentum
1669: Cassini feted in Paris
1669: Steno's theory of geological strata
1669: Newton takes up alchemical studies
1669: Kircher explores universal characters [info]
1671: Leibnitz reads Wilkins (and Dalgarno?) on universal language
1671: Newton's polar coordinates [cite]
1672: careful measurement of parallax of Mars
1672: Petty's economic geography of Ireland
1672: Newton abandons science and math for theology, studies church history intensively, adopts Arian heresy
1672: Leibnitz's multiplying machine inspired by pedometer [info]
1672: Leibnitz studies with Huygens, Arnauld
1672: Leibnitz views math as economical symbols for chains of ideas [cite]
1672: Leibnitz claims to have basics of a philosophical universal language [cite]
"By this means, all composite notions in the whole world are reduced to a few simple ones as their alphabet; and by the combination of such an alphabet a way is made of finding, in time by an ordered method, all things with their theorems and whatever it is possible to investigate concerning them."
1673: Halley enters Oxford with strong astronomy background
1673: Huygens' theory of centrifugal force leads to inverse-square law (with Hooke, Halley, and Wren)
1673: 19Apr: Leibnitz joins Royal Society
Leibnitz finally reads Descartes?
astrology and alchemy going out of fashion
1674: Hooke anticipates theory of gravitation
1675: Leibnitz's calculus [cite]
1675: distance to Sun and speed of light estimated [cite]
1675: Greenwich Observatory (Flamsteed 1st astronomer)
1676: Petty's "Political Arithmetic"
1676: Halley maps southern sky from St Helena
1676: Johann Sturm's universal language
1677: Flamsteed joins Royal Society
1677: Spinoza's posthumous "Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated" [info]
"I have looked upon human passions... as properties just as pertinent to human nature as are heat, cold, storm, thunder and the like to the nature of the atmosphere."
Leibnitz emphasizes importance of well-chosen mathematical notation
1678: Newton's precisely quantified alchemical experiments
"The spirit is the blood of the green lion Venus, the Babylonian Dragon that kills everything with its poison, but conquered by being assuaged by the Doves of Diana..."
1678: Hooke's weather clock records wind, rain, temperature, pressure; kinetic theory of gases "Of Spring"
1678: Huygens discovers polarisation of light
1678: 30Nov: 22yo Halley joins Royal Society
1679: Fermat finally published posthumously
1679: Leibnitz describes binary adder [cite] wants to collate all knowledge; proposes resolving disputes by calculation: "Calculemus" [info] [etext]
"Languages are the best mirror of the human mind, and a precise analysis of the signification of words would tell us more than anything else about the operations of the understanding.""All human ideas can be resolved into a few, as their primitives." [cite]
"Let there be assigned to any term its characteristic number, to be used in calculation, as the term itself is used in reasoning. I choose numbers whilst writing; in due course I will adapt other signs both to numbers and to conversation itself. For the moment, however, numbers are of the greatest use, because of their certainty and of the ease with which they can be managed, and because in this way it is evident to the eye that everything is certain and determinate in the case of concepts, as it is in the case of numbers." [cite]
1680: Newton dismisses Descartes' geometry as "the Analysis of the Bunglers"
1680: Dec: comet inspires Newton to rethink gravitation
1681: De Vienne Plancy's universal language
1683: Leewenhoek discovers microscopic life [cite]
1684: Newton begins writing Principia
1686: Royal Society has 400 members
1686: Newton tries to unify physics and chemistry by picturing matter as a net
1687: Newton's Principia
1689: Nov: Newton converts Nicolas Fatio from Cartesianism to Newtonianism
1689: Leibnitz becomes enthusiast for Chinese culture
1690: Locke's "Essay concerning Human Understanding" (1st analytic philosophy of mind) [info] [more] all ideas derived from sensation and reflection [cite]
sensation, reflection, memory, retention, discerning, comparing, composition, abstraction; simple ideas (extension, solidity, mobility, perceptivity, motivity, existence, duration, number), complex ideas (modes, substances, relations)"Truth, then, seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another."
1692? Leibnitz 1st to use terms variable, constant, function, abscissa, parameter, coordinate and perhaps derivative [cite]
1693: Halley's actuarial tables [cite]
1697: Halley's weather map
Leibnitz studies I Ching [cite]
"Fohi, the most ancient prince and philosopher of the Chinese, had understood the origin of things from unity and nothing, ie his mysterious figures reveal something of an analogy to Creation, containing the binary arithmetic (and yet hinting at greater things) that I rediscovered after so many thousands of years, where all numbers are written by only two notations, 0 and 1." [cite]
1701: Leibnitz publishes work on binary arithmetic
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