Robert Fox - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Books by Robert Fox

by Michal Kokowski, Nadezhda Kushlakova, Annette LYKKNES, R. Kremer, Abraham (Ab) Ch. Flipse, Carlo ARTEMI, Mitchell G . Ash, Fabio Bevilacqua, Brigitte BISCHOF, V. Boas, Maria Teresa BORGATO, José CHABÁS, Olga Elina, Olga Yu. ELINA, Falcon-perez Jm, Robert Fox, Andre Goddu, Ernst P. HAMM, Antoine JACOBSOHN, Jirí JINDRA, Juozas Al. KRIKSTOPAITIS, Andreas Kuehne, Tayra Lanuza-Navarro, Sławomir Łotysz, Victor Navarro Brotons, Juan Navarro-Loidi, Efthymios NICOLAIDIS, Christiane NIVET, Finola O'Kane, Núria Pérez, Prof. Dr. Raffaele Pisano, HDR (Habil.), Robert ROSNER, Voula Saridakis, René Sigrist, Rudolf Werner Soukup, Þorsteinn Vilhjálmsson, Andrzej Wróblewski, Enrique Wulff, Leszek ZASZTOWT, and Karl-Heinz ZIESSOW

Papers by Robert Fox

British Journal of Educational Studies, Mar 1, 1994

Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe explores the development of advanced s... more Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe explores the development of advanced scientific and technical education in seven European countries and the USA between the mid nineteenth century and the 1930s. The essays seek to replace the conventional notion of ...

Centaurus, 2018

As the Official Journal of the European Society for the History of Science, Centaurus is proud to... more As the Official Journal of the European Society for the History of Science, Centaurus is proud to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Society with a special section on the ESHS' origins and history. The ESHS has been growing fast in the last few years, and, with the Society turning 15 years old, it is a good moment to look back before its early history disappears in the midst of time. In fact, there is already quite some obscurity about the actual beginnings of the ESHS, and I had to search for original documents to supplement the memories of the founders. What is clear is that the Society's origins were inspired by and coincided with a moment of increasing European collaboration. Fifteen years later, we live in a different world, and the centrifugal forces that Europe is currently facing should also be an occasion for reflection on the ESHS' future. For these pages, past presidents of the Society were invited to write short contributions with personal memories, reflections, and stories about their tenure at the ESHS. I also invited them to write a few words about their vision for the future of the Society. Note that these pages are not an official history of the ESHS; for this, serious archival research would be needed. (Given that the founding of the Society coincided with the still early years of the general adoption of email, and since historians tend to be somewhat careless with their own archives, a lot of material is now difficult to recover.) In contrast, I asked for personal stories, and, as the reader will see, the pages below give the presidents' personal perspectives on the background of the ESHS, their involvement in the Society, and the opportunities and challenges they see going forward. Claude Debru deserves special mention in any story about the origins of the ESHS. Although he never was president of the Society, as the main driving force behind its creation, I asked him to write about the prehistory and early days of the ESHS. Debru was the Society's first vice-president, which was a fitting role given the Society's particular leadership structure. Indeed, since its inception, the ESHS has in fact three presidents who lead the Society together during a two-year period: "the president" is the executive head and chairperson of the Council; the "president-elect" serves concurrently with the president and after two years succeeds the president in office; the immediate past-president (called "vice president") remains active for another two years and remains part of the Council. Presidents are thus in office for a total duration of six years: two years as ESHS ANNIVERSARY CONTRIBUTION

Annales historiques de l’électricité, 2004

Dans Annales historiques de l'électricité Annales historiques de l'électricité 2004/1 (N° 2) 2004... more Dans Annales historiques de l'électricité Annales historiques de l'électricité 2004/1 (N° 2) 2004/1 (N° 2), pages 159 à 172 Éditions Victoires éditions Victoires éditions

Technology and Culture, 1998

... The Textile Manu-facture at Philadelphia. ... Patriot's carefully filmed performance... more ... The Textile Manu-facture at Philadelphia. ... Patriot's carefully filmed performance, on which its defenders based their case, emerges as highly contestable evidence ... John Pickstone, and Antoine Picon reflect something of the richness of the methodological menu now available ...

The American Mathematical Monthly, 1983

Centaurus, 2011

The European Society for the History of Science invites You to join us! Register yourself and you... more The European Society for the History of Science invites You to join us! Register yourself and your institution at: http://www.eshs.org What kind of scientific cultural background is necessary to teach science? This is the question being asked by many science scholars, teachers and historians as they try and respond to teachers' requests for guidance on how to teach historical, sociological, and philosophical knowledge about science in ways that their students find meaningful and motivating. In recent years there has been a realization among educationalists that in order for students to learn and understand the scientific sense of a subject it is also important for them to develop their intellectual and cultural understanding. This has lead to discussions regarding how scientific reasoning may be integrated as part of science education in schools.

Quaderns d'història de l'enginyeria, 1999

Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 2006

The history of science came early to Oxford. Its first champion was Robert T. Gunther, the son of... more The history of science came early to Oxford. Its first champion was Robert T. Gunther, the son of a keeper of zoology at the British Museum and a graduate of Magdalen College who took a first there in the School of Natural Science in 1892, specializing in zoology (figure 1). As tutor in natural science at Magdalen (and subsequently a fellow) from 1894 until his retirement in 1920, at the age of 50, Gunther showed himself to be a fighter, both for the cause of science in the university and for the preservation of Oxford's scientific heritage. His first work, A history of the Daubeny Laboratory (1904), reflected his devotion to the memory of the laboratory's founder and Magdalen's greatest man of science, Charles Daubeny, who had held chairs of chemistry, botany and rural economy at various times, for long periods simultaneously, between 1822 and his death in 1867. 1 Supplements, bearing the main title The Daubeny Laboratory register, followed in 1916 and 1924, 2 but it was Gunther's Early science in Oxford, published in 14 substantial volumes between 1920 and 1945, that signalled his definitive move from science to history. 3 World War I brought home to Gunther the vulnerability of Oxford's scientific collections, in particular the many early instruments that survived, largely disregarded, in the colleges. The gem, for Gunther, was the cabinet of mathematical and scientific apparatus that Charles Boyle, fourth Earl of Orrery, had bequeathed to his college, Christ Church, on his death in 1731. But the gem by no means represented the whole. The first three volumes of Early science in Oxford (1920-25) bear witness to the sheer quantity of instruments, specimens and records that Gunther had inventoried, ranging from the medieval astrolabes at Merton College to the anatomical, geological and other historic collections that were still being added to in many colleges and university departments in the early twentieth century. Once the finest of the instruments had been gathered and displayed for a special exhibition in the Bodleian Library in 1919, 4 no one could doubt the richness of Gunther's finds, and, with the bit now firmly between his teeth, he turned to the search for a permanent location, not only for the objects shown in the Bodleian but also for those that were offered to the university in 1922 by the private collector Lewis Evans, the younger brother of the archaeologist and keeper of the Ashmolean Museum from 1884 to 1908, Sir Arthur Evans. The location that Gunther coveted was the Old Ashmolean Building in Broad Street. Inaugurated in 1683 as a setting for the pursuit of the new philosophy of the seventeenth century, the Old Ashmolean had been used for a miscellany of purposes since 1894, when the opening of the Ashmolean Museum's new premises in Beaumont Street had provided a muchneeded home for the university's collections of art and antiquities (some of which had been 69

Notes and Records: the Royal Society journal of the history of science, 2014

BEHIND THE APPEARANCES Every two years Notes and Records has the privilege of publishing the winn... more BEHIND THE APPEARANCES Every two years Notes and Records has the privilege of publishing the winning entry in its Essay Award competition. The award for 2014 went to Emily Winterburn, and we begin this issue with her essay, a nuanced account of the educational resources available to the eighteenth-century astronomer and musician William Herschel. Despite Herschel's presentation of himself as self-taught, the opportunities for instruction in his native Hanover and later in England were plentiful and varied. Opportunities had to be seized, of course. And Herschel showed himself adept in reaching out, whether to the reading matter he encountered at home and in libraries or to the networks of personal mentors, instrument makers, and others to whom he had access. Winterburn's account of Herschel's rise to prominence (despite the lack of formal education) throws important new light on the biography of a man whose reminiscences of his own early life have clearly to be read with caution. The essay is a welcome reminder of the insights that await historians willing to explore the debt of even elite scientists to technicians and a range of other, often little-known, practitioners working outside or on the margins of academic science. Largely overshadowed by the spectacularly successful William Herschel was Caroline, his sister and collaborator. Caroline's was a discreet presence, and her role as an astronomer in her own right has still to be fully explored. A woman whose scientific attainments have been even more veiled was Margaret Cavendish, who created a sensation when she attended a meeting of the Royal Society, the first woman to do so, in 1667. Accounts of her science from her contemporary John Evelyn to C. H. Firth and Samuel Mintz in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been largely dismissive. But Emma Wilkins seeks to re-evaluate Cavendish's tart disparagement of the experimental pursuits of Fellows, encapsulated in their use of microscopes ('deluding glasses', as Cavendish called them, rather than 'true informers' about nature). Wilkins's article is at once more sympathetic and less 'gendered' than most existing accounts. If Cavendish broadly preferred 'Reason' over 'Sense', that did not imply a wholesale rejection of experiment, still less an ignorant contempt for the practices of the Royal Society. In certain respects Cavendish was as good a Baconian as any Fellow. And, as Wilkins insists, her reservations were ones that many male contemporaries shared; they were not a peculiarly female response. The cases of Caroline Herschel and Margaret Cavendish demonstrate the need for us to dig behind appearances that have made the past of science a story of predominantly male achievement. In a different register, Markman Ellis leads us behind the 'appearances' of science in its finished, carefully worked form of published papers and books. His account of the 'Weekly Letter' that the Royal Society's secretary, Thomas Birch, and Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, wrote between 1741 and 1766 points to the insights to be found in a source of a distinctly confidential character that reported, for a fee, on the literary, political and scientific worlds of London to selected recipients, mainly in Yorke's

Revue de synthèse, 1992

Les Actes de ce colloque contiennent vingt-sept articles aussi divers que l'activite du philosoph... more Les Actes de ce colloque contiennent vingt-sept articles aussi divers que l'activite du philosophe et du savant que fut Jean Le Rond, dit d' AIembert. Prepare et publie avec soin, Ie livre se termine par un precieux index des noms propres auquel iI aurait ete utile de joindre les titres des ceuvres de d' AIembert, utilisees par les differents auteurs de communications. Essayer de presenter d' AIembert dans la litterature des Lumieres (R Mortier, p. 17-39) ou Ie juger en tant qu'homme de science (Th. Hankins, p. 187-205), en presentant les difficultes de ces deux positions etait une demarche qui s'imposait pour la celebration du bicentenaire de la mort de celui qui fut ala fois attachegeometre puis pensionnaire titulaire aI'Academic des sciences et secretaire perpetuel de l'Academie francaise. J. Dhombres etudie quelques-unes de ses « attitudes », mettant en evidence « son souci profond des fms de I'institution » (p. 167-185). Les preoccupations du biographe de d'AIembert, 1. Pappas, Ie conduisent a exposer les « problemes », inevitables dans ce genre difficile (p. 85-109). Le document qui suit son expose, un pamphlet contre d'AIembert, iIIustre bien les difficultes de dosage delicat dans la prise en compte-on ne peut pas la passer sous silence quand elle existe-de cette litterature de ragots. La « verite biographique » a d'ailleurs ete abordee par d'AIembert lui-meme, ainsi que Ie rappelle W. Voise (p. 111-118). I1l'a mise en pratique d'une certaine maniere dans ses Eloges. Le probleme n'est pas aborde dans son ensemble, mais D. Essar I'envisage dans les deux cas de Bossuet et de Fenelon, mettant en evidence « la caricature dans Ie recit historique » (p. 55-84). C'est a un detail biographique, la visite de d'AIembert a Geneve en aout 1756, que I'on doit une des plus grandes batailles du siecle, soulevee par l'article « Geneve », paru dans Ie tome VII de I'Encyclopedie, comme on Ie sait. J.-D. Candaux revient sur ce sujet en tant que Genevois, en analysant les circonstances de l'enquete de l'encyclopediste (p. 119-134). Deux points de detail encore: les rapports de d'AIembert avec Montes

Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 1970

I mentioned to you a method of still doubling the effect of the steam, and that tolerably easy, b... more I mentioned to you a method of still doubling the effect of the steam, and that tolerably easy, by using the power of steam rushing into a vacuum, at present lost... it is peculiarly applicable to wheel-engines, and may supply the want of a condenser where force of steam is only used; for, open one of the steam-valves, and admit steam until one-fourth of the distance between it and the next valve is filled with steam; shut the valve, the steam will continue to expand, and to press round the wheel with a diminishing power ending in one-fourth of its first exertion. The sum of this series you will find greater than one-half, though only one-fourth steam was used. Watt to Dr William Small, 28 May 1769 (1) My first new improvement in steam or fire engines consists in admitting steam into the cylinders or steam vessels of the engine only during some certain part or portion of the descent or ascent of the piston of the said cylinder, and using the elastic forces, wherewith the said steam ...

Minerva, 2006

This paper offers personal reflections on the fashioning of the history of science in Europe. It ... more This paper offers personal reflections on the fashioning of the history of science in Europe. It presents the history of science as a discipline emerging in the twentieth century from an intellectual and political context of great complexity, and concludes with a plea for tolerance and pluralism in historiographical methods and approaches.

The Business History Review, 1999

Family loyalty had compelled Walter to support his parents and siblings; now he felt obliged to m... more Family loyalty had compelled Walter to support his parents and siblings; now he felt obliged to maintain Franks penniless widow and children, and to pay off 50,000ofhisbrothersdebts.Walterdiedin1899,agloomyandresentfuloldman,worthonly50,000 of his brothers debts. Walter died in 1899, a gloomy and resentful old man, worth only 50,000ofhisbrothersdebts.Walterdiedin1899,agloomyandresentfuloldman,worthonly28,697 and, in his own eyes, a failure. So far, none of his biographers would agree, but North America has not always been kind to engineers and very seldom to gentlemen.

British Journal of Educational Studies, Mar 1, 1994

Centaurus, 2018

Annales historiques de l’électricité, 2004

Technology and Culture, 1998

The American Mathematical Monthly, 1983

Centaurus, 2011

Quaderns d'història de l'enginyeria, 1999

Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 2006

Notes and Records: the Royal Society journal of the history of science, 2014

Revue de synthèse, 1992

Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 1970

Minerva, 2006

The Business History Review, 1999

Revue de synthèse, 1999

REsuME: Tout au long de sa longue carriere, Henri Lecoq a eu une reputation contrastee dans la co... more REsuME: Tout au long de sa longue carriere, Henri Lecoq a eu une reputation contrastee dans la communaute scientifique. Son oeuvre est citee par Mendel et par Darwin; cependant certains de ses compatriotes, tels qu'Adolphe Brongniart lui ont denie originalite et profondeur. Dans une certaine mesure, Lecoqa subi le destin de beaucoup de naturalistes provinciaux dont les efforts n'etaient pas vraiment reconnus par les maitres de la discipline. Mais une explication plus specifique se trouve peut-etre dans I'habitude qu'avait Lecoq d'utiliser dans Ie meme texte differents styles consideres comme incompatibles. Son travail sur I'hybridation vegetale est acet egard significatif : des bribesde vulgarisation hautesen couleurs y cotcient des conseils pratiques pour les horticulteurs, et les descriptions pittoresques s'y melent aux reflexions theoriques, Au terme de cette etude, Lecoq apparait comme un homme de science qui combine un sens aigude I'observation avec Iescaracteristiques d'un auteur romantique.