England

Gilbert, physician to Queen Elisabeth I, attempted to map the world of the Moon with the unaided eye, even before the telescope of Galileo. In antiquity, Plutarch had surmised the existence of land and ocean regions in the dark and light patches of the lunar surface.

Constellation figures remained popular in education, as in these constellation cards which make learning the constellations easy. The set includes 32 cards, each focused upon one or a few constellations.

A globe maker for the French royal family, J. Fortin, prepared this edition of Flamsteed’s celestial atlas in a much reduced format. Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal, who oversaw the building of the Greenwich Observatory. Newton relied upon Flamsteed’s star positions in his Principia.

This anthology includes letters to the Royal Society of London by various contributors, including Robert Hooke (1635-1703) and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). Here it is opened to a letter from Leeuwenhoek, faced by four small microscopic vignettes.

Chaucer’s astronomical knowledge, like Dante’s, was anything but casual; in addition to his stories, this volume also contains his detailed technical manual for use of the astrolabe.

For Robert Fludd, the universe is a monochord, its physical structure unintelligible without an understanding of music. In another section of the book, Fludd depicts the universe as a Temple of Music.

Newton’s mathematical physics established an understanding of the dynamics of the solar system.

This poem became one of the most widely read works of European literature in the 17th century. Tasso created serious characters with human flaws, psychological depth, and even melancholy, setting them in the inspirational but ambiguous era of the Crusades.

Planetary and stellar influences affect one’s physical temperament, so one must take steps not to catch the melancholic “influenza” of Saturn: “There’s some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favorable” (A Winter's Tale).

Pliny’s Natural History defined the scope and breadth of the field of natural history. Natural history meant the description (or “historia”) of nature, as opposed to explaining its causes (or “natural philosophy”). Pliny died in 79 CE while investigating the eruption of Mt.

The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland.

This book demonstrated the advantage of exercise training and physical therapy in promoting health. Pugh invented exercise apparatus to strengthen the muscles.

Topsell’s natural history includes both familiar and exotic creatures, drawn from sources both new and old. Topsell describes the horse, reindeer and chameleon. He portrays the magnificent appearance of the rhinoceros in the artistic tradition of Dürer.

After a century of calculating instrument innovation, Partridge created the slide-rule. Edmund Gunter designed a logarithmic scale in 1620. William Oughtred placed two logarithmic scales side-by-side to perform multiplication and division in 1630.

Artful lithographs of the Milkyway from a leading English observatory.

After studying with the chemist Robert Boyle and the naturalist John Ray, Sloane embarked on a voyage to Jamaica. In these two volumes, Sloane described about 800 species of plants he collected. Sloane included 48 extracts from Hernandez.

“Many a night I saw the Pleiades rising thro’ the mellow shade, glitter like a swarm of fire-flies Tangled in a silver braid.” “Locksley Hall,” 5th couplet.

Gerard, an estate manager for Queen Elizabeth’s chief executive, was in contact with naturalists around the world who sent him both plants and soil to grow them in. The first illustration of the “Virginia potato” appears in this volume.

These notes comprise one of the most important papers in the history of computing. Lovelace explained how Babbage’s “analytical engine,” if constructed, would amount to a programmable computer rather than merely a calculator.

Apollonius (3rd century B.C.E.) examined the properties of conic sections; namely, the: • circle (cuts a cone horizontally, perpendicularly to the axis of the cone) • ellipse (cuts a cone to make a closed curve) • parabola (cuts a cone parallel to a side of the cone) • hyperbola (cuts a cone in...

The “influenza” of Saturn brings melancholy: On one occasion, Galileo was called as an expert medical witness in a trial to testify about the physical effects of melancholy.

An explosion of plant knowledge: Herbals provided much more than biology or natural history information; they offered guidance for health, nutrition and common remedies. Two of the most important early English herbals are John Gerard’s Herball, and this work by Gerard’s student, John Parkinson...

This sun-centered cosmic section representes the first published defense of Copernicus in England, printed in a work of meteorology.

Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood, first time in English: Concluding a series of brilliant teachers and students at the medical school of Padua that included Vesalius, Colombo, and Acquapendente (a friend of Galileo’s), Harvey marshaled a combination of quantitative,...

Thomas Burnet, a royal chaplain, classical scholar, and Cambridge Platonist, published Telluris theoria sacra in 1681. The famous frontispiece first appeared in this English edition. A circle of seven globes represents the Earth completing its journey through time.

Newton’s contemporaries may have first heard of him through articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. There he reported his experiments with prisms on the nature of light and color in the atmosphere.

Gilbert, a physician to Queen Elisabeth I, wrote the first experimental treatise devoted to magnetism. Gilbert discerned analogies between the Earth and magnets, and reasoned that the Earth itself is a magnet.

The quest to eliminate smallpox through vaccination: Jenner, a student of John Hunter, knowing that milkmaids who contracted cowpox became immune to smallpox, surmised that pus from cowpox blisters could be used to vaccinate anyone against smallpox.

This page reflects Wegener’s interest in temperature fluctuations and patterns of glaciation. The theory of continental drift developed from Wegener’s researches in Greenland as a meteorologist with an interest in polar climate.

Organization of nursing as a profession: Florence Nightingale championed social reform and the organization of nursing as a profession.

The Copernican idea that the Earth moves as a planet required a thorough revision of physics. Galileo undertook this task in his Discourse on Two New Sciences, published 80 years after Copernicus.

For Newton, science and the Bible were not opposed, provided that one understood each one correctly.