出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.247, pp.186-188, 2008 (Released:2021-08-04)

著者

金山 浩司

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.248, pp.193-205, 2008 (Released:2021-08-04)

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In this study, I analysed the discourse of a philosophical dispute about the idea or theory of physics, which occurred in the first half of 1930-s in the Soviet Union. I examined the internal contents of the dispute between leading physicists and communist philosophers or old-generated technicians. This analysis has shown that against leading physicists such as Ia. I. Frenkel' or I.E. Tamm, their opponents such as V.E. Egorshin (communist philosopher) or V.F. Mitkevich (old-generation electrical engineer) insisted on the importance of materialistic/realistic interpretation of field proposed by Frenkel', which allowed the action in distance. Egorshin, based on Engels' philosophy, maintained the importance of the idea of energy as the reflection of the motion of real matters. Despite the ignorance (as pointed out by Soviet physicists) or bitterness of their discourse, the argument of the opponents is also understandable from their "anti-formalistic" tendency. This tendency has continued to form a base of the dispute about the philosophy of physics in the Soviet Union.

著者

恒山 清爾

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.248, pp.206-209, 2008 (Released:2021-08-04)

著者

島原 健三

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.248, pp.210-216, 2008 (Released:2021-08-04)

著者

小島 智恵子

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.75-84, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

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From 1919 to 1922, Marcel Brillouin published several papers on quantum theory. Some previous studies cited these works as paving the way for Louis de Broglie's matter wave. But few historical studies treated Brillouin's wave concept in his quantum theory in detail. In this paper, we first investigate Brillouin's wave concept, then analyze his motive for his study, and finally examine its influence on L. de Broglie, constrasting the differences between Brillouin's wave concept and L. de Broglie's matter wave.

著者

石橋 悠人

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.85-94, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

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This paper aims to demonstrate institutional characters of the Board of Longitude for the purpose of examining the relationship between science and polity in the 18th century Britain. In 1714, British parliament established the Longitude Act and appointed Commissioners of the Board who were experts familiar with navigation, astronomy, and geography. Their main role was improving navigational science, especially achieving the practical solution for finding the longitude at sea. The Board as a scientific institution had close relations to two public bodies: the Parliament and Royal Navy. The Parliament financed the Board and rarely intervened into or controlled their activities. Nevertheless, the determinations which parliament made were obviously priority to the Board's, accordingly only through the parliamentary act, its reorganization could be carried out. Several scientific activities of the Board were operated for the service of the Royal Navy : introducing newly invented methods for finding the longitude and navigational instruments, transferring geographical knowledge, and cooperating actively for the voyages of discovery to the Pacific ocean and Arctic. It is well known that until second half of the 19th century, British government seldom patronized scientific activities and organizations. The example of the Board presents that from second half of the 18th century on, however, the state had put huge public money into scientific projects related to navigation, commerce, and exploration.

著者

平岡 隆二

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.95-111, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

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In 1593-94, a Spanish Jesuit Pedro Gomez (1533-1600) completed his tripartite textbook for use by students preparing for the priesthood at Jesuit colleges in Japan. Its first part, De sphaera (On the Sphere), is well known as the first full-scale presentation of Western cosmology in Japan. However, it has been rarely noted that its third part, Compendium catholicae veritatis (Compendium of Catholic Belief), which treats theology, also contains such technical astronomical data as the dimension of the heavens. Comparison of Compendium's data with those seen in astronomy books in contemporary Europe has shown that some of the numerical values in fact correspond to those of a famous Jesuit mathematician Christoph Clavius (1537-1612), whose influence on De sphaera has already been indicated. This paper, while providing a modern Japanese translation of the related chapter in Compendium, first investigates the derivation of the data and, second, examines whether it influenced similar data seen in Kenkon Bensetsu (A Discussion on the Heavens and the Earth with Critical Commentaries) and its variant copy Tenmon Biyo (Compendium for Astronomy), both composed in the mid 17th century and attributed to the apostate Portuguese Chuan Sawano (Christovao Ferreira, ca.1580-1650).

著者

伊藤 節子

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.112-115, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

著者

梅村 崇

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.116-117, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.118-124, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

著者

池上 俊三

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.247, pp.129-139, 2008 (Released:2021-08-04)

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The Japanese optical industry started with the outbreak of World War One when the import of the optical weapons was suspended. The Imperial Japanese Navy made a decision to produce them domestically. The optical factory of the Naval Arsenal in Tsukiji succeeded in making an original rangefinder for preproduction purposes. In this paper, I would like to discuss the technology transformation process of the Japanese optical industry by verifying the technological progress of Japanese rangefinders. The database of the Industrial Property Digital Library is used. The early composition of the Japanese optical industry was the Naval Arsenal factory and two private companies closely associated with the government (i.e. Nippon Kogaku K.K. and Tokyo Gasu Denki K.K.). The new optical design technology (ray tracing method) was introduced to the Naval Arsenal by Kogoro Yamada from England independently from the German engineers whom Nippon Kogaku K.K. invited. However, due to the disarmament by the Washington Naval Treaty, the Naval Arsenal was closed and the optical factory of Tokyo Gasu Denki K.K. was also shut down despite its high technological level. As a result rangefinder and optical glass manufacturing technology was transferred to Nippon Kogaku K.K. from the Naval Arsenal which became a single powerful optical company. It was made clear in this paper that the technological level of the Japanese optical industry was self-reliant by early the Showa era through close cooperation between military, industry and academic.

著者

本間 栄男

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.247, pp.140-149, 2008 (Released:2021-08-04)

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Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637) is a self-learning man. He learned medicine by his reading medical books (contemporary and classic). In this paper I study how Beeckman read and understood them. He did not merely memorize them. But he gave some supplementary explanations to their (he thought) insufficient passages, sometimes criticized them and gave mechanical explanation that was based on atomism with hydrostatics. We can find similar ways of reading in the works of Lucretius and Cardano which young Beeckman read repeatedly. Beeckman learned the way of explaining natural phenomena with atomism from Lucretius' De rerum natura, and the way of explaining mechanics with natural philosophy and of demonstrating the principles of natural philosophy with machines from Cardano's De subtilitate. Beeckman's interactive reading is a good style of self-learning, but to avoid some bad effects of self-learning, he had to talk actually to a good respondent such as young Descartes.

著者

横田 陽子

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.245, pp.1-12, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

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In this paper, I describe how public health officers in Japan in the period of the late Taisho and early Showa eras claimed their position as professionals in the sanitary administrations of central and local governments. In the background of this push for recognition, there were related international and national movements. Internationally, public health ministries were established in developed countries and the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO) was created. LNHO wanted to improve the level of public health officials world-wide, so the organization sponsored international exchanges of officials. These activities made a strong impression on Japanese public health officials, who realized that they belonged to an internationally recognized profession and that they needed to work hard to improve the substandard Japanese public health situation. Meanwhile, at the level of domestic politics, there were several movements of technical experts in different fields of government administration that worked to fight the unfair treatment of administrative officials, a situation that had existed since Meiji Period. The public health officers collaborated with the other technical experts to improve their positions and to play key roles in society. But while the other technical experts actively pursued social leadership, public health officials wanted to remain scientists. This is because the sanitary departments in the local governments were organized within police departments. In this environment, the law was dominant and science was secondary. But public health officials insisted that the basis of public health should be science, so they emphasized their scientific expertise.

著者

山田 俊弘

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.245, pp.13-25, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

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In order to clarify the mutual influence between Robert Hooke and Nicolaus Steno in the history of geoscience, the present paper analyzes their collections of minerals as well as their texts about the Earth. Following a brief review of the circumstances of mineral collections and classifications in seventeenth-century England, I examine the text of Hooke's Discourse of Earthquakes (1668/1705) and the specimens that Hooke referred therein. I also note that Hooke utilized the specimens or related facts, or even fables, reported in natural histories, travel writings, classic texts, the Scriptures, letters and accounts of acquaintances, and so forth. Meanwhile, a study of the minerals referred to in Steno's Index of Natural Things and the contents of his Prodromus on Solid Bodies (1669) reveals that Hooke and Steno observed similar specimens, independently acquired, with some local differences between England (the Royal Society repository) and Italy (the Medici collection). Hooke, however, assumed that even fossil objects like ammonites or belemnites were of organic origin while Steno probably refrained from identifying such 'problematic' objects as being organic. Nevertheless, given the early interest of Steno in meteorological and terrestrial phenomena in his Chaos Manuscript (1659) and De thermis (1660), it is possible that Steno understood the significance of fossils in his early years, though Hooke's priority of publication is undeniable, given that he determined their organic origin in the early 1660s and published on them in Micrographia (1665).

著者

安孫子 誠也

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.245, pp.26-31, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

著者

伊藤 和行

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.245, pp.32-35, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

著者

三浦 伸夫 鈴木 孝典 高橋 憲一 斎藤 憲

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.245, pp.36-47, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.245, pp.48-61, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

著者

白石 崇人

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.246, pp.65-74, 2008 (Released:2021-08-05)

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Tei Nishimura planned the Japanese Association for the Advancement of Science in 1888. According to his plan, the association was established through the union of educational, scientific and technological groups. The purpose was to enlighten people on the value of science, promote special research topics, improve the political position of science and scientists, and simplify the dissemination of research outcomes. The model adopted was that of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, although this association had no educational section in the 1880s. Nishimura's plan to unite educational and scientific groups within the association developed from his theory of education, which sought to relate education to science. He hoped for the development of pedagogy, and conducted research on the relationship between education and science. In addition, he thought that the theory of A. Bain was quoted, and that science assisted didactics. He thought that Bain applied psychology, physiology etc. to didactics, and was going to use their scientific method as a practical method. He began the reform of the Educational Society of Japan based on his plan. In 1888, he established a system of consultation with the Ministry of Education, to enable cooperation between science and technological research as well as education, and to conduct research into education.

著者

野村 恒彦

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.46, no.244, pp.220-230, 2007 (Released:2021-08-09)

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Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was a polymath at the Victorian Age in England. He is famous for his calculating engines, especially the Analytical Engine, which is a prototype of modern computers. Also it is well known that the range of Babbage's writings are spread over many fields. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise is a typical book indicating another talent of his. This treatise is known as a critic of Whewell's words in his Bridgewater Treatise entitled Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology. In his treatise, Whewell dismissed works of continental mathematicians, because they were injurious to devotion. However Babbage stood against Whewell's position. When Babbage was an undergraduate of Cambridge University, he organized "Analytical Society " with his friends. The Society's object was to introduce continental mathematics (Analysis) into England. Babbage had learned the importance of continental Analysis, so he criticized Whewell's words. Another topic of Babbage's treatise is Hume's argument about miracles. In Hume's essay, Babbage noticed the number of witness of miracles. Using Laplace's probability theory and singular points of curves of the forth degree, Babbage criticized Hume's thought. Thus Babbage manifested his idea about natural theology, as a mathematician who adhered continental analysis.