Seventeenth Century Practical Mathematics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Practical Mathematics

scholarly journals Alligation Alternate and the Composition of Medicines: Arithmetic and Medicine in Early Modern England

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvan Bregman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Medical Applications ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Practical Mathematics ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Mathematical Literature

Practical mathematics in the early modern period was applied to such fields as astronomy and navigation; cartography and surveying; engineering and military arts, including gunnery; and especially banking and mercantile trade. Those who have written about practical mathematics make no mention of medical applications in their surveys, although there were many cases where physicians set up as mathematical practitioners. This article examines medical applications found in practical mathematical literature up to the end of the seventeenth century in England.

Surveyor of the Restoration

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-154
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Elementary Mathematics ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Tower Of London ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Mathematics ◽  
The City

Frances Willmoth, Sir Jonas Moore: Practical Mathematics and Restoration Science . Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1993. Pp.xi+244. £35. ISBN 0-85115-321-6 Jonas Moore (1617-79) is a slightly anomalous figure in the seventeenth- century scientific scene, well known but in some ways obscure. He belongs partly to the history of elementary mathematics: his major publication was Moores Arithmetick (1650 and several other editions); this is largely but not wholly based on the work of Oughtred, whom Moore cited as one to whom he owed ‘all the Mathematicall Knowledge I have’ (a statement not to be taken literally, as Dr Willmoth stresses). That few copies now survive shows, as with most works of arithmetic at the time, that it was used by practical men and read to death. Moore belongs as well to the history of practical mathematics: he worked for some seven years in the 1650s as Surveyor to the Earl of Bedford’s Fen Drainage Company and produced an often-reprinted map at the end of it; this led to his being asked in 1663 to undertake an expedition to Tangier which resulted in a map of the city and its confines. He also produced a map of the Thames in 1663 and a survey of London after the Great Fire. In 1663 he became Surveyor of the Ordnance, based on the Tower of London. From this position he found it easy to enter into the scientific world of Restoration London: he was elected F.R.S. in 1674 and immediately put on the Council (1675-78); he became the patron of many young practical mathematicians; perhaps Moore’s greatest claim to fame was his patronage of the young John Flamsteed and his critical role in creating for Flamsteed the post of Astronomer Royal (1675) and helping to supply him with the necessary instruments.

Salivary Conditioning in the Seventeenth Century.

1963 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jozef Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century

Transmission of Renaissance herbal images to China: the Beitang copy of Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and its annotations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-253
Author(s):  
Wu Huiyi ◽  
Zheng Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
National Library ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Northern Chinese ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Animal Names ◽  
National Library Of China ◽  
Made In

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.

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