‘Data’ in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, 1665–1886

Was there a concept of data before the so-called ‘data revolution’? This paper contributes to the history of the concept of data by investigating uses of the term ‘data’ in texts of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions for the period 1665–1886. It surveys how the notion enters the journal as a technical term in mathematics, and charts how over time it expands into various other scientific fields, including Earth sciences, physics and chemistry. The paper argues that in these texts the notion of data is not used merely as a rhetorical category, and also cannot strictly be identified with the category of evidence. Instead, the notion comes with an associated epistemic structure, one that is in line with its development from an early mathematical use

Connoisseurship and the Communication of Anatomical Knowledge: The Case of William Cheselden’s Osteographia (1733)

This essay re-examines the connections between connoisseurship and anatomical knowledge in the works of the elite medics of eighteenth-century Britain. These medics, including Richard Mead and William Cheselden, were known both for their medical innovations and for their commitment to the practices of connoisseurship—the collection and criticism of fine art objects. The essay discusses the making, presentation and reception of one such object—the Osteographia (1733), a luxurious anatomical atlas produced by the famous surgeon William Cheselden and sharply criticized by another surgeon, John Douglas. Focusing on how these two surgeons engaged with the aesthetic and material qualities of the book, Wragge-Morley identifies hitherto overlooked connections between the much-contested discourses and practices of medical knowledge and connoisseurship

James Petiver’s ‘Kind Friends’ and ‘Curious Persons’ in the Atlantic World: Commerce, Colonialism and Collecting

In 1695, James Petiver concluded the first ‘century’ of his Musei Petiveriani by observing that he had received the specimens described within it from his ‘Kind Friends from divers parts of the World’ and ‘Curious Persons…Abroad’. This essay examines Petiver’s network of such ‘Kind Friends’ and ‘Curious Persons’ in the Atlantic World. The composition of Petiver’s network reflected many of the broader patterns of English commerce in the Atlantic at the turn of the eighteenth century. Moreover, England’s growing overseas empire and its expanding commercial activity required a parallel expansion in maritime labour. Mariners were correspondingly central to Petiver’s work as a naturalist and collector in the region. The importance of slavery and the slave trade to Atlantic economic and social structures meant that the naturalist relied on the institutions, infrastructures and individuals of the slave trade and plantation slavery. A social history of Petiver’s Atlantic network reveals how the naturalist utilized the routes of commerce and colonialism to collect specimens, as well as to collect the correspondents who might provide them from West Africa, Spanish America, the Caribbean and mainland North America. It demonstrates the entangled histories of commerce, colonialism, collecting and the production of natural knowledge

The etiology of dental caries

Thesis contains some original observations on the incidence of dental caries in breastfed children contrasted with the condition of the teeth in hand-fed children, and a general review of the subject

The mechanics of precision presplitting

Precision Presplitting is a widely used method of presplit blasting for the mining and construction industries. In recent years considerable effort has gone into the development of empirical equations based on field data to be able to better design the Precision Presplit for various rock types and structural environments. However, the most widely discussed theory about the mechanics of the presplit formation, that of shockwave collisions, does not appear to be applicable for this method of presplitting. This research has disproven this theory based on insufficient magnitude of the shockwave from modeling with basic wave mechanics. Other authors have suggested alternative theories based on the gas pressurization of the borehole. Recently the concept of hoop stresses as a result of the gas pressurization of the borehole was suggested. No method to analyze the gas pressurization of the borehole and magnitude of the hoop stresses existed. This research seeks to develop the basic theory to determine the hoop stress field for a Precision Presplit blast, using basic laws from thermodynamics and mechanics of materials to present a mathematical proof to determine the borehole pressure from a decoupled charge and the magnitude of the hoop stress developed in the rock. This modelling approach analyzes the stress from both the shockwave and gas pressure, which are quantified and compared to the tensile strength of the rock. This research shows that the shockwave magnitude is much too low to cause presplit formation while the hoop stress has sufficient magnitude to cause the split --Abstract, page iii