The War on Newton

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“The Turkish Alcoran”: New Light on the 1649 English Translation of the Koran

The first translation of the Koran into English appeared in 1649, the first year of the Commonwealth. The political and religious significance of the publication was then and remains contested. In this essay, Mordechai Feingold traces the history of the translation’s appearance, describing the personages and motivations involved with the publication and its reception. Arguing that Thomas Ross is the likeliest editor, he challenges an alternative identification of those responsible for the translation and paratexts. Feingold surveys the critical reception of the edition, which appears to have been partisan rather than principled, and concludes with a description of rival editions proposed by contemporary Arabists

A Rake’s Progress: William Whiston Reads Josephus

William Whiston celebrated his sixty-seventh birthday on Monday, 9 December 1734. As if to solemnize the occasion, he entered his study and began translating the works of Josephus. The decision to undertake the translation was far from spontaneous. As early as 16 March 1733 Whiston had advertised the imminent publication of two dissertations on the Jewish historian, intended to serve as “preparatory to a New Version of Josephus in English.” Still, the date is suggestive for elucidating the motivation of the translation. In the previous month Whiston’s youngest son, John, had been made free of the Merchant’s Taylor Company, having completed his apprenticeship with the bookseller Fletcher Gyles. Setting up shop in Fleet Street, John would become William’s sole publisher, and the translation, I submit, was intended to secure an immediate best seller—which would both ensure the future well-being of John’s business and alleviate William’s chronic financial difficulties

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The Accademia del Cimento and the Royal Society

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Introduction

Previous discussions of the early modern republic of letters by intellectual historians have tended to use a narrow definition of that republic that excluded institutions of higher education. Informed by recent historiographical discussions that have broadened our interpretation of the “Republic of Letters,” this volume uses a framework which enables it to discuss wider developments in the history of knowledge and science.1 Adapting a formulation used by the forthcoming Princeton University Press Information: A Historical Companion, we use “Republic of Letters” heuristically as a very broad category, “an international and self-described network of early modern scholars, philosophers, and thinkers who communicated with one another via letters and personal contact.”2 Our early modern Republic of Letters formed part of an intellectual world of connected scholarship, created by learned individuals. Most of its male writers were products of their contemporary higher education system. While they were born into differing social strata, they shared a common approach to argument and writing, which followed classical models, and many of them wrote in Latin. We believe that their higher education was a necessary preparation which enabled them to develop new understandings and connections in the sciences. We therefore aim to integrate our discussion of higher education institutions into that broader republic of connected scholarship

The Early Royal Society and Visual Culture

Recent studies have fruitfully examined the intersection between early modern science and visual culture by elucidating the functions of images in shaping and disseminating scientific knowledge. Given its rich archival sources, it is possible to extend this line of research in the case of the Royal Society to an examination of attitudes towards images as artefacts –manufactured objects worth commissioning, collecting and studying. Drawing on existing scholarship and material from the Royal Society Archives, I discuss Fellows’ interests in prints, drawings, varnishes, colorants, images made out of unusual materials, and methods of identifying the painter from a painting. Knowledge of production processes of images was important to members of the Royal Society, not only as connoisseurs and collectors, but also as those interested in a Baconian mastery of material processes, including a “history of trades”. Their antiquarian interests led to discussion of painters’ styles, and they gradually developed a visual memorial to an institution through portraits and other visual records.AH/M001938/1 (AHRC

Introduction: Debates on Experience and Empiricism in Nineteenth Century France

The lasting effects of the debate over canon-formation during the 1980s affected the whole field of Humanities, which became increasingly engaged in interrogating the origin and function of the Western canon (Gorak 1991; Searle 1990). In philosophy, a great deal of criticism was, as a result, directed at the traditional narrative of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophies—a critique informed by postcolonialism (Park 2013) as well as feminist historiography (Shapiro 2016). D. F. Norton (1981), L. Loeb (1981) and many others1 attempted to demonstrate the weaknesses of the tripartite division between rationalism, empiricism and critical philosophy.2 As time went on, symptoms of dissatisfaction with what has been called the “standard narrative” ( Vanzo 2013) and the “epistemological par-adigm” (Haakonssen 2004, 2006) only increased. Indeed, at present, a consensus has been reached that the narrative of the antagonism between “Continental rationalism” and “British empiricism”, and the consequent Aufhebung provided by “German critical philosophy,” has been unable to make sense of the complexity, variety and dynamics of early modern.Fil: Antoine-Mahut, Delphine. Ecole Normale Supérieure; FranciaFil: Manzo, Silvia Alejandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales; Argentin

Response to H. Floris Cohen's essay review on Newtonian scholarship

Long ago, George Sarton set down criteria for reviewers. In addition to insisting on the need to compose ‘faithful’ reviews, he cautioned against four types of unfit reviewers: the ‘egoist’, the ‘obscure’ reviewer, the one who is noncommittal, and the pedantic critic. Unfortunately, Cohen's review comes short on several counts. Cohen writes that he intends to examine what is ‘new’ in the three books he reviews, and whether the results therein contained are ‘worth learning’ (p. 687). Cohen denies being given to ‘misplaced hero worship’, insisting that his sole aim is to assess whether ‘scholarly novelty’ (p. 693) has been attained. Nevertheless, given his repeated rebuke of the authors under review for ‘failing to refer back to [Richard] Westfall's work’ on Newton – now nearly half a century old – it seems that he grounded his critique principally on Westfall's interpretation