Gems and the New Science by Michael Bycroft (.ePUB)
File Size: 5 MB
Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution (Synthesis) by Michael Bycroft
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 5 MB
Overview: The first book-length history of gems in early modern science offers a thought-provoking new take on the Scientific Revolution.
InGems and the New Science, Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connected to major developments in the “new science” between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As he explains, precious and semiprecious stones were at the center of dramatic shifts in natural knowledge in early modern Europe. They were used to investigate luminescence, electricity, combustion, chemical composition, and more. They were collected by naturalists; measured by mathematicians; and rubbed, burned, and dissolved by experimental philosophers. This led to the demise of the traditional way of classifying gems—which grouped them by transparency, color, and locality—and the turn to density, refraction, chemistry, and crystallography as more reliable guides for sorting these substances.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Educational
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