•  247
    The objects of science education are transformed, degraded and disappeared for many reasons, and sometimes take other things with them when they go. This close reading of an undergraduate physiology laboratory report demonstrates how the kymograph was never a stand-alone instrument, but intertwined with conceptual frameworks and technical skills, laboratory amenities, materials, animal supply, technicians. Replacing the obsolete kymograph entails changing all of that, though our usual stories ar…Read more
  •  59
    Tycho's Talisman: Astrological Magic in the Design of Uraniborg
    Early Science and Medicine 16 (2): 95-119. 2011.
    Renaissance Vitruvianism provides a broad context in which to situate the architecture of Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg, but fails to account for the motivation behind Tycho’s design, for how Tycho knew Vitruvian design principles, and for any of Uraniborg’s specific features. Identifying Uraniborg as a Palladian design fares even worse. Some of Uraniborg’s features can, however, be understood in terms of talismanic ideas such as those circulating in sources such as Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (w…Read more
  •  37
    In light of the long-lived, on-going debate surrounding the Aristotelian doctrines of prime matter and the four simple bodies (or 'elements'), the general message of this thesis is surprising: that Aristotle's theory is centred on neither. I argue that Aristotle does in fact have a substantial prime matter, but not the single, featureless, immutable prime matter of tradition