Ofer Gal was born in 1962 and earned his PhD from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh 1996 and is a professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University Sydney.
He has published extensively on early modern natural philosophy and on the epistemological, ontological and historiographical riddles presented by the emergence of modern science and its culture. His latest monographs are Baroque Science (with Raz Chen-Morris, Chicago UP, 2013) and Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge UP, 2021).
ABSTRACT This book is a historical-epistemological study of one the most consequential idea of ea... more ABSTRACT This book is a historical-epistemological study of one the most consequential idea of early modern celestial mechanics: Robert Hooke's proposal to "compoun[d] the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body," a proposal which Isaac Newton adopted and realized in his Principia. Hooke's Programme was revolutionary both cosmologically and mathematically. It presented "the celestial motions," the proverbial symbol of stability and immutability, as a process of continuous change, and prescribed only parameters of rectilinear motions and rectilinear attractions for calculating their closed curved orbits. Yet the traces of Hooke's construction of his Programme for the heavens lead through his investigations in such earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology, and the mathematical tools developed by Newton to accomplish it appear no less local and goal-oriented than Hooke's lenses and springs. This transgression of the boundaries between the theoretical, experimental and technological realms is reminiscent of Hooke's own free excursions in and out of the circles occupied by gentlemen-philosophers, university mathematicians, instrument makers, technicians and servants. It presents an opportunity to examine the social and epistemological distinctions, relations and hierarchies between those realms and their inhabitants, and compels a critical assessment of the philosophical categories they embody.
Studies in history and philosophy of science, Sep 30, 2013
This study concentrates on two travel narratives from the turn of the seventeenth century: Fynes ... more This study concentrates on two travel narratives from the turn of the seventeenth century: Fynes Morison’s Itinerary and Johannes Kepler’s Somnium. Though one is real and the other imaginary, and though they belong to different traditions and their authors differ in credentials and aspirations, their subject matter, I suggest, is the same. Both are concerned with motion, the great intellectual challenge of the early modern era. For both Kepler and Moryson, motion represents the prospect of knowledge attained by change of perspective and the challenge of controlling it by practical mathematics; for both it is a source of terror and a wellspring of hope. For both of them, like it was for their contemporary Galileo, motion unifies the world and gives it meaning and structure.
The history of science is like a cathedral: a grand human achievement of many hands; magnificent ... more The history of science is like a cathedral: a grand human achievement of many hands; magnificent yet imperfect; purposeful yet contingent. The following article is an extract from the first chapter of a textbook soon to be published by Cambridge University Press titled 'The Origins of Modern Science: From Antiquity to the Scientific Revolution'.
From Copernicus’s claim that the earth is engaged in three different motions—none of which we can... more From Copernicus’s claim that the earth is engaged in three different motions—none of which we can experience—to Newton’s claim that the planetary motions are disorderly—and it is the philosopher’s task to enforce a pattern on them—early modern science made paradoxes the core of its inquiry. Rather than marking the limits of reason or laying foundations for playful skepticism, paradoxes were explicitly sought, carefully elaborated and seriously inquired into, scientifically and philosophically. This entry will string together the most crucial of these paradoxes, one often leading to the other: Tycho demonstrated that the heavens are changing; Kepler showed that vision is a causal process with no inherent cognitive value; Descartes concluded that the passions are the conduits of knowledge; and Bernard Mandeville, already a proud disciple of a self-confident Newtonian science, argued that public virtue arises for private vice. The acknowledged, reflective, and fertile paradoxical nature of its claims and techniques turns the New Science into a representative and a shaping force of Baroque culture.
The Origins of Modern Science is the first synthetic account of the history of science from antiq... more The Origins of Modern Science is the first synthetic account of the history of science from antiquity through the Scientific Revolution in many decades. Providing readers of all backgrounds and students of all disciplines with the tools to study science like a historian, Ofer Gal covers everything from Pythagorean mathematics to Newton's Principia, through Islamic medicine, medieval architecture, global commerce and magic. Richly illustrated throughout, scientific reasoning and practices are introduced in accessible and engaging ways with an emphasis on the complex relationships between institutions, beliefs and political structures and practices. Readers gain valuable new insights into the role that science plays both in history and in the world today, placing the crucial challenges to science and technology of our time within their historical and cultural context.
Motion defined the world of early modern savants. Whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or English, ... more Motion defined the world of early modern savants. Whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or English, they were taken by the new intellectual challenges and options of a world populated by people and objects moving over lands, oceans and heavens. How are we to tell the history of knowledge at the eve of modernity giving this global experience its due?
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2011
Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading ... more Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading chemists. Even some of the leading proponents of the new chemistry admitted its ‘absolute existence’. We demonstrate that what was defended under the title ‘phlogiston’ was no longer a particular hypothesis about combustion and respiration. Rather, it was a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions and the empirical practices associated with them. Lavoisier's gravimetric reduction, in the eyes of the phlogistians, annihilated the autonomy of chemistry together with its peculiar concepts of chemical substance and quality, chemical process and chemical affinity. The defence of phlogiston was the defence of a distinctly chemical conception of matter and its appearances, a conception which reflected the chemist's acquaintance with details and particularities of substances, properties and processes and his skills of adducing causal relations from the interplay between their c...
ABSTRACT This book is a historical-epistemological study of one the most consequential idea of ea... more ABSTRACT This book is a historical-epistemological study of one the most consequential idea of early modern celestial mechanics: Robert Hooke's proposal to "compoun[d] the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body," a proposal which Isaac Newton adopted and realized in his Principia. Hooke's Programme was revolutionary both cosmologically and mathematically. It presented "the celestial motions," the proverbial symbol of stability and immutability, as a process of continuous change, and prescribed only parameters of rectilinear motions and rectilinear attractions for calculating their closed curved orbits. Yet the traces of Hooke's construction of his Programme for the heavens lead through his investigations in such earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology, and the mathematical tools developed by Newton to accomplish it appear no less local and goal-oriented than Hooke's lenses and springs. This transgression of the boundaries between the theoretical, experimental and technological realms is reminiscent of Hooke's own free excursions in and out of the circles occupied by gentlemen-philosophers, university mathematicians, instrument makers, technicians and servants. It presents an opportunity to examine the social and epistemological distinctions, relations and hierarchies between those realms and their inhabitants, and compels a critical assessment of the philosophical categories they embody.
Studies in history and philosophy of science, Sep 30, 2013
This study concentrates on two travel narratives from the turn of the seventeenth century: Fynes ... more This study concentrates on two travel narratives from the turn of the seventeenth century: Fynes Morison’s Itinerary and Johannes Kepler’s Somnium. Though one is real and the other imaginary, and though they belong to different traditions and their authors differ in credentials and aspirations, their subject matter, I suggest, is the same. Both are concerned with motion, the great intellectual challenge of the early modern era. For both Kepler and Moryson, motion represents the prospect of knowledge attained by change of perspective and the challenge of controlling it by practical mathematics; for both it is a source of terror and a wellspring of hope. For both of them, like it was for their contemporary Galileo, motion unifies the world and gives it meaning and structure.
The history of science is like a cathedral: a grand human achievement of many hands; magnificent ... more The history of science is like a cathedral: a grand human achievement of many hands; magnificent yet imperfect; purposeful yet contingent. The following article is an extract from the first chapter of a textbook soon to be published by Cambridge University Press titled 'The Origins of Modern Science: From Antiquity to the Scientific Revolution'.
From Copernicus’s claim that the earth is engaged in three different motions—none of which we can... more From Copernicus’s claim that the earth is engaged in three different motions—none of which we can experience—to Newton’s claim that the planetary motions are disorderly—and it is the philosopher’s task to enforce a pattern on them—early modern science made paradoxes the core of its inquiry. Rather than marking the limits of reason or laying foundations for playful skepticism, paradoxes were explicitly sought, carefully elaborated and seriously inquired into, scientifically and philosophically. This entry will string together the most crucial of these paradoxes, one often leading to the other: Tycho demonstrated that the heavens are changing; Kepler showed that vision is a causal process with no inherent cognitive value; Descartes concluded that the passions are the conduits of knowledge; and Bernard Mandeville, already a proud disciple of a self-confident Newtonian science, argued that public virtue arises for private vice. The acknowledged, reflective, and fertile paradoxical nature of its claims and techniques turns the New Science into a representative and a shaping force of Baroque culture.
The Origins of Modern Science is the first synthetic account of the history of science from antiq... more The Origins of Modern Science is the first synthetic account of the history of science from antiquity through the Scientific Revolution in many decades. Providing readers of all backgrounds and students of all disciplines with the tools to study science like a historian, Ofer Gal covers everything from Pythagorean mathematics to Newton's Principia, through Islamic medicine, medieval architecture, global commerce and magic. Richly illustrated throughout, scientific reasoning and practices are introduced in accessible and engaging ways with an emphasis on the complex relationships between institutions, beliefs and political structures and practices. Readers gain valuable new insights into the role that science plays both in history and in the world today, placing the crucial challenges to science and technology of our time within their historical and cultural context.
Motion defined the world of early modern savants. Whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or English, ... more Motion defined the world of early modern savants. Whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or English, they were taken by the new intellectual challenges and options of a world populated by people and objects moving over lands, oceans and heavens. How are we to tell the history of knowledge at the eve of modernity giving this global experience its due?
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2011
Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading ... more Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading chemists. Even some of the leading proponents of the new chemistry admitted its ‘absolute existence’. We demonstrate that what was defended under the title ‘phlogiston’ was no longer a particular hypothesis about combustion and respiration. Rather, it was a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions and the empirical practices associated with them. Lavoisier's gravimetric reduction, in the eyes of the phlogistians, annihilated the autonomy of chemistry together with its peculiar concepts of chemical substance and quality, chemical process and chemical affinity. The defence of phlogiston was the defence of a distinctly chemical conception of matter and its appearances, a conception which reflected the chemist's acquaintance with details and particularities of substances, properties and processes and his skills of adducing causal relations from the interplay between their c...
People living around the turn of the 17th century were experiencing motion in ways beyond the gra... more People living around the turn of the 17th century were experiencing motion in ways beyond the grasp of anyone less than a century earlier. Goods and people were crossing lands and oceans to distances never envisioned and in scales hardly imaginable by their recent predecessors. The earth itself has been set in motion and the heavens were populated by a whole new array of moving objects: comets, moons, sun spots. Even the motion of terrestrial objects—so close at hand and seemingly obvious—was being thoroughly reshaped. In the two centuries to follow, this incessant, world-changing motion would transform the creation, interpretation and dissemination of knowledge and the life and experiences of the people producing it: savants, artisans, pilots, collectors. The suggested volume comprises studies of this early modern drama of motion and transformation of knowledge. This drama was a global experience. From the Mongol conquest of Eurasia linking the landmasses to the ‘age of discovery’ connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, Asia, Europe, and finally the “New World” became inextricably bound. By the middle of the 16th century, commerce, conquest and exploration across political and geographical borders have turned these ties into a close-bound global economic and cultural network: Chinese-Indian spice was carried by Dutch vessels; Peruvian silver, brought by the Spanish, monetized the Chinese economy; Portuguese merchant ships mediated silk trade between China and Japan and took over internal exchange in the Indian Ocean; Chinese porcelain export dictated economy, finance and taste in both Europe and China. This collection is unique in taking this global nature of early modern network of commerce and culture as a fundamental fact in studying the sea-changes in practices and modes of knowledge from the 16th to the 18th century. It thus contains studies of the theme of motion and knowledge in China, Europe and the Pacific. A few recent works such as Cook’s Matters of Exchange (2007), Elman’s On their Own Terms (2005), and Raj’s Relocating Modern Science (2010) suggest the need to treat early modern science as a “global shift with many sources and roots,” in the words of Subrahamanyan’s “Connected Histories,” (1997). But despite these pioneering insights, the historiography of early modern knowledge is still dominated by the image of clash and accommodation between reified “civilizations,” of a cultural contest between the new and evolving vs. the static and antiquated. A truly global history of knowledge—in particular at the early, formative epoch of the ‘scientific revolution’—still awaits a new framework from which to examine this early modern economically and culturally interdependent world and its corollary world of knowledge. This collection takes a step in this direction by looking at the common experience of a world set in motion and the varied answers to its challenges and opportunities.
PREFACE
This book is a historical-epistemological study of one of the most consequential breakth... more PREFACE This book is a historical-epistemological study of one of the most consequential breakthroughs in the history of celestial mechanics: Robert Hooke's (1635-1703) proposal to "compoun[d] the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body." This is the challenge Hooke presented to Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in a short but intense correspondence in the winter of 1679-80, which set Newton on course for his 1687 Principia, transforming the very concept of "the planetary heavens" in the process. It is difficult to overstate the novelty of Hooke's Programme. The celestial motions, it suggested, those proverbial symbols of stability and immutability, were in fact a process of continuous change: a deflection of the planets from original rectilinear paths by "a centrall attractive power." There was nothing necessary or essential in the shape of planetary orbits, and as Newton was quick to realize, this also implied that "the planets neither move exactly in ellipse nor revolve twice in the same orbit, so that there are as many orbits to a planet as it has revolutions." Far from "being exceedingly well ordered in heaven," as Kepler was still very much certain they were, the planetary trajectories, according to Hooke's Programme, represented nothing but a precarious balance between conflicting tendencies. Culminating in this paragon of abstract celestial mechanics, however, the traces of Hooke's construction of his Programme lead through his investigations in such practical, earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology. Similarly, the mathematical tools Newton developed torealize Hooke's Programme appear no less crafted and goal-oriented than Hooke's lenses and springs. This transgression of the boundaries between the theoretical, experimental and technological realms lends philosophical significance to Hooke's free excursions in and out of the circles occupied by gentlemen-philosophers, university mathematicians, instrument makers, technicians and servants. Tracking these forays thus becomes more than just a survey of the epistemic activities of late seventeenth century English savants. Rather, it presents an opportunity to examine the epistemological categories embodied by Hooke and Newton, and the suspicion that much of these categories is nothing but a reflection of the social divisions, relations and hierarchies that separated Hooke's diverse acquaintances and collaborators.
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This drama was a global experience. From the Mongol conquest of Eurasia linking the landmasses to the ‘age of discovery’ connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, Asia, Europe, and finally the “New World” became inextricably bound. By the middle of the 16th century, commerce, conquest and exploration across political and geographical borders have turned these ties into a close-bound global economic and cultural network: Chinese-Indian spice was carried by Dutch vessels; Peruvian silver, brought by the Spanish, monetized the Chinese economy; Portuguese merchant ships mediated silk trade between China and Japan and took over internal exchange in the Indian Ocean; Chinese porcelain export dictated economy, finance and taste in both Europe and China.
This collection is unique in taking this global nature of early modern network of commerce and culture as a fundamental fact in studying the sea-changes in practices and modes of knowledge from the 16th to the 18th century. It thus contains studies of the theme of motion and knowledge in China, Europe and the Pacific. A few recent works such as Cook’s Matters of Exchange (2007), Elman’s On their Own Terms (2005), and Raj’s Relocating Modern Science (2010) suggest the need to treat early modern science as a “global shift with many sources and roots,” in the words of Subrahamanyan’s “Connected Histories,” (1997). But despite these pioneering insights, the historiography of early modern knowledge is still dominated by the image of clash and accommodation between reified “civilizations,” of a cultural contest between the new and evolving vs. the static and antiquated. A truly global history of knowledge—in particular at the early, formative epoch of the ‘scientific revolution’—still awaits a new framework from which to examine this early modern economically and culturally interdependent world and its corollary world of knowledge. This collection takes a step in this direction by looking at the common experience of a world set in motion and the varied answers to its challenges and opportunities.
This book is a historical-epistemological study of one of the most consequential breakthroughs in the history of celestial mechanics: Robert Hooke's (1635-1703) proposal to "compoun[d] the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body." This is the challenge Hooke presented to Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in a short but intense correspondence in the winter of 1679-80, which set Newton on course for his 1687 Principia, transforming the very concept of "the planetary heavens" in the process.
It is difficult to overstate the novelty of Hooke's Programme. The celestial motions, it suggested, those proverbial symbols of stability and immutability, were in fact a process of continuous change: a deflection of the planets from original rectilinear paths by "a centrall attractive power." There was nothing necessary or essential in the shape of planetary orbits, and as Newton was quick to realize, this also implied that "the planets neither move exactly in ellipse nor revolve twice in the same orbit, so that there are as many orbits to a planet as it has revolutions." Far from "being exceedingly well ordered in heaven," as Kepler was still very much certain they were, the planetary trajectories, according to Hooke's Programme, represented nothing but a precarious balance between conflicting tendencies.
Culminating in this paragon of abstract celestial mechanics, however, the traces of Hooke's construction of his Programme lead through his investigations in such practical, earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology. Similarly, the mathematical tools Newton developed torealize Hooke's Programme appear no less crafted and goal-oriented than Hooke's lenses and springs. This transgression of the boundaries between the theoretical, experimental and technological realms lends philosophical significance to Hooke's free excursions in and out of the circles occupied by gentlemen-philosophers, university mathematicians, instrument makers, technicians and servants. Tracking these forays thus becomes more than just a survey of the epistemic activities of late seventeenth century English savants. Rather, it presents an opportunity to examine the epistemological categories embodied by Hooke and Newton, and the suspicion that much of these categories is nothing but a reflection of the social divisions, relations and hierarchies that separated Hooke's diverse acquaintances and collaborators.