Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T13:19:10.066Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

25 - Acoustics and Optics

from Part III - Dividing the Study of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Paolo Mancosu
Edited by
Katharine Park  and
Lorraine Daston
Katharine Park
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Lorraine Daston
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin
Get access

Summary

During the early modern period, music (of which acoustics is an offspring) and optics belonged to the “mixed mathematical” sciences. “Mixed mathematics” refers here to those physical disciplines that could be treated by extensive use of arithmetic or geometric techniques, such as astronomy, mechanics, optics, and music (see Andersen and Bos, Chapter 28, this volume).

The study of sound in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be properly considered to belong to any single discipline but rather is found at the intersection of several fields, including music theory, mechanics, anatomy, and natural philosophy. Thus, no single mixed mathematician of the sixteenth or the seventeenth century can be properly said to have specialized in acoustics. Among the early modern scholars who contributed to the study of sound were mixed mathematician Giovanni Battista Benedetti (1530–1590), musician Vincenzo Galilei (1520–1591), and natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627–1691), which gives some idea of the variety of disciplinary approaches. It is nonetheless safe to say that the study of music theory provided the common background on the basis of which further studies on sound phenomena would be undertaken. Moreover, in the area of natural philosophy, the classical treatises De sensu (On the Senses), De audibilibus (On Things Audible), De anima (On the Soul), and the Problemata (Problems), all attributed to Aristotle at the time, contained material pertaining to acoustic phenomena and were well known to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars.

The practitioners involved in the study of sound were socially disparate as well, ranging from the choirmaster of St. Mark’s in Venice, Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–1590); to a schoolteacher in the Netherlands, Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637); to a Minim friar in Paris, Marin Mersenne (1588–1648).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 596 - 631
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alhazen’s, De aspectibus and Witelo’s Perspectiva were printed in Opticae thesaurus, ed. Risner, Friedrich (Basel: Episcopios, 1572).Google Scholar
Andersen, Kirsti “The Mathematical Technique in Fermat’s Deduction of the Law of Refraction,” Historia Mathematica, 10 (1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristoxenus’s, Elementa harmonica is in The Harmonics of Aristoxenus, ed. and trans. Macran, Henry S. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1902).Google Scholar
Artherton, MargaretBerkeley’s Revolution in Vision (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Bartholin, ErasmusExperimenta crystalli Islandici disdiaclastici, quibus mira et insolita refractio detegitur (Hafniae: Danielis Paulli, 1669).Google Scholar
Boyer, CharlesThe Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (New York: Sagamore Press, 1959).Google Scholar
Boyle, RobertNew Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects (Oxford: H. Hall, 1660).Google Scholar
Bradbury, S.The Evolution of the Microscope (Oxford: Pergamon, 1967).Google Scholar
Caldwell, J. “The De institutione arithmetica and the De institutione musica,” in Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Gibson, M. T. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Cantor, GeoffreyOptics after Newton: Theories of Light in Britain and Ireland, 1704–1840 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Coelho, , ed., Music and Science in the Age of Galileo; Gozza, Paolo, ed., La musica nella rivoluzione scientifica del Seicento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989).Google Scholar
Cohen, H. FlorisQuantifying Music: The Science of Music at the First Stage of the Scientific Revolution, 1580–1650 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costabel, Pierre “La refraction de la lumièreetla Dioptrique de Descartes,” in Costabel, Pierre, Démarches originals de Descartes savant, (Paris: J. Vrin, 1982).Google Scholar
Crombie, Alistair C.Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition: The History of Argument and Explanation Especially in the Mathematical and Biomedical Sciences and Arts, 3 vols. (London: Duckworth, 1994).Google Scholar
De Buzon, F. “Science de la nature et theorie musicale chez Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637),” Revue d’histoire des sciences, 38 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Rore, CiprianoDiversarum speculationum mathematicarum & physicorum liber (Turin: Successors of Nicola Bevilaqua, 1585).Google Scholar
del Cimento, AccademiaSaggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell’Accademia del Cimento (Florence: Cocchini, 1667).Google Scholar
della Porta, GiambattistaMagiae naturalis libri XX (Naples: Horatio Salvianum, 1589).Google Scholar
Dostrovski, Sigalia and Cannon, John T., “Entstehung der musikalischen Akustik (1600–1750),” in Geschichte der Musiktheorie, ed. Zaminer, Frieder (Hören, Messen and Rechnen in der frühen Neuzeit, Band 6) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987).Google Scholar
Dostrovsky, Sigalia “Early Vibration Theory: Physics and Music in the XVIIth Century,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 14 (1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drake, Stillman “Renaissance Music and Experimental Science,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 31 (1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eamon, WilliamSciences and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Feingold, Mordechai and Gouk, Penelope, “An Early Critique of Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum,” Annals of Science, 40 (1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Floris Cohen, H. “Benedetti’s Views on Musical Science and Their Background in Venetian Culture,” in Instituto Veneto di Science Lettere edArti, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio “Giovan Battista Benedetti e il suo tempo” (Venezia, 1987) (Venice: Il Istituto, 1987).Google Scholar
Galilei, GalileoTwo New Sciences, including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion, translated with notes by Drake, Stillman (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Galilei, VincenzoDiscorso intorno all’opere di Gioseffo Zarlino (Florence: G. Marescotti, 1589).Google Scholar
Giudice, Franco “La tradizione del mezzo e la Nuova teoria della luce di Leonhard Euler,” Nuncius, 15 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giudice, FrancoLuce e visione: Thomas Hobbes e la scienza dell’ottica (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999).Google Scholar
Gouk, , “Acoustics in the Early Royal Society, 1660–1680,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 36 (1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouk, , “The Role of Acoustics and Music Theory in the Scientific Work of R. Hooke,” Annals of Science, 37 (1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouk, Penelope “Music in Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy,” in Francis Bacon: Terminologia, ed. Fattori, Marta (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1984).Google Scholar
Gouk, Penelope “Some English Theories of Hearing in the Seventeenth Century: Before and after Descartes,” in The Second Sense: Studies in Hearing and Musical Judgement from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, ed. Burnett, Charles, Fend, Michael, and Gouk, Penelope (London: Warburg Institute, 1991).Google Scholar
Gouk, PenelopeMusic, Science, and Natural Magic in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Gouk, Penelope, “The Harmonic Roots of Newtonian Science,” in Let Newton Be! A New Perspective on His Life and Work, ed. Fauvel, John, Flood, Raymond, Shortland, Michael, and Wilson, Robin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Gozza, , “La musica nella filosofia naturale del Seicento in Italia,” Nuncius, 1 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gozza, Paolo “Una matematica media gesuita: la musica di Descartes,” in Christoph Clavius e l’attività scientifica dei gesuiti nell’età di Galileo, ed. Baldini, Ugo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1995).Google Scholar
Hadou, PhilippeLa Mutation du visible: Essai sur la portée épistémologique des instruments d’optique au XVIIe siècle (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaire du Septentrion, 1999).Google Scholar
Hakfoort, CasperOptics in the Age of Euler (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschberg, JuliusGeschichte der Augenheilkunde (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1977; orig. publ. 1899 (vol. 1) and 1908 (vol. 2)).Google Scholar
Hunt, Frederick V.Origins in Acoustics: The Science of Sound from Antiquity to the Age of Newton (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
Huygens, ChristiaanGreat Books of the Western World, 54 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952).Google Scholar
Huygens, ChristiaanOeuvres, 22 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1888–), vol. 13 (1916).Google Scholar
Huygens, ChristiaanTreatise on Light, trans. Thompson, Silvanus P. (London: MacMillan, 1912).Google Scholar
John Steffens, HenryThe Development of Newtonian Optics in England (New York: Science History Publications, 1977).Google Scholar
Kemp, MartinThe Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Knobloch, Eberhard “Harmony and Cosmos: Mathematics Serving a Teleogical Understanding of the World,” Physis, nuova ser., 32 (1995).Google Scholar
Knobloch, Eberhard “Musurgia Universalis,” History of Science, 17 (1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas “Mathematical Versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (1976).Google Scholar
Lindberg, David C. and Cantor, Geoffrey, The Discourse of Light from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1985).Google Scholar
Lindberg, David C. “Continuity and Discontinuity in the History of Optics: Kepler and the Medieval Tradition,” History and Technology, 4 (1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindberg, David C. “Optics in XVIth Century Italy,” in Novità celesti e crisi del sapere (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1983).Google Scholar
Lindberg, David C. “The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Light: Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler,” Osiris, 2 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindberg, David C.Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).Google Scholar
Lindberg, , Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. Rashed, Roshdi, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1996), vol. 2.Google Scholar
Lindberg, , Opticae thesaurus, introd. Lindberg, David C. (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1972).Google Scholar
Lindberg, , Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Mahoney, Michael S.The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat, 1601–1665 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973).Google Scholar
Malet, AntoniAd Vitellionem paralipomena: Les Fondements de l’Optique Moderne: Paralipomenes à Vitellion (1604) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1990).Google Scholar
Malet, Antoni “Gregorie, Descartes, Kepler, and the Law of Refraction,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences, 40 (1990).Google Scholar
Malet, Antoni “Isaac Barrow and the Mathematization of Nature: Theological Voluntarism and the Rise of Geometrical Optics,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 46 (1995).Google Scholar
Malet, Antoni “Keplerian Illusions: Geometrical Pictures vs. Optical Images in Kepler’s Visual Theory,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 21 (1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marco, Guy A. and Palisca, Claude V., is given in The Art of Counterpoint: Part Three of Le istitutioni harmoniche (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968).Google Scholar
McGuire, J. R. and Rattansi, P. N., “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21 (1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morland, Sir SamuelTuba Stentoro-Phonica, An Instrument of Excellent Use, As well at Sea, as at Land; Invented and variously experimented in the Year 1670 (London: Godbid, 1672).Google Scholar
Münxelhaus, BarbaraPythagoras Musicus: zur Rezeption der pythagoreischen Musiktheorie als quadrivialer Wisenschaft im lateinischen Mittelalter (Bonn: Verlag für Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1976).Google Scholar
Newton, Isaac “A New Theory about Light and Colours,” in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. Turnbull, H. W. and Scott, J.-F., 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959).Google Scholar
Palisca, Claude V. “Scientific Empiricism in Musical Thought,” in Seventeenth Century Science and the Arts, ed. Rhys, H. H. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961).Google Scholar
Palisca, Claude V.Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Palisca, Claude V. appears in On the Modes: Part Four of Le istitutioni harmoniche (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Palisca, , “Was Galileo’s Father an Experimental Scientist?,” in Music and Science in the Age of Galileo, ed. Coelho, Victor (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992).Google Scholar
Plato, , Republic, translated by Grube, G. M. A., revised by Reeve, C. D. C. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992).Google Scholar
Platter, FélixDe corporis humani structura et usu libri III (Basel: König, 1603).Google Scholar
Politzer, A.Geschichte der Ohrenheilkunde, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Enke, 1907–13, repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967).Google Scholar
Reiss, Josef “Jo. Bapt. Benedictus, De intervallis musicis,” Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 7 (1924–5).Google Scholar
Ribe, Neil M. “Cartesian Optics and the Mastery of Nature,” Isis, 88 (1997).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ronchi, VascoIl cannocchiale di Galileo e la scienza del Seicento (Turin: Boringhieri, 1958).Google Scholar
Ronchi, VascoThe Nature of Light (London: Heinemann, 1970).Google Scholar
Rosen, Edward “The Invention of Eyeglasses,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 11 (1956).Google ScholarPubMed
Rupert Hall, A.All Was Light: An Introduction to Newton’s Opticks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Sabra, A. I.Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Sepper, Dennis L.Newton’s Optical Writings: A Guided Study (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Shapiro, Alan E. “Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 11 (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, Alan E. “The Optical Lectures and the Foundations of the Theory of Optical Imagery,” in Before Newton: The Life and Times of Isaac Barrow, ed. Feingold, Mordechai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Shapiro, Alan E. ed., The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton, vol. 1: The Optical Lectures, 1670–1672 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Shapiro, , Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Smith, A. Mark “Descartes’s Theory of Light and Refraction: A Discourse on Method,” Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 77 (1987).Google Scholar
Stephenson, BruceThe Music of the Heavens: Kepler’s Harmonic Astronomy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straker, S. “The Eye Made ‘Other’: Durer, Kepler, and the Mechanization of Life and Vision,” in Science, Technology, and Culture, in Historical Perspective, ed. Knafla, Louis A., Staum, Martin S., and Travers, T. H. E. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1976).Google Scholar
Straker, Stephen “Kepler, Tycho, and the ‘Optical Part of Astronomy’: The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Pinhole Images,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 24 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlinson, G.Music in Renaissance Magic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Truesdell, Clifford A. “The Rational Mechanics of Flexible or Elastic Bodies, 1638–1788,” in Euler, Leonhard, Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia, ed. Rudio, Ferdinand, Krazer, Adolf, and Stacckel, Paul, second ser. (Leipzig: B. G. Teubneri, 1911–), vol. 11 (1960).Google Scholar
Truesdell, , “The Theory of Aereal Sound, 1687–1788,” in Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia, vol. 13 (1960).Google Scholar
van Helden, Albert “Galileo and the Telescope,” in Novità celesti e crisi del sapere, ed. Galluzzi, Paolo (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1983).Google Scholar
van Helden, Albert “The Invention of the Telescope,” The American Philosophical Society, 67 (1977).Google Scholar
Walker, Daniel P. “Leibniz and Language,” in Music, Spirit, and Language in the Renaissance, ed. Gouk, Penelope (London: Variorum Reprints, 1985).Google Scholar
Walker, Daniel P.Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute, 1958).Google Scholar
Walker, Daniel P.Studies in Musical Science in the Late Renaissance (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978).Google Scholar
Waller, RichardEssays of Natural Experiments made in the Accademia del Cimento (London: Alsop, 1684).Google Scholar
Wallis, John “Dr Wallis’ letter to the publisher, concerning a new musical discovery,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 12 (1677–8).Google Scholar
Wittman, MichaelVox atque sonus, 2 vols. (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1987).Google Scholar
Zarlino, GioseffoLe istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×