Despite recent work on scientific instruments by historians of science, the meeting ground between historians and curators of collections has been disappointingly narrow. This study offers, first, a characterization of sixteenth-century mathematical instruments, drawing on the work of curators, as represented by the online database Epact. An examination of the relationship between these instruments and the natural world suggests that the ‘theoric’, familiar from studies of the history of astronomy, has a wider relevance to the domain of practical mathematics. This outcome from a study of collections is then used in re-examining an established question in the history of science, the position of William Gilbert on the motion of the Earth.

The remarkable developments in Galileo's theory of motion revealed by his letter to Guidobaldo del Monte in 1602 have never been easy to account for in view of the almost complete lack of direct evidence. By examining the nature of the empirical evidence for the new ideas he advanced in 1602 and his earliest writings on motion in De motu, it is argued that the source of this transformation was his Copernican beliefs. There exists evidence that those beliefs led him to start work on his theory of the tides by 1595, and by 1597 to state to Kepler that Copernicanism had allowed him to account for many otherwise inexplicable phenomena. These comments very probably related to his new study of rotary and linear motion, linked to his theory of circular fall, which it is argued was devised at this point, and to an investigation of the pendulum. Such an investigation would account for his new interest in isochronism and his discovery of the link between linear and circular motion and to the two laws of isochronism announced to Guidobaldo in 1602: that of the pendulum and the law of chords.

In the eighteenth century, Newton's ideas were an important element of the dominant world view, but it was not immediately clear that they could play such a role. What made them seem philosophically relevant is investigated in the case of the Dutch Republic. At the universities people initially were rather sceptical about Newton's theories. Support came mainly from scientific amateurs who tried to place their religious feelings on a scientific footing. The Spinozists' claim that religion was refuted by mathematics created the need for a scientific answer, which would demonstrate the fallaciousness of Spinoza's geometrical method and uphold revealed religion. In this article, it is shown in some detail how Newtonian ideas were put to such use among mathematical amateurs in Amsterdam, mainly under the influence of informal contacts with David Gregory and his circle. Physico-theology appeared not so much as a fresh start as a transformation of the older mathematical approach of philosophical and religious questions.

This paper examines the central role of ethnology, the science of race, in the administration of colonial India. This occurred on two levels. First, from the late eighteenth century onwards, proto-scientists and administrators in India engaged with metropolitan theorists through the provision of data on native society and habits. Second, these same agents were continually and reciprocally influenced in the collection and use of such data by the political doctrines and scientific theories that developed over the course of this period. Among the central interests of ethnographer-administrators was the native criminal and this paper uses knowledge developed about native crime and criminality to illustrate the way science became integral to administration in the colonial domain.

‘If it didn't have Einstein's name on it, would you give a damn?’ Nobel laureate Philip Anderson, critiquing proposals for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in 1990

Interest in Einstein's work and name shows little sign of abating in either scholarly or popular circles. The books reviewed here range from a collection of primary sources and research papers devoted to fine points of detail, through to cultural commentary and popular studies of Einstein's work and its legacy; their most common general concern is with the place science holds in broader culture.