Elena Fratto examines Chekhov’s interests in the scientific advancements of his time, showing how his passion for horticulture, his knowledge of botany, and his interests in astronomy, optics, thermodynamics, and evolutionary and degenerative theory transferred directly to his fiction.

This paper offers a provocative re-reading of the passage about the sizes of the sun, moon, and stars late in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (5.564-613). Attention to not only details of argumentation but also shades of meaning and contorted syntax shows a more complex, ambiguous presentation than generally acknowledged. This paper suggests that Lucretius' narrator—rather than merely parroting wrong, ridiculed doctrines—pulls student-readers into the process of inquiry. It becomes the didactic audience’s task to receive data from sense-perception and use lessons learned earlier in the poem in making correct judgments based upon that data. In Epicurean and Lucretian accounts of reality, the senses themselves are infallible; so the Lucretius-ego’s assertion that the sun as big as perceived by our senses must also be infallible. But our interpretation of what that assertion entails about the sun’s actual size is a matter of judgment, and thus fallible and uncertain indeed.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scientists, philosophers, writers, artists, and composers were interested in questions of order and structure – of the universe, human society, and the individual. So were the people who read, saw, heard, and discussed their works in clubs, coffeehouses, salons, newspapers, and journals. Many people developed new ways to contemplate the universe and the place of humans in it: physicians, chemists, and alchemists observed and experimented on the natural world; astronomers searched the skies with the newly invented telescope; mathematicians posited laws to explain how basic forces worked. Philosophers increasingly argued that reason was the best tool for understanding the world, though most thought that the capacity for rational thought varied widely between different types of people. Concern with order and the limits of human understanding emerged in literature as well, while art and music saw giant works on a huge scale but also smaller, more reflective pieces. The eighteenth century saw a broadening of culture and learning, but also a growing split between professional and amateur – both trends that created a larger market for many types of cultural products.

The efforts to decode the mystery of the Antikythera mechanism, a unique machine surviving from around 70–60 BC, extend more than a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of a Greek island. Although the first experts who looked at the device were baffled by its gear mechanisms, dating, and purpose, this chapter explains how many of these inscrutable aspects slowly came to be clarified and deciphered. The author illustrates the immense efforts it can take to ‘solve’ an enigma: in this case, the combined work of historians, epigraphers, radiographers, X-ray machines, mechanics, filmmakers, and multinational technology companies. The chapter also displays the valuable insights which can come from such endeavours. Decoding the Antikythera mechanism challenged common assumptions about technological skill and astronomical knowledge in antiquity, but it also encouraged innovations in modern technology and revealed something of humanity’s search to understand the cosmos.

Plato’s dialoguesespecially the Republiclead us to wonder what the objects of mathematics are. For Plato, no perceptible three is unqualifiedly three, a necessary condition for being an object of knowledge. Aristotle controversially ascribes to Plato the view that mathematical objects are “intermediates,” between perceptibles and Forms: multiple but also eternal, lacking change, and separate from perceptibles. The hunt for or against intermediates in Plato’s dialogues has depended on two ways of understanding Plato on scientific claims, a Form-centric approach and a subject-centric (semantic) approach. Although Socrates does not present intermediates in the Republic, it is difficult to see how the units of the expert arithmetician or motions of the real astronomer could be simply Forms or perceptibles. The standard over-reading of the Divided Line, where the middle sections are equal, further obscures our understanding. The Phaedo and the Timaeus provide candidates for mathematical objects, although these have only some of the attributes ascribed to intermediates. We are left with no clear answer, but exploring options may be exactly what Plato wants.

Undergraduate research experiences have been identified as a high-impact practice in higher education. Within the physics community, research experiences were cited as a critical educational experience for undergraduate students by many thriving physics programs. Furthermore, the discipline has, for many years, supported undergraduate research experiences by advocating for and funding such programs as well as providing opportunities for undergraduate students to present their research at professional conferences and in peer-reviewed professional journals. In this chapter, the authors briefly highlight the benefits of research experiences to undergraduate physics students along with some of the known or community-accepted best practices for engaging undergraduate students in research. The authors also discuss the challenges faced by the community surrounding equity and our ability to engage all students in this meaningful professional and educational experience. While challenges exist, there are opportunities for the physics community to successfully address them through hard work, creativity, and innovation.

The primum mobile is the largest body of the universe, giving impetus to the whole complex system of natural causes. Limit of the physical world, it serves as a vantage point on the metaphysical structure that undergirds it. The planets are moved by angels that appear to whirl at different speeds in nine concentric fiery wheels variously distant from the common focus of their orbits. The angels are uninterruptedly intent on what they know and love, to the degree that they know and love it. The opening astronomical simile serves to describe a single moment of perfect balance in an ambiguous twilight before the universe took sides and split into light and dark, good and evil. It is a moment of expectation, in which what comes next depends on whether one settles for what appears in the here and now or believes that it promises something more yet to come.

While scholars have outlined the general characteristics of ancient Mesopotamian commentaries from the first millennium BCE, much work remains to be done in examining the outliers among these compositions and what they can tell us about this important tradition. In an effort to better understand these outliers, we consider two of the few Mesopotamian commentaries that are extant in multiple copies. Focusing on celestial-divinatory commentaries, which are the best attested genre of commentary in Assyria and Babylonia, this chapter begins by introducing celestial-divinatory commentaries and the source text upon which most seem to comment, the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil (“When (the Gods) Anu, Enlil, (and Ea)”). The bulk of this contribution then considers the commentary on Tablet 14 of Enuma Anu Enlil and the exegetical series Šumma Sîn ina Tamartišu (“If the Moon at Its Appearance”), which are both atypical celestial-divinatory commentaries extant in multiple copies. We ask how the commentary on Enuma Anu Enlil 14 and Šumma Sîn ina Tamartišu interpret and relate to their source texts, how copies of these compositions are associated with one another, why these exegetical texts may have been copied in the first place, and how they may have been used in antiquity. Our analysis illuminates important, understudied aspects of both of these compositions while noting how the features therein should alter our conception of Mesopotamian commentaries on the whole.

This chapter argues that in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the early Ming and the Timurid Empire can very much be thought of as post-Chinggisid polities. Timur (Tamerlane) very deliberately fashioned himself after Genghis Khan, but the early Ming rulers such as Hongwu and Yongle also very much understood sovereignty in the manner of their Chinggisid predecessors. As a result, both the Timurid and the early Ming manifested ambitions of world empire and recognition as well and came close to constructing a world order we may call 'bipolar' in our time. This is the story told in this chapter, as well the demise of this would-be world order in the middle of the fifteenth century – the Timurids lost control over their realm and the Ming jettisoned Chinggisid norms, turning increasingly isolationist. The chapter speculates whether the fragmentation of this world order may have something to do with a period of continental crisis in the middle of the fifteenth century, which caused a coin shortage and disrupted trade flows.

Explanation of Ice Ages in terms of Earth's orbit around the Sun.

This paper offers a provocative re-reading of the passage about the sizes of the sun, moon, and stars late in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (5.564-613). Attention to not only details of argumentation but also shades of meaning and contorted syntax shows a more complex, ambiguous presentation than generally acknowledged. This paper suggests that Lucretius' narrator—rather than merely parroting wrong, ridiculed doctrines—pulls student-readers into the process of inquiry. It becomes the didactic audience’s task to receive data from sense-perception and use lessons learned earlier in the poem in making correct judgments based upon that data. In Epicurean and Lucretian accounts of reality, the senses themselves are infallible; so the Lucretius-ego’s assertion that the sun as big as perceived by our senses must also be infallible. But our interpretation of what that assertion entails about the sun’s actual size is a matter of judgment, and thus fallible and uncertain indeed.

It has long been recognized that astronomy was a catalyst of the Scientific Revolution, spurring on deeply consequential speculation about the nature of the cosmos and its physical principles. Yet the history of celestial physics is far richer than was thought a generation ago, and there is much to be learned about the origins of the field, particularly in the sixteenth century, when humanist activity brought forth a dazzling array of philosophical possibility—from reconsiderations of Aristotle and Islamicate commentary to the revival of Platonic, Epicurean, and Stoic worldviews. Celestial physics offered some of the most heated arguments for or against the Aristotelian cosmos, with controversial attempts to account for astronomical observation by integrating various causal innovations. This chapter will focus on a number of themes that mark celestial physics and cosmological speculation in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: the order of the celestial bodies and their nature, the relationship between celestial and terrestrial things, the question of celestial animism or vitalism, and the status of the divine in celestial nature.

Astronomers depend on light for their understanding of the cosmos beyond the confines of the Solar System. Many of the most exciting discoveries over the last couple of decades were made possible by new generations of cameras and telescopes, both on the ground and in space. The resulting observations captured the imagination not just of the scientists but also of the general public. Dr Crawford will discuss the new facilities anticipated coming online over the next ten years or so – how they’ll not only change our view of the Universe, but also alter the way we do Astronomy.

The majority of works written in Early Modern Morocco in the natural sciences remain in manuscript, which has made them difficult to access and evaluate. The chapter takes up astronomical, medical, and alchemical works to discuss the types of approaches scholars in Morocco used and the nature of the questions in which they were interested. Drawing on recent work in the field, it demonstrates that the occult sciences, including lettrism, were part and parcel of this project and that Moroccan scholars produced innovative syntheses and commentaries throughout the period in consideration.

This chapter sets out to explore the thesis that Plato, at least in his later years, in his efforts to identify the nature of his First Principle, was inclined to settle on the concept of a rational World Soul, with demiurgic functions, and that this was a doctrine that his faithful amanuensis in his last years, Philip of Opus, advanced on his own account, in the belief that in this he was developing the latest theories of his Master.

From the intergalactic dance of dark energy and gravity, to the push and pull of our sun’s protonic plasma, to the ebb and flow of Earth’s winds and waves, a series of delicate balances supports life on our “Goldilocks Planet.” A nice balance of gravity's pull and dark energy's push resulted in a rich quilt of galaxies and stars, with us ending up in a comfortable Green galaxy, in a prime-mid spiral section of the Milky Way galaxy, rotating around a nice sun (not too close, not too far) gently emitting in the yellow part of the energy spectrum. A healthy quantity of atmosphere and greenhouse gasses, along with the Van Allen belts, keeps out most high-energy particles and maintains a reasonable temperature. The Hadley and Walker Circulations pitch in, creating clockwise rotating circulation cells in and over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, transporting heat away from the equator and depositing it in poleward latitudes. These circulations bring life-giving moisture to the continents, supporting abundant life. Note, however, that the manual for Spaceship Earth does not contain a warranty. Right there on the cover, next to the red “Don't Panic” logo, is emblazoned “No Returns If Opened.”

Here, framed in the context of a humorous story, we learn about the electromagnetic spectrum, entropy, negentropy, and available potential energy. We learn to see stars as tremendous gravity-driven concentrations of matter and energy, uniquely capable of supporting increased complexity and life on our planet. Seen from this perspective, the vast empty reaches of space allow for the formation of stars, which in turn support life. Energetically closed systems are doomed to entropic heat death, as mixing drives the system inexorably toward a boring end. But energetically open systems, like the Earth, absorb solar radiation and turn it into growing complexity on a planet hovering in a “magic” and narrow temperature range. This “negentropic” system can evolve over time. This increasing complexity arises because this incoming energy supports temperature gradients that drive weather and climate systems. Climate change adds more energy, and this extra energy can create more intense gradients, and more intense weather and climate events. Understanding this simple fact improves our ability to recognize and predict the dangerous impacts occurring now. At large scales, exceptionally warm tropical waters drive drought-inducing semi-global rainfall disruptions. At regional scales, warmer Ocean and atmosphere conditions can lead to more intense storms and hurricanes. As more energy moves through our Earth system, we are experiencing more extreme weather and climate.

The transfer of the Cape to British control in 1806 gave the region new geopolitical prominence and the Cape sea-route more importance as the colonial authorities sought to consolidate control of the hinterland. British colonisers legitimated their presence in the region by insisting on their commitment to civilisation, progress, better governance and scientific accomplishment. This included conquest of the Xhosa, the British settlement programme in 1820, and scientific institutions. African kingdoms were also changing rapidly as they absorbed new military technologies such as horses and firearms. In the 1820s, a Royal Observatory was sited at Cape Town to expand knowledge of astronomy in the southern hemisphere and help with navigation and mapping. In the first half of the nineteenth century, scientific networks and associations gained footholds in local colonial society leading to the establishment of a natural history museum, the revival of the botanical garden and zoological expeditions. Geological exploration revealed fossils in the Karoo, prompting new thinking about the age of the earth. Flints and middens helped to catalyse archaeology as a field of interest – as did rock art. The science of race, which slip-streamed in Darwin’s wake, was given impetus by imperial conquest in South Africa.