The Light of Nature

This volume of essays is meant as a tribute to Alistair Crombie by some of those who have studied with him. The occasion of its publication is his seven tieth birthday - 4 November 1985. Its contents are a reflection - or so it is hoped - of his own interests, and they indicate at the same time his influence on subjects he has pursued for some forty years. Born in Brisbane, Australia, Alistair Cameron Crombie took a first degree in zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1938, after which he moved to Je sus College, Cambridge. There he took a doctorate in the same subject (with a dissertation on population dynamics - foreshadowing a later interest in the history of Darwinism) in 1942. By this time he had taken up a research position with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Cambridge Zoological La boratory, a position he left in 1946, when he moved to a lectureship in the his tory and philosophy of science at University College, London. H. G. Andrewa ka and L. C. Birch, in a survey of the history of insect ecology (R. F. Smith, et al. , History of Entomology, 1973), recognise the importance of the works of Crombie (with which they couple the earlier work of Gause) as the principal sti mulus for the great interest taken in interspecific competition in the mid 194Os.

Contenu
One: Medicine and the Life Sciences.- 1. Development of Medical Education among the Arabic-speaking Peoples.- 2. Gentile da Foligno and the Via Medicorum.- 3. Some Assumptions behind Medicine for the Poor during the Reign of Louis XIV.- 4. Buffon's Histoire naturelle as a Work of the Enlightenment.- 5. Adam Gottlob Schirach's Experiments on Bees.- 6. William Swainson: Types, Circles, and Affinities.- 7. A Retrospoct on the Historiography of the Life Sciences.- Two: Astronomy and Natural Philosophy.- 8. Two Astronomical Tractates of Abbo of Fleury.- 9. Pseudo-Euclid on the Position of the Image in Reflection: Interpretations by an Anonymous Commentator, by Pena, and by Kepler.- 10. Thomas Harriot's Papers on the Calendar.- 11. Thomas Harriot's Observations of Halley's Comet in 1607.- 12. Animadversions on the Origins of the Microscope.- 13. Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics.- Three: The Social Framework.- 14. Galileians in Sicily: a Hitherto Unpublished Correspondence of Daniele Spinola with Domenico Catalano in Messina (16501652).- 15. A Friend of Hobbes and an Early Translator of Galileo: Robert Payne of Oxford.- 16. Descartes and the English.- 17. From Corfu to Caledonia: the Early Travels of Charles Dupin, 18081820.- 18. A Scotswoman Abroad: Mary Somervillc's 1817 Visit to France.- Four: Styles in the History of Ideas.- 19. Rationality and the Generalization of Scientific Style.- 20. The Idea of the Decay of the World in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha.- 21. Science in Antiquity: the Indian Perspective.- 22. System-building in the Eighteenth Century.- 23. Elements in the Structure of Victorian Science, or Cannon Revisited.- A Bibliography of the Writings of Alistair C. Crombie.- General Index.