Wolfgang Lefèvre

Wolfgang Lefèvre
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science | MPIWG · Department I Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge

Doctor of Philosophy

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86
Publications
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Introduction
Wolfgang Lefèvre currently works at Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Wolfgang does research in History of Science. His most recent publication is 'The Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787): A Document of Transition'.

Publications

Publications (86)
Chapter
Botanical and zoological systematics in the early modern period – from Cesalpino in the sixteenth century to Linnaeus and Jussieu in the eighteenth century – was a two-faced and latently contradictory enterprise: It was, on the one hand, an empirical naturalistic science and, on the other hand, aligned with metaphysical principles concerning the or...
Article
Full-text available
Wie kann man einen historischen Blick auf das eigene Fach werfen? Diese Frage ist nicht einfach zu beantworten – will man einerseits nicht in einer Nabelschau und Hagiographie enden, andererseits aber auch keinen umfassenden Entwurf einer zukünftigen Historiographie vorlegen. Die hier als Bausteine zu einer Oral History der Wissenschaftsgeschichte...
Chapter
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The importance of place – as a unique spatial identity – has been recognized since antiquity. Ancient references to the 'genius loci', or spirit of place, evoked not only the location of a distinct atmosphere or environment, but also the protection of this location, and implicitly, its making and construction. This volume examines the concept of pl...
Chapter
Drawings and the practice of drawing take centre stage in an investigation of what ‘designed’ Renaissance architecture, and what led the medieval master builder to gradually develop the characteristic features of the modern architect. This article focuses on the languages of drawings that were employed and developed by Renaissance architects. Exami...
Chapter
The chapter shows that the characteristic pattern of interrelations between learned and practical knowledge in the field of mining can be summarized by the following features: (1) The principal structure of the various fields of knowledge of the mining science was already delineated by Agricola’s De re metallica at the start of its career in the ea...
Chapter
An epilog is expected to provide a resume of a book’s findings. In our case, however, such a resume seems almost impossible in light of the broad range and diversity of facts and complex relationships described and discussed in the six chapters. But we can recapitulate the different patterns of interrelations between learned and practical knowledge...
Chapter
The chapter shows that the characteristic pattern of interrelations between learned and practical knowledge in the field of chemistry can be summarized by the following features: (1) The learned counterpart of early modern chemical practices was not a unified body of chemical theories but a few diverse natural philosophical theories of the ultimate...
Book
This book offers a comprehensive account of the co-evolution of technological and scientific literature in the early modern period (1450–1750). It examines the various relationships of these literatures in six areas of knowledge – Architecture, Chemistry, Gunnery, Mechanical Engineering, Mining, and Practical Mathematics – which represent the main...
Article
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The Méthode de nomenclature chimique, published by the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1787, is rightly praised as a landmark in the history of early modern chemistry. It is also – though less rightly – considered to be a fruit of Lavoisier’s Chemical Revolution. In fact, main features of the Méthode’s nomenclatural and classificatory proposal rest...
Book
A history of raw materials and chemical substances from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries that scrutinizes the modes of identification and classification used by chemists and learned practitioners of the period, examining the ways in which their practices and understanding of the material objects changed. In the eighteenth cent...
Chapter
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The subject of this chapter is the structure of architectural knowledge in the long sixteenth century. In its first section, the social dimension of the structure of architectural knowledge is addressed, which is not regarded as a feature particular to this field of practical knowledge, but something that can be studied in almost every complex fiel...
Conference Paper
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According to the topos “Ende der Naturgeschichte” (Foucault, Lepenies) a veritable historical understanding of Nature came into being around 1800. The contribution re-considers this thesis and discusses in particular the historical speculations in deistic cosmologies as well as in the context of the idea of a “Great Chain of Beings.” Finally attent...
Chapter
Nach abgebrochener Priesterausbildung und abgebrochener Militärkarriere ab 1766 Medizinstudium in Paris; Bekanntschaft mit führenden Naturalisten im Umkreis des Jardin des Plantes; 1779 erstes naturwissenschaftliches Werk Flore françois; 1793 Professur für Zoologie am neuen Musée Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris; 1793–1802 zahlreiche Veröffe...
Article
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The focus of this contribution lies on eighteenth-century chemistry up to Lavoisier’s anti-phlogistic chemical system. Some main features of chemistry in this period will be examined by discussing classificatory practices and the understanding of the substances these practices imply. In particular, the question will be discussed of whether these pr...
Article
Did Vermeer van Delft create some of his paintings by means of a camera obscura? This still undecided question has stirred up heated debates. For some, the mere idea is an inexcusable insult on a great artist. All this heat has drawn attention away from a rich seam of questioning: what was the seventeenth-century camera obscura really like? And did...
Article
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The article takes the term technoscience literally and investigates a conception of science that takes it not only as practice, but as production in the sense of a material labor process. It will explore in particular the material connection between science and ordinary production. It will furthermore examine how the historical development of scien...
Chapter
How technical drawings shaped early engineering practice. Technical drawings by the architects and engineers of the Renaissance made use of a range of new methods of graphic representation. These drawings—among them Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawings of mechanical devices—have long been studied for their aesthetic qualities and technological ingen...
Chapter
No doubt, it was a sign of not little civil courage if one dared to voice such thoughts in the Germany of 1863. More remarkable, however, is the identity of the person who uttered them and the occasion he chose to deliver such a statement. The sentences quoted are from the opening address to the 38th Conference of German Natural Researchers and Phy...
Chapter
The images that are subject of this essay pertain to the realm of engineering in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. That is the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, the time of technical treatises like Georg Agricola’s De re metallica with its telling illustrations, and the time of the famous Theatri machinarum. These last works in par...
Book
I. Mechanics Between Practical and Theoretical Knowledge and the Mediatory Function of Images.- The Challenging Images of Artillery: Practical Knowledge at the Roots of the Scientific Revolution.- Ships, Science and the Three Traditions of Early Modern Design.- Art and Artifice in the Depiction of Renaissance Machines.- The Limits of Pictures: Cogn...
Chapter
Natural classification or how to devise a natural system of classification was a prominent subject of controversy among naturalists of the eighteenth century. Classificatory work itself was one of the most important occupations of the naturalists of the time among whom we encounter such famous figures as Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), Georges-Louis Lec...
Book
It is a truism that philosophy and the sciences were closely linked in the age of Leibniz, Newton, and Kant; but a more precise determination of the structure and dynamics of this linkage is required. The subject matter of this volume is the interactions among the developments in philosophy and the transformations that the different branches of sci...
Article
The Argument In spite of Koyré's conclusions, there are sufficient reasons to claim that Galileo, and with him the beginnings of classical mechanics in early modern times, was closely related to practical mechanics. It is, however, not completely clear how, and to what extent, practitioners and engineers could have had a part in shaping the modern...
Chapter
The question as to the point when accumulated knowledge is to be interpreted as evidence of “scientific” knowledge and which part of it is to be designated as “scientific” knowledge, receives a variety of answers depending on the definition of what is science. The question presumes that, in the course of history, the nature of human cognition chang...

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