The new (so-called) Magdeburg experiments of Otto von Guericke

Bibliographic Information

The new (so-called) Magdeburg experiments of Otto von Guericke

by Otto von Guericke ; translation and preface by Margaret Glover Foley Ames

(Archives internationales d'histoire des idées = International archives of the history of ideas, 137)

Kluwer Academic, c1994

Other Title

Ottonis de Guericke Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio

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Note

Translation of: Amstelodami : Apud Joannem Janssonium, 1672

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Otto von Guericke has been called a neglected genius, overlooked by most modern scholars, scientists, and laymen. He wrote his Experimenta Nova in the seventeenth century in Latin, a dead language for the most part inaccessible to contemporary scientists. Thus isolated by the remoteness of his time and his means of communication, von Guericke has for many years been denied the recognition he deserves in the English speaking world. Indeed, the century in which he lived witnessed the invention of six important and valuable scientific instruments -- the microscope, the telescope, the pendulum clock, the barometer, the thermometer, and the air pump. Von Guericke was associated with the development of the last three of these; he also experimented with a rudimentary electric machine. Thus his Experimenta Nova was an important work, heralding the emerging empiricism of seventeenth century science, and merits this first English translation of von Guericke's magnus opus.

Table of Contents

Preface. Short Biography of Otto von Guericke. Book I: The System of the World, according to the More Common Philosophical Theories. Book II: Empty Space. Book III: Individual Experiments. Book IV: Mundane Virtues and other Allied Subjects. Book V: The Sphere of Land and Sea and its Companion, the Moon. Book VI: The Planetary System. Book VII: The Fixed Stars and the Boundary which Confines Them.

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