Re-entangling the Thermometer: Cornelis Drebbel's Description of his Self-regulating Oven, the Regiment of Fire, and the Early History of Temperature

• Autores: Vera Keller
• Localización: Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza, ISSN 0394-7394, Vol. 28, Nº. 2, 2013, págs. 243-275
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A new, illustrated source, �Drebbel�s Description of his Circulating Oven,� sheds light on the thermostatic oven of Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633), a Dutch alchemist, engineer, and philosopher active in Holland, Zeeland, London and Prague. The �Description� survives in two German copies. It describes two new inventions, a �Judicium� (which we might call a thermometer) and a �Regimen� (which we might call a feedback control mechanism).

    It thus engages longstanding debates concerning the invention of the thermometer. More fundamentally, it engages the relationship of artisanality and philosophy. The �Description� highlights the entangled origins of both instruments, which emerged through combined concerns of alchemy, engineering, philosophy, and natural magic. In the early seventeenth century, the term �thermometer� indicated an object with a more expansive role than it later would. The later emergence of a distinct scientific instrument industry, separating previously entangled roles, has colored subsequent views of such instruments and their makers.