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.

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 Galileians in Sicily: a Hitherto Unpublished Correspondence of Daniele Spinola with Domenico Catalano in Messina (1650-1652).- 15.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, 1808-1820.- 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.