This paper aims to show that the seventeenth-century conception of mechanics as the science of particles in motion founded on universal laws of motion owes much to the employment of a new conceptual resource – the physics of motion developed within optics. The optical analysis of reflection was dynamically interpreted through the mechanical analogy of rebound. The kinematical and dynamical principles so employed became directly applicable to natural phenomena after the eventual transformation of light's ontological status from that of an Aristotelian ‘quality’ to a corpuscular phenomenon, engendered by the rise of atomism during the first half of the seventeenth century. The mechanization of light led to a conceptual shift from the analogical employment of dynamical principles in the physical interpretation of reflection to the mechanical generalization of optical principles – the direct application of kinematical and dynamical principles of reflection to mechanical collisions. This first part of the paper traces out the first conceptual shift from Aristotle's original analogy of reflection as rebound to its full concretization. A second part will trace out the second conceptual shift, from the full concretization of this analogy to the axiomatization of already generalized kinematical and dynamical principles of reflection into laws of nature and of motion.

The phenomenon of the Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland has attracted much attention over five centuries. This essay recounts the formative years between 1688 and 1708 of the Giant's Causeway as a field site and ‘philosophical landscape’ in the light of recent research on the historical geographies of scientific knowledge. This research has provided new perspectives on field science, emphasizing the spatial character of the field and its discursive formation in different spaces. A view of the field as a self-contained unit in which science is practised is rendered problematic. Instead, it is seen as part of a network of intersecting locales within which scientists and science circulate. This essay draws upon this work, exploring and mapping the spaces and techniques used by late seventeenth-century natural philosophers in London and Dublin to generate observational and conceptual knowledge of the Giant's Causeway. In doing so, the paper contributes to an understanding of the spaces of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, of the knowledge networks within which the virtuosi operated and of the earth science field site.

The nineteenth-century engineering hero Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a prominent patent abolitionist in debates about the patent system in Britain. His opposition is usually regarded as principled, that is, based in liberal laissez-faire opposition to monopolies and to the constraints of bureaucracy. Against this it is argued that Brunel's views on patents evolved. As late as 1840, despite lessons about patents from the bad experiences of his father, Brunel could still consider taking out a patent himself, something that a decade later he denied he had ever contemplated. Brunel's engineering persona, his experiences and conduct of engineering practice were the base from which he eventually formulated principled opposition to the patent system. The paper examines his responses to importunate inventors who pestered him with inventions in the 1840s and elucidates how he dealt with the patented inventions of others that he wanted to use in his projects. It is suggested that for Brunel patent abolitionism was in effect a way of doing business before it became a political cause. The case suggests the value of approaching the history of patents and, by implication, of intellectual property more generally, through detailed examination of practices.

This essay analyses the development of the Carrel-Dakin treatment for infected wounds during the First World War to explore the relationship between industrialized warfare and experimental medicine, the politics of standardization, and the relationship between the theories and practices of physiology and scientific management. It first describes the intellectual and institutional context from which Alexis Carrel's wound research emerged: experimental medicine and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Next the story moves to the experimental laboratory hospital on the Western Front and the quantification of wounds. Then it considers the propaganda and training campaign in support of the method at the War Demonstration Hospital located on the institute's New York City campus. The de-skilling inherent in the standardization of surgical practice was a response to the incompetence of inexperienced military surgeons, but also an attempt to restructure the medical profession into a hierarchical organization capable of being administered by elite scientist–physicians. Underlying the narrative is the paradox of simultaneous segregation of the biological and the social through laboratory practices and their conflation through the organic analogy.