Ongoing debates among historians of early modern philosophy are concerned with how to best understand the context of historical works and authors. Current methods usually rely on qualitative assessments made by the historians themselves and do not define constraints that can be used to profile a given context in more quantitative terms. In this paper, we present a computational method that can be used to parse a large corpus of works based on their linguistic features, alongside some preliminary information that can be retrieved from the associated metadata. The goal of the method is to use the available information about the corpus to create broad groups that can work as sub-contexts for better understanding different sorts of works and authors. In turn, this makes it possible to better profile each group and identify its most distinguishing linguistic features. Once these features are clarified, it will eventually become possible to also identify what the most representative works and authors in each group are and which of them may be worth exploring in greater detail. This classification method thus allows historians to integrate their qualitative assessments with quantitative studies in order to better define the relevant context for any given work.

The Jesuit Joachim Bouvet established an analogy between the binary arithmetic developed by Leibniz and the diagram Fuxi liushisi gua fangwei (or FX64), attributed to Shao Yong, which organizes the sixty-four hexagrams according to the Fuxi/Xiantian order. Consequently, this diagram could be considered as binary. Some scholars argue that the diagram is not binary because of the different construction of the two systems and the “wrong” reading direction used by Bouvet and Leibniz—opposite to the one used in China. Nevertheless, by a superimposition of Leibniz’s binary table and of the derivation table used to construct the diagram, this article shows that the diagram is binary, since it is constituted of two elements and the binary system can use other symbols than 0 and 1. The reverse methodology used in constructing the two systems because of their different purpose—division for the FX64 diagram and multiplication for Leibniz’s dyad—allows their reading from either one direction or the reverse. This does not affect the fact that they are both binary, since it leads to the same form and structure.

This paper analyzes how the founding figure of German agricultural science grappled with the traditional hierarchies of knowledge undergirding the eighteenth-century agricultural improvement debates. By tracing the ways in which physical labor and farm management shaped Albert Thaer’s doctrine of rational agriculture, I look at his position through the lens of a labor history of science. A close examination of the legitimizing strategies that Thaer deployed in order to counter persistent cultural taboos will highlight the role of conceptual work in pushing the bounds of legitimate scholarly practice. The paper concludes by arguing that changes in the relationship between scientific identity and manual labor form a transformative element in the history of science that can also be considered a criterion of discontinuity between its configurations before and after 1800.

The cluster of psychiatric concepts that includes “personality disorders,” “psychopathy” and “moral insanity” has long been controversial and uncertain. This article investigates the concept of “psychopathy” in 1950s England and shows how this ambiguity is not a flaw or failure in the concept but absolutely necessary for the role it carries out: policing broad areas of social life. A case of Munchausen syndrome (a type of “psychopathy”) in the late 1950s still functions as a precedent in the welfare system today, denying claimants sickness benefit, “closing a loophole,” and exemplifying the usefulness of this uncertainty.

This article uses archival material to trace rising rhetoric about prenatal prevention of birth defects. I argue that the new philanthropic framing of “birth defects,” aimed to create a coherent category and scientifically prevent a complex array of intractable anatomical and functional disorders seen in infants and young children, with repercussions for women. Emphasis on scientific prevention of birth defects was built on networks of volunteers, fundraising activities, and philanthropic marketing models that had been developed for a crippling epidemic disease, polio. The National Foundation’s (NF) expansion to congenital malformations fit uneasily within the prior infectious disease eradication model, assuming that elimination of birth defects was a worthy and achievable goal. Scientific research fundraising, advice, and advocacy aims became entangled. Marketing of birth defects as a vast problem and looming undesirable outcome for all potentially pregnant women was shaped by philanthropic and professional domain expansion. The NF initially promised that funding scientific research innovation would yield a return on investment, with scientific research on pregnancy leading inevitably to elimination or repair of congenital malformations or medical rehabilitation. However, definitions of prenatal prevention were unstable, and prioritizing research and medical aid funds for the vast array of chronic conditions defined as their new target became a challenge. Framing birth defects as a public health crisis, such advocacy leveraged parents’ hopes and aspirations for their children’s future well-being towards fundraising for medical research and technologically mediated gatekeeping of bodily and functional differences.