Shorter writings

• around Quantifying Music
  • ‘Benedetti’s Views on Musical Science and their Background in Contemporary Venetian Culture’. In: Cultura, Scienze e Techniche nella Venezia del Cinquecento. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio ‘Giovan Battista Benedetti e il suo tempo‘. Venezia (Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti), 1987, 301-310.
  • ‘Simon Stevin’s Equal Division of the Octave’. Annals of Science 44, September 1987, 471-488.
  • ‘Beats and the Origins of Early Modern Science’, in: V. Coelho (ed.), Music and Science in the Age of Galileo. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, 17-34.
  • ‘La musique comme science physique et mathématique au XVIIme siècle’. In: R. Aulotte et al., Musique et humanisme à la Renaissance (Cahiers V.L. Saulnier 10). Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1993; 73-81.
  • ‘Musical Intervals’. In: I. Grattan-Guinness (ed.), Companion Encyclopaedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences. London: Routledge, 1993, 266-274.
  • Lemma ‘Simon Stevin’. In: S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition. London: MacMillan, 2001; 29 vols.; vol. 24, p. 381-382.
  • Lemma ‘Johannes Kepler’ (revision of the original lemma by Susi Jeans). In: S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition. London: MacMillan, 2001; 29 vols.; vol. 13, p. 487-488.
  • ‘Instruments adrift: 17th century vicissitudes of the harmonic world’; for: Conference ‘The organon of music. The musical instrument as a scientific instrument’: Bologna, January 23-24, 2004.
  • review of: Benjamin Wardhaugh, Music, Experiment and Mathematics in England (1653-1705). For: Early Science and Medicine 15, 2010, p. 310-312; also for: Journal of Mathematics and Music, 4, 3, 2010, p. 173 – 174.
  • ‘Music As Science and As Art – The 16th/17th Century Destruction of Cosmic Harmony’. In: R. Bod, J. Maat & T. Weststeijn (eds.), The Making of the Humanities. Vol. 1: Early Modern Europe. Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2010; p. 59-71.
  • ‘Music and intelligence’ (unpublished lecture, given at the ‘Nacht van Descartes’; Utrecht, October 27, 2015) .
  • ‘Knowing Heaven and Earth Through Music’  (2019; with J. Prins).
  • ‘World Harmony in the 1620s: Opening Shots for Its Final Unraveling’ (PDF & PPT).
  • ‘Stevin’s Music Theory Revisited. A Dialogue’ (with Julia Kursell; ch. 10 of C.A. Davids et al., Rethinking Stevin, Stevin Rethinking. Constructions of a Dutch Polymath. Leiden: Brill, 2020; p. 252-273 (https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004432918_012).
    
    
    
• around The Scientific Revolution
  • ‘Galileo’s Ups and Downs in the Historiography of the Scientific Revolution’. In: C.S. Maffioli & L.C. Palm (eds.), Italian Scientists in the Low Countries in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989, 9-30.
  • ‘The Scientific Revolution: Has There Been a British View? – A Personal Assessment‘. History of Science 37, 1999, 107-112.
  • Lemma ‘Scientific Revolution’. In: Wilbur Applebaum (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton. New York/London: Garland, 2000; p. 589-593.
  • ‘Joseph Needham’s Grand Question, and How to Make It Productive For Our Understanding of the Scientific Revolution’. In: A. Arrault and C. Jami (eds.), Science and Technology in East Asia, vol. 9: The Legacy of Joseph Needham (vol. 51 in series ‘De Diversis Artibus’). Turnhout: Brepols, 2001; p. 21-31.
  • Lemma ‘Scientific Revolution’. In: J.L. Heilbron (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Oxford UP, 2003; p. 741-743.
  • Lemma ‘scientific revolutions’. In: J.L. Heilbron (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Oxford UP, 2003; p. 743-744.
  • Lemma ‘Scientific Revolution’. In: New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Detroit: Scribner, 2005.
• around How Modern Science Came Into The World
  • ‘How Christiaan Huygens Mathematized Nature’  – essay review of: Joella G. Yoder, Unrolling Time. Christiaan Huygens and the Mathematization of Nature. British Journal of the History of Science 24, 1991, 79-84.
  • ‘Divinity at Work’ — essay review of: Bruce Stephenson, The Music of the Heavens: Kepler’s Harmonic Astronomy. Journal for the History of Astronomy 26, 2, May 1995, 165-167.
  • ‘Les raisons de la transformation: la spécificité européenne’. In: M. Blay & E. Nicolaïdis (eds.), L’Europe des sciences. Constitution d’un espace scientifique. Paris: Le Seuil, 2001; p. 51-94 (transl.: A. Barberousse).
  • ‘Global History of Science Comes of Age‘ (essay review of: James E. McClellan III & Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History. An Introduction). Early Science and Medicine 6, 4, 2001, 362-368.
  • ‘The Paradigm Shift to Beat All Paradigm Shifts’. In: A.A. MacDonald & A.H. Huussen (eds.), Scholarly Environments. Centres of Learning and Institutional Contexts 1560-1960. Leuven: Peeters, 2004; p. 1-14.
  • ‘A Historical-Analytical Framework For the Controversies Over Galileo’s Conception of Motion’. In: C.R. Palmerino & J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004; p. 83-97.
  • ‘No End of Fansying – 17th Century Searches For Ways and Means to Arrive at Valid Conclusions’; for: ‘The Sixth Three Societies Conference: Connecting Disciplines’, University of Oxford; July 4-6, 2008.
  • ‘From West to East, from East to West? Early Science Between Civilizations‘; in: Early Science and Medicine 17, 2012, p. 339-350
  • ‘La révolution scientifique, un concept repensé’. In: V. Jullien & E. Nicolaidis (eds.), Europe et sciences modernes. Histoire d’un engendrement mutuel. Pieterlen (Switzerland): Peter Lang, 2012; p. 183-198.
  • ‘Between Revolution and Evolution: The Third in the Scientific Revolution’; for: Internationale Tagung ‘Tertium datur: Das Dritte in der Geschichte 1450-1850 / The Third in History 1450-1850’; Zürich, June 21-23, 2012.
  • ‘Two New Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution Compared’. Contribution to ‘Scientific Culture in the Modern Era: A Forum’ (dedicated to Stephen Gaukroger’s book series on ‘Science and the Shaping of Modernity’). Historically Speaking. The Bulletin of the Historical Society, 14, 2, April 2013, p. 24-26.
  • ‘Letter to the Editor’, Isis 105, 2, June 2014 .
  • ‘Enlarging the Picture, Enlarging the Audience: Response to My Three Critics’. In: Metascience 26 (2017), p. 373–380 .
    
    NB ‘Beeckman at Gresham College in 1668 — An Alternative ‘As If’ Scenario’. Chapter in a book on Beeckman and Descartes, edited by Klaas van Berkel and Arjan van  Dixhoorn.
    
• on the emergence of the modern world
  • ‘All Ever Said About Technological Progress’ – essay review of: J.H.J. van der Pot, Die Bewertung des technischen Fortschritts. Eine systematische Übersicht der Theorien. Tractrix 4, 1992, 106-113.
  • ‘Inside Newcomen’s Fire-Engine, or: The Scientific Revolution and the Rise of the Modern World’; for: conference ‘Régimes for the Generation of Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Europe and Asia 1368-1815’, London, Windsor Great Park; April 14-16, 2000
  • ‘The Rise of Modern Science as a Fundamental Pre-Condition for the Industrial Revolution’. In: P. Vries (ed.), Global History. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 20, 2, 2009; p. 107-132
  • review of Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth. The Origins of the Modern Economy, in: Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists, 6-7-2018 .
  • ‘Science Shaping Modernity — Gaukroger’s Four-Volume Series Completed’. Essay review of Stephen Gaukroger’s four-volume series Science and the Shaping of Modernity. Isis 112, 1 (March 2021); p. 156-163 (DOI 021-1753/2021/0112-0013.
    
    NB completed, accepted, and to appear in 2022 in Endeavour: ‘Science as a Calling and as a Profession —The Wider Setting in Weber’s Scholarly Endeavor’.

• history-oriented perspectives
  
  

  L’homme est celui qui avance dans le brouillard. Mais quand il regarde en arrière pour juger les gens du passé il ne voit aucun brouillard sur leur chemin. De son présent, qui fut leur avenir lointain, le chemin lui paraît entièrement clair, visible dans toute son étendue. Il voit le chemin, il voit les gens qui s’avancent, il voit leurs erreurs, mais le brouillard n’est plus là.
  
  Milan Kundera, ‘Les chemins dans le brouillard’, L’Infini 40 (November 1992); p. 42-64; p. 64.
  _{[Man is bound to advance through the fog. But when he looks back to judge those who lived before him, he fails to see any fog on their path. From his present, which was their far-away future, the path looks to him entirely clear, visible over its full extension. He can see the path, he can see the people who advance, but the fog is no longer there.]}

  • Lemma ‘Science, History of’. In : D.R. Woolf (ed.), A Global Encyclopaedia of Historical Writing. New York & London: Garland, 1998; 2 vols., 816-819 in vol. 2. 
  • ‘Can Historians Think in the Abstract?’; for: valedictory symposium John North, University of Groningen; May 11, 1999.
  •  ‘Dichotomous Conceptualization in the History of Science’. Essay review of: Andrew Cunningham, The Identity of the History of Science and Medicine. In: Metascience, 23, 1, 2014; p.169-172.
  • ‘The Natural Sciences and the Humanities: Not Separate Yet Unequal?‘ In: In: R. Bod, J. Maat & T. Weststeijn (eds.), The Making of the Humanities. Vol. 3: The Modern Humanities. Amsterdam University Press, 2014; p. 43-52.
  • ‘On Rereading Arthur Koestler’s Sleepwalkers’ (posted on Februari 15, 2016)
  • ‘How versatile can a scholar be? Some remarks about Max Weber and music’; for: Vossius Seminar, Amsterdam; May 22, 2018.
  • ‘A Preface With a History, or: Seven Ways to Miss the Point of Max Weber’s Own Research Program’; for: seventh conference History of the Humanities, Amsterdam, November 17, 2018 .
  • ‘Stock and Bulk in the Latest Newton Scholarship’. Essay review of three Newton books (by Guicciardini, by Iliffe, and a collection edited by Boran/Feingold). British Journal for the History of Science 51, 4 (December 2018); p. 687–701.
  • review of Roger Hart, Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter. In: East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 46; 2017; p. 225-231.
  • A brief note on Max Weber’s Wissenschaft als Beruf
    
    NB completed, accepted, and to appear in 2022 in The Routledge History of American Science: ‘Science and History in the History of Science’: ‘Science as a Calling and as a Profession —The Wider Setting in Weber’s Scholarly Endeavor’.
    
• various topics
  • ‘Note about an unfinished book on Ostwald by the late Casper Hakfoort, and about its author’. Mitteilungen der Wilhelm-Ostwald-Gesellschaft 6, 4, 2001, p. 53-57 (followed by Casper’s introductory chapter 1 ‘Paradise is here’: p. 57-62).
  • ‘Eloge: Casper Hakfoort, 6 January 1955 – 4 March 1999’. Isis 93, 1, March 2002; 75-77.
  • ‘Shall I compare thee to an avocado pear?’ For: valedictory symposium Lissa Roberts; Leiden, Museum Boerhaave, November 24, 2019. (PowerPoint)