Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by dr_dshiv on Friday July 15, 2022 @04:03PM (#32112162)

Nice! Thanks to the Ritman library in Amsterdam, I have access to a lot of Fludd’s published books (with fun marginalia etc…) but a fair amount of his work doesn’t seem to have been translated. (Maybe you’ve found otherwise?)

Descartes and Mersenne present a early conflicted aversion to the occult/esoteric/natural magic (eg, topics like resonance). I presume that certain ideas became somewhat taboo. This is one reason why it may have taken so long for the concept of resonance to be adopted widely in the sciences (see Buchanan 2019 in Nature “Going into resonance”)

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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II by antonhowes on Saturday July 16, 2022 @08:52AM (#32117539)

Ah nice. Yes, I’m not aware of full translations, though I often have to translate things myself (with a bit of help). In this particular case for Fludd I mainly used secondary literature on his use of the inverted flask experiment and (spoilers) weatherglasses, which also sometimes translate some significant sections.

Very interesting on resonance - I’ll check that out. I seem to recall there was a PhD thesis I skim-read that was all about the relationship between music and weatherglasses in Fludd’s thought.

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