Talk:Simon Stevin

I contacted the author of the Dutch Simon Stevin homepage mentioned in the links about scans of a better quality. He replied that he already had made such scans, but that they were lost in a hard disk crash. Since then, he has felt discouraged by that incident to make the scans again. The disappointment he felt has disappeared by know, but he is so busy at work that he won't have the time for at least half a year.

Also, I have some questions for this article that others may be able to answer. They may have relevance to other biographies as well.

Simon Stevin seems to have been a rather pragmatical man. It seems that science to him was not there to increase the body of human knowledge, but rather to further practical needs. Since none of the sources I used for this article remark on this, I take it this was common for scientists of that age. Is this so? Is there perhaps a name for that phenomenon or for the scientist/inventor/engineers of those days? Is the qualification mathematician I give him at the beginning of the article even correct, or is it just the way we view him nowadays, perhaps holding scientists in higher regard than 'mere' engineers and inventors?

Also, I noticed that he had (?) some of his works translated. This raised a couple of questions with me. How did scientific writing propagate in those days? Nowadays you have journals that are published world wide, but how did it work in those days? What was the scientific lingua franca? Stevin seems to have believed that Dutch could fulfill that rôle: in how far was this realization of his based on the Dutch feeling to be on top of the world in the Dutch golden age?

Hm, I remember having had more questions, but I forgot, and I'd already be glad if somebody could provide some insight into these issues.--User:Branko

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In those days, Latin was the language of science, and communication worked through book publication, by travelling, and by correspondence.

Stevin probably thought that Latin was an obstacle to people who were not 'learned'. In my judgment he was partly misguided: Mathematics may be a difficult subject, but you do not make it any easier by calling mathematics 'Wiskunde'.

S.

The word Dutch means 'of the people', and he certainly seems to have tried and make scientific language accessible to the people, just as his scientific research was there for the benefit of the craftspeople (see the part on De Thiende).

I personally do believe that terms as 'optellen' (lit. count including) and 'delen' (lit. part, share) are better, because they specifically refer to a type of mathematics every layperson was and is used to, whereas the Latin terms 'add' and 'divide' definitely were not.

Also there may have been a psychological aspect, as in when something sounds like your language, it seems easier to comprehend. I don't know if it is really easier then (I can see it working the other way around), but it could boost confidence: 'Hey, one of us was able to comprehend!'

Have you got any references (perhaps WP articles) about how scientific communication worked in those days? Your description is a bit short for me to form a mental image of how it worked. Thanks,--User:Branko

I contest the fact that S. claims that Latin was the language of science. It might have been the lingua franca during the middle ages, but in the sixteenth century this gradually changed. This was because of a number of facts. Because of humanism standard of Latin was again raised to the level of Cicero, not longer the medieval Latin of scholasticism. This made Latin a very austere, unflexible language, which wasn't suited anymore to practice science in it. So scientists turned to the vernacular. Letting the layman share in scientific knowledge was maybe a honorable idea, and Stevin said so as well, but in practice these books were still only read by educated people. Besides the grand works of the 'scientific revolution', books were published in the vernacular for the layman, the so-called 'books of secret' for instance, which made science more accesible, but these did not help scientific progress, one could compare them with books for the popularization of science of today, all they can do is arrouse interest. That being said, the reason Stevin wrote in Dutch was not for sharing it with the broad public, but because he really believed that Dutch was the one supreme language. One should just read his essay on the worth of the Dutch language, to understand what a fanatic he was about this. He could not write in any other language that Latin, for he claimed that Dutch was the superior language to do science in.

On scientific communication: I don't know in how far the authors listed below are of any use, the all lived later than Stevin. The principal method was writing books, there were no scientific journals yet. These would only be started in the seventeenth century. So some of his books were translated in order to be read abroad.

On scientific practice: it was indeed common for scientists of that period to connect practical considerations to theoretical ones, nowadays it is believed that that was the essential ingredient of the scientific revolution, see Peter Dear's Revolutionizing the sciences, where he sets the scientific revolution in an operationalistic framework. Thus Stevin was a very good example of this, theory and practice always went together, though he has done purely mathematical work as well. You could call him a physico-mathematician, as he claimed truth for his mathematical theories, he claimed to be doing natural philosophy in this respect, which used to be denied of mathematicians.

By the way, the claim that the wreath of spheres is depicted on his tombstone is a myth. Feynman was wrong about this.

It should be added that he was the first to claim that perpetual motion was impossible, and that he was one of the first to use the conservation of energy in a proof (though not explicitely, but together with Torricelli and Huygens he was one of the first to use it intuitively). This was only accepted in the nineteenth century, so it should be noted.

It should also be noted that he did the experiment with the two leaden balls before Galilei claimed so (as Galilei most probably never did it). Of course he wasnt't the first to do this experiment, as someone (I forgot his name) already did it as far back as the sixth century, more accuratly actually than Stevin, for Stevin claimed that they fall at exactly the same speed, whereas the sixteenth century author claimed there was a small difference, a difference of course due to air-resistance (ann I don't think Stevin was thinking of ceteris paribus :-) ).

Anyway, I think this article should take into account these remarks, and be rewritten accordingly, for the quality is not that great now (not bad though, for a somewhat obscure figure, though according to Sarton 'the most original man of the second half of the sixteenth century (Sarton:1934)). user:Raskolnikov

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Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), a priest of the Order of Minims, now best known for the "Mersenne primes", functioned as a kind of "exchange" for scientific news: he maintained an extensive international correspondence (in Latin!) and passed news on to such correspondents who he thought might be interested.

Ole (Olaus) Worm (?1585-?1651), a Danish physician, runologist, and museum pioneer, also had a wide correspondence. It has recently been published - in my opinion absurdly - only in Danish translation.

Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), German-born Jesuit and polyhistor residing in Rome, published several big folio volumes om subjects as diverse as music theory, geology, and egyptology. His books were widely read, but the contents are uncritical.

In haste, S.

No problem, I can use these as a spring board for further research. Thanks!--User:Branko

Note to self: see Leonardo da Vinci for more on scientific dissemination.--user:Branko

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he left a widow with two children - he was 70 years old when he died! How old were these children????? Also, do we need ALL of those links? -- Zoe

1. I have been doing some searching, but other than that he married at 68 so far I have found little. I'll look some further to see what I can dig up, though I cannot say the man's family life intrigues me the most.

2. There are 'only' four links, but the link texts are surely too much. I listed those links as starting points for further online exploration, so that the article can be made more complete.

3. What is so NPOV about the bit about religion that you had to remove it whole? The religion of a person during the Reformation, where people actually got killed for being catholic or protestant, was important, as was lying about it to save one's skin. In this case, it could have made the difference between Stevin being a Dutch mathematician (a nationality that had only come into existance recently) or a Spanish one, to say the least.--user:Branko

The religion paragraph was removed, because it claims that only Protetants can be free-thinkers. -- Zoe

He actually left four children, all of them born in the last decade of his life (1610-1620). He married very late in his life, and some of his children were born outside wedlock, as he was in fact himself. He died between February 20th and April 18th of the year 1620. One of his sons followed in his fathers footsteps, studying mathematics and becoming quartermaster. He published posthumously some of his fathers works. Reference E.J. Dijksterhuis, ed. The principal works of Simon Stevin, volume 1, 1955. I don't know what was stated in the religion part of the article, as it seems to have been removed, but I should point out that religion didn't play such a great part in Stevin's life as it might seem. His leaving Bruges was probably hardly related to any kind of prosecution on account of his calvinistic background. He might have grown sick of the religious quarrels, and left to focus on his work. Anyway, later we for example see him dedicating one of his principal works, de Beghinselen der Weeghconst, to Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emporer, and notoriously anti-protestant. So he couldn't have cared much about religion. For more information, just ask, I did some work about Stevin, so I'm well informed. user:Raskolnikov

Dutch

Dutch is not the only language which uses a non-Greek derived name for mathematics. Icelandic also is one. --Starryboy 14:04, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Reference for claim

Could someone please give a reference for this claim:

This name became so well used that in France there is still a government authority that has the literal name 'Waterstaat'.

I have tried to verify this, but to no avail. The best I can come up with is that the dutch Rijkswaterstaat has been part of the Service des Ponts et Chaussées around 1810 when The Netherlands were part of France for a short period. -- Wijnand 15:15, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I have removed this claim from the article until someone can give a reference. -- Wijnand 12:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

waterstaat

i removed nonsense inluded here about the origin of the word waterstaat. Aleichem 10:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

for source see Busken Huet - het land van Rembrand p.23 note 1 Aleichem 08:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't see how that footnote relates to your claim that what you removed is nonsense (Stevin could easily have suggested the name first, and then been appointed to the function of inspector by Maurits; your reference doesn't seem to give conclusive evidence). Though granted, it did need a citation of some sort anyway, so I'm not arguing to return the segment. Wijnand 12:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)