Table of Contents

pp 5-7

List of Illustrations

pp 8-11

A Note on Abbreviations

pp 12-12

Preface

pp 13-14

1 - Introduction

pp 15-28

Part I - Assessing Beeckman

pp 29-30

2 - Isaac Beeckman in the Context of the Scientific Revolution

pp 31-50

3 - Isaac Beeckman at Gresham College in 1668: An Alternative ‘As If’ Scenario

pp 51-62

4 - Framing Beeckman: Cornelis de Waard as Editor of the Beeckman Papers

pp 63-80

Part II - Understanding Beeckman

pp 81-82

5 - ‘Like Water, That Is Forced to Flow through a Narrow Opening’: Isaac Beeckman’s Early Conceptualization of the Telescope

pp 83-128

6 - Optics, Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy: Beeckman, Descartes, Kepler, and the Dutch Connection

pp 129-156

7 - Combining Atomism with Galenic Medicine: The Physiological Theory of Isaac Beeckman (1616-1627)

pp 157-180

8 - Physician, Patient, Experimenter and Observer: Isaac Beeckman’s Accounts of Illness and Death

pp 181-200

9 - Beeckman, Descartes, and the Principle of Conservation of Motion

pp 201-238

10 - Beeckman’s Corpuscular Study of Plants

pp 239-258

Part III - Situating Beeckman

pp 259-260

11 - Networks of Knowledge in Middelburg around 1600: The Context of Isaac Beeckman as a Young Man

pp 261-316

12 - Musical Culture in Middelburg in the Times of Isaac Beeckman

pp 317-338

13 - Consten-Culture: Beeckman, the Rhetoricians, and a New Style of Philosophizing

pp 339-368

14 - Harnessing the Elements: Beeckman and Atmospheric Instruments

pp 369-392

15 - ‘Communicated Only to Good Friends and Philosophers’: Isaac Beeckman, Cornelis Drebbel, and the Circulation of Artisanal Philosophy

pp 393-414

16 - What’s in a Language?: Dutch and Latin in Isaac Beeckman’s Journal

pp 415-450

17 - ‘Ut patet in figura’: On the Use of Images in Beeckman’s Journal

pp 451-470

18 - Concluding Remarks

pp 471-476

Acknowledgements

pp 477-478

Index

pp 479-486