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Biennial History of Astronomy Workshops
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Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop - ND IV July 1-4, 1999

Program

All sessions, except the poster session, take place in the Auditorium of the Center for Continuing Education.

Thursday, July 1 Workshop Opens
8:00 - 10:00 pm Welcoming Reception
Notre Dame Center for Continuing Education
Friday, July 2 Sessions begin
8:30 - 9:00 am Greetings and Introduction of Participants
Mike Crowe (Notre Dame) and Steve Dick (U. S. Naval Observatory), Co-chairs of the Workshop
Matt Dowd (Notre Dame), Local Arrangements Chair
  • Introduction of Dr. Peter Lombardo, Director of the Center for Continuing Education
  • Introduction of Participants
9:00 - 10:45 am Special Topic Session: Astronomy in Culture
Chair: Matt Dowd (Univ. of Notre Dame)
  • Jamil Ragep (Univ. of Oklahoma): “Tusi and Copernicus: The Earth's Motion in Context”
  • Michael Shank (Univ. of Wisconsin): “The Cultural Context of Fifteenth-Century Astronomy in Piero della Francesca's 'Flagellation?'”
11:00 - 11:45 am Reports from Other Conferences
  • David DeVorkin (National Air and Space Museum): “The American Astronomical Society's Centennial Celebrations”
  • Steve McCluskey (West Virginia Univ.): “Astronomy and Cultural Diversity: The Sixth Oxford Conference on Archaeoastronomy”
11:50 am Group Photograph (weather permitting)
Noon - 1:15 pm Lunch
1:15 - 2:45 pm Special Topic Session: Old Instruments and New Technologies in the Class Room
Chair and Organizer: Albert Van Helden (Rice University)
  • Jim Bennett (Univ. of Oxford): “The Real Thing: Actual vs. Virtual”
  • Robert Hatch (Univ. of Florida): “Teaching and Learning and the Web: Real, Possible, and Alternative Worlds”
  • Albert Van Helden: “Galileo's Finger or Galileo's Telescope: The Galileo Project in the Class Room”
3:00 - 4:00 pm Historical Studies on Astronomy I
Chair: John Briggs (Yerkes Observatory)
  • John Dimmock (Univ. of Alabama in Huntsville) and Mitzi Adams (NASA Marshal Space Flight Center): “Theories of the Universe: One Semester Course for Honors Undergraduates”
  • Joseph Ross (Univ. of Notre Dame): “Hegel's Typology of Celestial Bodies: Planets as Locus of Intellectual Life”
  • Robert Havlik (Univ. of Notre Dame): “The Lincolns and the Yerkes Observatory”
4:00 - 4:15 pm Poster Papers and Special Exhibit (available throughout workshop)
  • B. N. Narahari Achar (Univ. of Memphis): “The Hindu Calendar”
  • Dennis Danielson (Univ. of British Columbia): “The Discourse of Cosmology in Calvin and Kepler”
  • Matthew F. Dowd (Univ. of Notre Dame): “Apropos of the New Millennium: William Herschel's Comments on the Beginning of the Century”
  • Dana Freiburger (Independent Scholar): “John Thompson, English Philomath - A Question of Land Surveying and Astronomy”
  • Thomas Hockey (Univ. of Northern Iowa): “The 'Shadow Argument' for Jupiter”
  • David J. Krause (Henry Ford Community College): “The Phases of Venus-What Do They Prove, and Why Should We Care?”
  • Bruce Stephenson (Adler Planetarium): “X-ray Studies of (Real and Fake) Astrolabes”
  • B. L. Welther (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory): “The Founding of the AAS: Opportunities for Women and Amateurs”
  • Thomas Nelson Winter (Univ. of Nebraska): “Big Geometry: The Third Century B.C. Measures of Earth, Sun and Moon”
  • Special Exhibit: “American Astronomical Society's First Hundred Years” (Sara Schechner Genuth, Curator)
4:50 - 5:15 pm Historical Studies on Astronomy II
Chair: William Donahue (Green Lion Press)
  • Sofie Lachapelle (Univ. of Notre Dame): “Astronomy, Religion, and the Psychical Research of Camille Flammarion”
  • Roberto de Andrade Martins (Group of History and Theory of Science, UNICAMP, Brazil): “Searching for the Ether: Leopold Courvoiser's Attempts to Measure the Absolute Velocity of the Solar System”
  • Patricia S. Whitesell (Detroit Observatory, Univ. of Michigan): “A Creation of His Own: Tappan's Detroit Observatory”
8:00 - 10:00 pm Gathering at the home of Mike Crowe (see map in conference packet)
Note: The new 25 minute video on Daniel Kirkwood will be available for viewing.
Saturday, July 3  
9:00 - 11:45 am Special Topic Session: Past and Present Roles for Instruments: Concept, Commerce and Collection
Organizer: Jim Bennett (Univ. of Oxford); Co-Chairs: Jim Bennett and Deborah Warner (National Museum of American History)
  • Jim Bennett (Univ. of Oxford): “Was the Astrolabe a 'model' of the Heavens?”
  • Sara Schechner Genuth (American Institute of Physics): “Faith in Time: Religious Belief and Sundials”
  • Albert Van Helden (Rice University): “Divini and Campani Head-to-Head: Spectacle, Patronage, and Commerce”
  • Tracy Spaight (Cornell University): “'An arrangement so unwise'?: William Herschel's Venture into the Commercial Telescope Market”
  • Steve Turner (National Museum of American History): “The Dobsonian Revolution-and Counterrevolution”
  • David DeVorkin (National Air and Space Museum): “Collecting History of Astronomy at the National Air and Space Museum: Is It the Right History?”
1:00 - 2:15 pm Special Topic Session: Historiography
Chair: Sofie Lachapelle (Univ. of Notre Dame)
  • Marvin Bolt (Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum): “Presenting Astronomy to the Public via Texts, Talks, and Toys”
  • Anna Felicity Friedman (Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum): “Teaching the History of Astronomy through Art”
  • David Strauss (Kalamazoo College): “From Cultural History to History of Science: Tracking Percival Lowell across Disciplinary Boundaries”
2:30 - 3:45 pm Special Topic Session: The Ptolemy Controversy Revisited
Chair: David DeVorkin (National Air and Space Museum)
  • Keith Pickering (Analysts International Corporation): “The Ancient Star Catalog: A Question of Authorship”
  • Owen Gingerich (Harvard University): “The Trouble with Ptolemy”
  • Hugh Thurston (Univ. of British Columbia): “Against Ptolemy”
  • James Evans (Univ. of Puget Sound): “What Was New in Ptolemy's Astronomy?”
4:00 - 5:35 pm Historical Studies on Astronomy III
Chair: Voula Saridakis (Virginia Tech)
  • Jesse Kraai (Univ. of Bielefeld): “The Astrological Philosophy and Coincidences Which Lead to the Publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus: Georg Joachim Rheticus (1532-1543)”
  • Sven Dupre (Univ. of Ghent): “Galileo, Magini and the Moon: An Analysis of the 'Theory of the Concave Spherical Mirror'”
  • Howard Margolis (Univ. of Chicago): “Why Did Tycho Supplant Ptolemy BEFORE the Telescope?”
  • Jordan Marché (Independent Scholar): “Remarks on Collective Biography in Astronomical Historiography”
  • Douglas A. Vakoch (SETI Institute): “Assumptions of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Historical Perspectives on the Nature of Extraterrestrials, Science, and Mathematics”
6:30 - 8:30 pm Conference Banquet, Morris Inn on the Notre Dame Campus
Welcoming Remarks: Philip R. Sloan (Univ. of Notre Dame)
Invited Speaker: Jim Bennett (Univ. of Oxford): “'La Grande Lunette': the Spectacle of Astronomy in 1900”
8:30 - 10:00 pm Optional Open Session at the Notre Dame Observatory (Nieuwland Science Hall). Group will depart directly from the banquet.
Sunday, July 4  
9:00 - 10:00 am Historical Studies on Astronomy IV
Chair: Patrick Catt (Indiana University)
  • B. N. Narahari Achar (Univ. of Memphis): “Vedic Astronomy and Ritual: Nakshatra, the Stellar Frame and Yajna, the Ritual”
  • James A. Marshall (Independent Scholar): “A New Rebuttal to the Archaeoastronomers”
  • Nicholas Kollerstrom (University College, London): “The Chinese Reception of Newton's Lunar Theory”
10:00 - 10:30 am Business Meeting
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