title: Early modern mathematical instruments.
abstract: In considering the appropriate use of the terms "science" and "scientific instrument," tracing the history of "mathematical instruments" in the early modern period is offered as an illuminating alternative to the historian's natural instinct to follow the guiding lights of originality and innovation, even if the trail transgresses contemporary boundaries. The mathematical instrument was a well-defined category, shared across the academic, artisanal, and commercial aspects of instrumentation, and its narrative from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century was largely independent from other classes of device, in a period when a "scientific" instrument was unheard of.
authors.affiliation: Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3AZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bennett
mesh_terms: D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation*