AAHPSSS members will be interested in two pieces of news.
First we at the Unit for HPS, Sydney are happy to welcome a new overseas Affiliate, Dr Raffaele ‘Raf’ Pisano, University of Lille. He is a prolific publisher in the history of physics, 16th to 19th century, with well established historiographical/epistemological views about history of physics. He is well connected in the HPS profession. For example he is Vice President of the Joint Teaching Commission of the History of Science and Philosophy of Science International Unions.
Secondly, Raf informs me that he and his colleague Paolo Bussotti now have a contract with OUP to produce an English translation and critical edition of the so-called ‘Jesuit Edition’ of Newton’s Principia. This work, originally published in four volumes in Geneva in 1739-42, sits at a crossroads in the evolution of mathematics and mathematical physics in the two generations after the Principia first edition. It is full of revealing commentaries and essays explicating Newton's mathematical physics.
Pisano and Bussotti plan to add a fifth volume with a detailed historical/epistemological analysis and commentary of their own. By the way, it is the Jesuit Edition ‘so-called’ because the Editors, Thomas Le Seur (1703–1770) and Francois Jacquier (1711–1788) and Jean Louis Calandrini (1703–1758) were not actually Jesuits. Pisano and Bussotti’s fifth volume will also explore the biographies, contexts and motives of these little known but important early 18th century exponents of Newtonian mechanics.
Since history of physical science is alive and well in Oz, let us hope that we will soon see Raf here for a history and historical epistemology of physics fun fest.