Subscribe nowThe Scientific Revolution did not take place, to paraphrase Steven Shapin, and this is a short film about it. No scientific instrument epitomizes the spirit of that complex and historiographically dubious process more fully than the air pump (again here we may reference Shapin, this time accompanied by Schaffer). And no work of art conveys the power, danger, and fascination of the air pump more vividly than Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), currently on display at the National Gallery in London.
And no work of art conveys the power, danger, and fascination of the air pump more vividly than Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), currently on display at the National Gallery in London. Much experimental natural philosophy of the early modern period cut across the disciplinary boundaries that took shape over the following centuries and that today we often take for granted.