1657 in science explained

The year 1657 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Geography

• Peter Heylin publishes his Cosmographie, one of the earliest attempts to describe the entire world in English and the first known description of Australia.

Mathematics

• Christiaan Huygens writes the first book to be published on probability theory,^[1] De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ("On Reasoning in Games of Chance").^[2]

Medicine

• Walter Rumsey invents the provang, a baleen instrument which he describes in his Organon Salutis: an instrument to cleanse the stomach.^{[3] [4]}

Technology

• Christiaan Huygens patents his 1656 design for a pendulum clock and the first example is made for him by Salomon Coster at The Hague.^[5]
• approx. date – The anchor escapement for clocks is probably invented by Robert Hooke.^{[6] [7] [8] [9]}

Institutions

• Accademia del Cimento established in Florence.^[10]

Births

• February 11 – Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientific populariser (died 1757)
• approx. date – Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, French fur trader and explorer (died 1704)

Deaths

• June 3 – William Harvey, English physician who discovered the circulation of blood (born 1578)
• June 16 – Fortunio Liceti, Italian Aristotelian scientific polymath (born 1577)
• September 23 – Joachim Jungius, German mathematician, logician and philosopher of science (born 1587)
• October 22 – Cassiano dal Pozzo, Italian scholar and patron (born 1588)
• November – John French, English physician and chemist (born c. 1616)

Notes and References

1. "I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably." —Christiaan Huygens, Letter to Pierre Perrault, 'Sur la préface de M. Perrault de son traité del'Origine des fontaines' [1763], Oeuvres Complétes de Christiaan Huygens (1897), Vol. 7, 298. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 163. Quotation selected by W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds., 2005), Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations p. 317 quotation 4.
2. Book: Gullberg, Jan. Jan Gullberg

   . 963–965. Jan Gullberg. Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers. W. W. Norton & Company. 978-0-393-04002-9.

3. Web site: The Coffee Houses of Old London. 2011-05-23. https://web.archive.org/web/20120225232747/http://www.coffee-beans-arabica.com/info/coffee_houses_of_old_london.htm. 2012-02-25. dead.
4. Book: Morrice, J. C.. Wales in the Seventeenth Century: its literature and men of letters and action. Bangor. Jarvis & Foster. 1918. 26. 2011-05-23.
5. Book: van den Ende, Hans. Huygens's Legacy: The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock. Fromanteel Ltd. 2004. etal.
6. Book: Milham, Willis I.. Time and Timekeepers. 1945. London. Macmillan. 978-0-7808-0008-3. 146.
7. Book: Glasgow, David. Watch and Clock Making. 1885. Cassell. London. 293.
8. Headrick . Michael . 2002 . Origin and Evolution of the Anchor Clock Escapement . Control Systems Magazine . Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . 22 . 2 . 2007-06-06 . https://web.archive.org/web/20091025120920/http://geocities.com/mvhw/anchor.html . October 25, 2009 . dead .
9. Book: Reid, Thomas. Treatise on Clock and Watch-making, Theoretical and Practical. Carey & Lea. 1832. Philadelphia. 184.
10. Book: Panzanelli. Roberta. Ephemeral Bodies:Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure. Getty Research Institute. 102. 2008. 9780892368778.