Also, I have some questions for this article that others may be able to answer. They may have relevance to other biographies as well.
Simon Stevin seems to have been a rather pragmatical man. It seems that science to him was not there to increase the body of human knowledge, but rather to further practical needs. Since none of the sources I used for this article remark on this, I take it this was common for scientists of that age. Is this so? Is there perhaps a name for that phenomenon or for the scientist/inventor/engineers of those days? Is the qualification mathematician I give him at the beginning of the article even correct, or is it just the way we view him nowadays, perhaps holding scientists in higher regard than 'mere' engineers and inventors?
Also, I noticed that he had (?) some of his works translated. This raised a couple of questions with me. How did scientific writing propagate in those days? Nowadays you have journals that are published world wide, but how did it work in those days? What was the scientific lingua franca? Stevin seems to have believed that Dutch could fulfill that rôle: in how far was this realization of his based on the Dutch feeling to be on top of the world in the Dutch golden age?
Hm, I remember having had more questions, but I forgot, and I'd already be glad if somebody could provide some insight into these issues.--User:Branko
Stevin probably thought that Latin was an obstacle to people who were not 'learned'. In my judgment he was partly misguided: Mathematics may be a difficult subject, but you do not make it any easier by calling mathematics 'Wiskunde'.
S.
Ole (Olaus) Worm (?1585-?1651), a Danish physician, runologist, and museum pioneer, also had a wide correspondence. It has recently been published - in my opinion absurdly - only in Danish translation.
Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), German-born Jesuit and polyhistor residing in Rome, published several big folio volumes om subjects as diverse as music theory, geology, and egyptology. His books were widely read, but the contents are uncritical.
In haste, S.
1. I have been doing some searching, but other than that he married at 68 so far I have found little. I'll look some further to see what I can dig up, though I cannot say the man's family life intrigues me the most.
2. There are 'only' four links, but the link texts are surely too much. I listed those links as starting points for further online exploration, so that the article can be made more complete.
3. What is so NPOV about the bit about religion that you had to remove it whole? The religion of a person during the Reformation, where people actually got killed for being catholic or protestant, was important, as was lying about it to save one's skin. In this case, it could have made the difference between Stevin being a Dutch mathematician (a nationality that had only come into existance recently) or a Spanish one, to say the least.--user:Branko
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