Catalogue of Scientific Papers Subject Indexes — Mechanics, Physics, Mathematics, 1800-1900 (Royal Society)

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publishing Date Range: 1908 – 1914
Number of Completed Volumes: 4 (17 proposed)¹
Number of Records: 109,914

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The Catalogue of Scientific Papers Subject Indexes (CSP:SI) attempted to sort scientific papers published from 1800 to 1900 by subject.

Through Eight Centuries, search the nearly 110,000 records of the CSP:SI comprising the subject areas of mathematics, mechanics, and physics. The CSP:SI was a sister project to the Catalogue of Scientific Papers and the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, both also available to search in Eight Centuries.

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The Royal Society of London’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers Subject Indexes were intended to serve as a companion to the Society’s long running Catalogue of Scientific Papers (CSP), an index of nineteenth century scientific periodical literature published in nineteen volumes between 1867 and 1825. Entries in the original CSP were sorted by author and title, meaning papers from physicists appeared beside those from geologists, those from mathematicians came after those from natural historians, et cetera.² This organizational schema made any attempt at systematically reading the literature of a given field very difficult.

 

For this reason, the compilers of the CSP recognized that a set of subject indexes would be necessary to make the series truly useful. This sentiment appeared as far back as the publication of the CSP’s first volume in 1867:

[The committee] recommended that the main publication should be a ‘Serial Index,’ [...] and that to this, other Indexes should be attached,—an Index of Authors’ names certainly, and a classified Index of Subjects, if it could be done.³

It could indeed be done. However, the CSP proved to be such a herculean task that it took an additional thirty-one years for work on the subject indexes to begin. Editors began compiling material for the first CSP:SI volume, “Pure Mathematics,” in 1898 and published ten years later in 1908.⁴ It was the first of four such volumes that would appear from 1908 until 1914: “Pure Mathematics” (1908), “Mechanics” (1909), “Physics Part I: Generalities, Heat, Light, Sound” (1912), and “Physics Part II: Electricity and Magnetism” (1914).

 

These four volumes actually constituted an incomplete set; the project ended prematurely due to World War I leaving the majority of planned scientific fields unindexed. The original proposal called for seventeen volumes in total, taking their subject headings from those used by the successor project to the CSP, the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature (ICSL).⁵ In toto, these were to consist of:

Mathematics, Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Meteorology, Mineralogy, Geology, Geography, Palaeontology, Biology, Botany, Zoology, Anatomy, Anthropology, Physiology, and Bacteriology.⁶

Since only four volumes out of seventeen materialized, contemporary users of the CSP:SI must be aware of a significant a level of incompleteness of coverage when dealing with the index. Another consideration: to save space, title entries in the CSP:SI were often truncated, the idea being that the user would then be able to access the full title by cross-referencing with the original CSP.⁷ Luckily, the Eight Centuries user has quick access to both databases, making such cross-referencing easy when necessary.

 

Further reading from Paratexting: The Paratexting Blog:

“The Pressure of Military Service”: The Great War’s Impact on Scholarly Editing Projects

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Sample research topics addressed by the Catalogue of Scientific Papers Subject Indexes in Eight Centuries:

 

How have women’s lives compared to men’s on actuarial tables throughout history?

(Cornelius Walford, “On Female, as Contrasted with Male Lives,” Journal of the Institute of Actuaries 19, 1876)

 

By what methods were mathematically-derived methodologies introduced to the burgeoning field of “natural history” (geology and biology) in the early nineteenth century? What biases and prejudices stood in the way of this union?

(R. Heron, “The Same Methods of Reasoning Common to Mathematics and to Natural History and other Branches of Physics,” The Philosophical Magazine 11, 1801)

 

What scientific activities supplemented the daily life of Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (the future Napoleon III of France) while imprisoned in the fortress at Ham in the 1840s?

(Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, “Theory of Primary Cells” [“Sur la théorie de la pile voltaïque”], Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie 16, 1843)

 

How has mathematics historically been taught? What pedagogical methods did instructors employ during the nineteenth century?

(Wilh. Fiedler, “Zur Reform des geometrischen Unterrichts,” Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zurich 22, 1877)

 

How did color theory contribute to the development of color photography?

(J. Joly, “On a Method of Photography in Natural Colours,” The Scientific Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society 6, 1898)

 

In what ways did nineteenth century observers predict food refrigeration would change world commerce?

(James Tolson, “On the Preservation of Perishable Articles of Food by Refrigeration,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland 3, 1887)