Final published version
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - On “The Science of Waters” by Père Jean François from 1653
AU - Beven, Keith
PY - 2024/8/9
Y1 - 2024/8/9
N2 - The early quantification of the catchment water balance in the 17 th century has been well documented. But there is one book, called L’Hydrographe or La Science des Eaux, that was published by a Jesuit priest, Père Jean François, in Rennes in 1653 (20 years before the publication of Pierre Perrault’s De l’Origine des Fontaines) that has been largely overlooked. The book is split into four parts that deal with the formation, movement and mixing of waters and the origin of springs. Further parts were published with La Science des Eaux that deal with the arts of surveying and drawing of maps, and the construction of canals and fountains, with a final part on doing arithmetic with integers and real numbers “with pen and counters.” François was convinced, much more than Perrault, that the waters of springs were the result of rainfall and snowmelt.
AB - The early quantification of the catchment water balance in the 17 th century has been well documented. But there is one book, called L’Hydrographe or La Science des Eaux, that was published by a Jesuit priest, Père Jean François, in Rennes in 1653 (20 years before the publication of Pierre Perrault’s De l’Origine des Fontaines) that has been largely overlooked. The book is split into four parts that deal with the formation, movement and mixing of waters and the origin of springs. Further parts were published with La Science des Eaux that deal with the arts of surveying and drawing of maps, and the construction of canals and fountains, with a final part on doing arithmetic with integers and real numbers “with pen and counters.” François was convinced, much more than Perrault, that the waters of springs were the result of rainfall and snowmelt.
KW - 17 century
KW - flood forecasting
KW - history of hydrology
KW - origin of springs
KW - preferential flows
KW - pump test
U2 - 10.1080/02626667.2024.2377352
DO - 10.1080/02626667.2024.2377352
M3 - Journal article
VL - 69
SP - 1561
EP - 1570
JO - Hydrological Sciences Journal
JF - Hydrological Sciences Journal
SN - 0262-6667
ER -