This volume, first published in 1921, presents a series of portraits of Einstein, thus offering glimpses in the character and private reflections of the man who changed the course of modern science. Intended neither as a biography, nor as a resume of Einsteinian physics, Einstein: The Searcher instead focusses on Einstein's relationship with the scientific project as he himself conceived it, and so is still of contemporary significance for those puzzled by the spirit of scientific enquiry.

First published in 1989, this dictionary of the whole field of the physical sciences is an invaluable guide through the changing terminology and practices of scientific research. Arranged alphabetically, it traces how the meaning of scientific terms have changed over time. It covers a wide range of topics including voyages, observations, magnetism and pendulums, and central subjects such as atom, valency and energy. There are also entries on more abstract terms such as hypothesis, theory, induction, deduction, falsification and paradigm, emphasizing that while science is more than 'organized common sense' it is not completely different from other activities. Science's lack of innocence is also recognized in headings like pollution and weapons. This book will be a useful resource to students interested in the history of science.

Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb takes up the question of how the world found itself in the age of nuclear weapons - and how it has since tried to find a way out of it. Albert I. Berger charts the story of nuclear weapons from their origins through the Atomic Age and the Cold War up through the present day, arguing that an understanding of the history of nuclear weapons is crucial to modern efforts to manage them. This book examines topics including nuclear strategy debates, weapon system procurement decisions, and arms control conferences through the people and leaders who experienced them. Providing a chronological survey, Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb starts with the major scientific discoveries of the late 19th century that laid the groundwork for nuclear development. It then traces the history of nuclear weapons from their inception to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the reaction to them by key players on both sides. It continues its narrative into the second half of the twentieth century, and the role of nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, engaging in the debate over whether nuclear weapons are an effective deterrent. Finally, the closing chapters consider the atomic bomb's place in the modern world and the transformation of warfare in an age of advanced technology. This clear and engaging survey will be invaluable reading for students of the Cold War and twentieth-century history.

This book offers an overview of a huge range of scientific achievements in the 20th century, specifically in the field of applied science. The majority of the essays originally appeared in papers and journals such as the Daily Worker, New Statesman and Nation, Science and Society and Nature. Insofar as one theme runs through them, it is the application of scientific knowledge for the benefit of human society. The author is unashamed to present his perspective on some of the topics discussed in the context of his commitment to Marxism. This collection of essays, first published in 1947, thus offers an intriguing glimpse of mid-20th century attitudes towards science, and specifically to the possibilities of a scientific approach to the full spectrum of human endeavour as they were perceived in the aftermath of the Second World War, at a time when the Soviet Union and its creed still seemed ascendant.

First published in 1936, this volume contains six of the Halley Stewart Lectures - originally founded "For Research towards the Christian Ideal in All Social Life" - by some of the greatest of English scientists of the mid-20th century, each a leading authority in his respective field: cosmology, physics, meteorology, medicine and genetics. The final lecture considers the relationship between scientific knowledge and human ideals, commenting on the paradox that a century which produced such scientific advance also witnessed the most concentrated period of social, economic and political turmoil in world history.

This book seeks to explore how scientists across a number of countries managed to cope with the challenging circumstances created by World War II. No scientist remained unaffected by the outbreak of WWII. As the book shows, there were basically two opposite ways in which the war encroached on the life of a scientific researcher. In some cases, the outbreak of the war led to engagement in research in support of a war-waging country; in the other extreme, it resulted in their marginalisation. The book, starting with the most marginalised scientist and ending with those fully engaged in the war-effort, covers the whole spectrum of enormously varying scientific fates. Distinctive features of the volume include: a focus on the experiences of 'ordinary' scientists, rather than on figureheads like Oppenheimer or Otto Hahn contributions from a range of renowned academics including Mark Walker, an authority in the field of science in World War II a detailed study of the Netherlands during the German Occupation This richly illustrated volume will be of major interest to researchers of the history of science, World War II, and Modern History.

This study offers a critical survey of past and present interpretations of the Chemical Revolution designed to lend clarity and direction to the current ferment of views.

This work fills a gap in recent studies on the history of race and science. Focusing on both the classification systems of human variety and the development of science as the arbiter of truth, Brown looks at the rise of the emerging sciences of life and society - biology and sociology - as well as the debate surrounding slavery and abolition.

The essays in this edited collection look at the role of poetry in the development of Enlightenment ideas. As scholarly disciplines began to emerge - anthropology, linguistics, psychology - the ancient art of poetry was invoked to create new ways of defining and expanding this philosophy of human science.

First published in 1951 to coincide with the British Festival, this book explores the developments in science which had occurred since the Great Exhibition of 1851. Covering the full range of scientific development which had emerged in that time - from fundamental physics to evolution and genetics, and from geology to medical surgery - this accessible collection of essays charts with impressive comprehension and clarity the momentous changes which had occurred in the pursuit of science since the mid-nineteenth century, and ably demonstrates the appropriateness of citing the twentieth century as the advent of the scientific age. A Century of Science will appeal to those interested in the history of science, those wishing to ground their knowledge of specific scientific disciplines in a broader understanding of the subject, and also to the general reader who values scientific progress and the questions it continues to raise.

The year 2008 marks the 150th birth anniversary of Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose who, at a relatively young age, established himself among the ranks of European scientists during the heyday of colonial rule in India. He was one of those great Indian scientists who helped to introduce western science into India. A physicist, a plant electrophysiologist and one of the first few biophysicists in the world, Sir J C Bose was easily 60 years ahead of his time and much of his research that was ignored during his lifetime is now entering the mainstream. As the inventor of millimeter waves and their generation, transmission and reception, and the first to make a solid state diode, he was the first scientist who convincingly demonstrated that plants possess a nervous system of their own and "feel" pain. J C Bose later spent his life's savings to set up the Institute which carries his name in Calcutta and Darjeeling.This book covers Bose's life in colonial India, including the general patriotic environment that pervaded at the time and how he became one of the flag bearers of the Bengal Renaissance. It also examines the scientific achievements of this polymath and his contributions to physics and plant electrophysiology, while highlighting his philosophy of life.

Ballooning, like the Enlightenment, was a Europe-wide movement and a massive cultural phenomenon. Lynn argues that in order to understand the importance of science during the age of the Enlightenment and Atlantic revolutions, it is crucial to explain how and why ballooning entered and stayed in the public consciousness.

Yallop looks at how people in eighteenth-century England understood and dealt with growing older. Though no word for 'aging' existed at this time, a person's age was a significant aspect of their identity.

In this book, Esposito presents a historiography of organicist and holistic thought through an examination of the work of leading biologists from Britain and America. He shows how this work relates to earlier Romantic tradition and sets it within the wider context of the history and philosophy of the life sciences.

In this title, first published in 1984, Peter Morton argues that in late Victorian Britain a group of novelists and essayists quite consciously sought and found ideas in post-Darwinian biology that were susceptible to imaginative transformation. The period between 1860 and 1900 was a time of great confusion in biology; the natural selection hypothesis was in retreat before its acute critics, and no extension of evolutionary theory to human affairs was too bizarre to attract its quota of enthusiasts. Writers capitalised on this prevailing uncertainty and used it to their own artistic or polemic ends. A fascinating and interdisciplinary title, this reissue will interest students of late Victorian literature, as well as historians of biological theory between The Origin of Species and Mendel.

Represents a history of the British Empire that takes account of the sense of empire as intellectual as well as geographic dominion: the historiography of the British Empire, with its preoccupation of empire as geographically unchallenged sovereignty, overlooks the idea of empire as intellectual dominion.

Summarising the most novel facts and theories which were coming into prominence at the time, particularly those which had not yet been incorporated into standard textbooks, this important work was first published in 1921. The subjects treated cover a wide range of research that was being conducted into the atom, and include Quantum Theory, the Bohr Theory, the Sommerfield extension of Bohr's work, the Octet Theory and Isotopes, as well as Ionisation Potentials and Solar Phenomena. Because much of the material of Atomic Theories lies on the boundary between experimentally verified fact and speculative theory, it indicates in a unique way how the future of physics was perceived at the time of writing. It thus throws into stark relief not only the immense advances made since the 1920s, but also, perhaps, highlights the importance of not rigidly adhering to a particular program of future discoveries.

The Progress of Science, first published in 1934, was originally intended to help the interested reader develop their understanding of the natural sciences as they stood in the period leading up to the Second World War. This intention was predicated on the belief that the spirit of science can only have a positive influence on human society, and that when enough people are sufficiently scientifically-minded the problems of civilisation will be resolved through the steady application of scientific principles. Covering the full range of the distinct disciplines- physics, chemistry, biology - this collection offers a fascinating window into the attitudes towards science at a time when the full extent of its potentially catastrophic potential was about to be realised across the world.

In this collection of informal reminiscences, first published in 1975, Max Born has written an extraordinarily vivid account of his life and work, originally intended for his family. Ranging from his time at the University of Goettingen, where Born had his first real motivation for a professional career in science, to the period in Berlin as professor extraordinary, when he and his wife became close friends of Einstein, these anecdotes and memories chart the "heroic age of physics" from the perspective of one of its leading characters. In 1954 Born was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his fundamental contributions to the great discovery of that cadre of superlative scientific minds - quantum theory. But his scientific research provides only one strand of this story. Born's varied interests outside science led to many interesting experiences - some of historical importance insofar as they offer a glimpse into German society before and between the wars.

Groundbreakers describes an amazing technical journey in man's effort to find and produce oil and gas, with more than 450 pages and 130 illustrations. This is the first ever, comprehensive account of how upstream technology developed. The story is packed with human drama, extraordinary innovation and oversized personalities who dared to dream. By any standards, the story is unmatched for the sheer physical and intellectual bravado of its key players. The book relies on interviews with more than 125 technical leaders in the upstream and an exhaustive review of literature and patents since the mid-19th century. In addition, the book features timelines for exploration, drilling, reservoir engineering and production engineering innovations. There are copious endnotes and references, including an index of the key players.

First published in 1957, this essential classic work bridged the gap between analytical and theoretical biology, thus setting the insights of the former in a context which more sensitively reflects the ambiguities surrounding many of its core concepts and objectives. Specifically, these five essays are concerned with some of the major problems of classical biology: the precise character of biological organisation, the processes which generate it, and the specifics of evolution. With regard to these issues, some thinkers suggest that biological organisms are not merely distinguishable from inanimate 'things' in terms of complexity, but are in fact radically different qualitatively: they exemplify some constitutive principle which is not elsewhere manifested. It is the desire to bring such ideas into conformity with our understanding of analytical biology which unifies these essays. They explore the contours of a conceptual framework sufficiently wide to embrace all aspects of living systems.

Why have elephants-and our preconceptions about them-been central to so much of human thought? From prehistoric cave drawings in Europe and ancient rock art in Africa and India to burning pyres of confiscated tusks, our thoughts about elephants tell a story of human history. In Elephant Trails, Nigel Rothfels argues that, over millennia, we have made elephants into both monsters and miracles as ways to understand them but also as ways to understand ourselves. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including municipal documents, zoo records, museum collections, and encounters with people who have lived with elephants, Rothfels seeks out the origins of our contemporary ideas about an animal that has been central to so much of human thought. He explains how notions that have been associated with elephants for centuries-that they are exceptionally wise, deeply emotional, and have a special understanding of death; that they never forget, are beloved of the gods, and suffer unusually in captivity; and even that they are afraid of mice-all tell part of the story of these amazing beings. Exploring the history of a skull in a museum, a photograph of an elephant walking through the American South in the early twentieth century, the debate about the quality of life of a famous elephant in a zoo, and the accounts of elephant hunters, Rothfels demonstrates that elephants are not what we think they are-and they never have been. Elephant Trails is a compelling portrait of what the author terms "our elephant."

Science in the Forest, Science in the Past: Further Interdisciplinary Explorations comprises of papers from the second of two workshops involving a group of scholars united in the conviction that the great diversity of knowledge claims and practices for which we have evidence must be taken seriously in their own terms rather than by the yardstick of Western modernity. Bringing to bear social anthropology, history and philosophy of science, computer science, classics and sinology among other fields, they argue that the use of such dismissive labels as 'magic', 'superstition' and the 'irrational' masks rather than solves the problem and reject counsels of despair which assume or argue that radically alien beliefs are strictly unintelligible to outsiders and can be understood only from within the system in question. At the same time, they accept that how to proceed to a better understanding of the data in question poses a formidable challenge. Key problems identified in the inaugural workshop, whose proceedings were published in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory (2019) and in HAU Books (2020), provided the basis for asking how obvious pitfalls might be avoided and a new or revised framework within which to pursue these problems proposed. The chapters in this book were originally published in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews.

Though best known for his superlative poetry and plays, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) also produced a sizable body of scientific work that focused on such diverse topics as plants, color, clouds, weather, and geology. Goethe's way of science is highly unusual because it seeks to draw together the intuitive awareness of art with the rigorous observation and thinking of science. Written by major scholars and practitioners of Goethean science today, this book considers the philosophical foundations of Goethe's approach and applies the method to the real world of nature, including studies of plants, animals, and the movement of water.

Part I discusses the philosophical foundations of the approach and clarifies its epistemology and methodology; Part II applies the method to the real world of nature; and Part III examines the future of Goethean science and emphasizes its great value for better understanding and caring for the natural environment.

Locating Emerging Media focuses on the tensions between the local and global in the design, distribution, and use of emerging media forms, building on scholarship on the cultural geography of new media networks and products and the relationships between the "global" and the "local." Authors consider new media practices, texts, services, software, policies, infrastructures, and design discourses that enrich existing relationships between creative industries and cultures of production, reception, and engagement. This consideration highlights the relationships between global and local perspectives and new media technologies and practices emerging within (and through) the geography and culture of particular places. Areas examined include East Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, South Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East. Through all is the recognition that what is new or emergent around the globe is unique in each locality.