A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, strangest, and most unwieldy self-help book ever written. Engaging with the rich cultural and literary framework of melancholy, this book traces its causes, symptoms, and cures through Burton's writing. Each chapter starts with a case study of melancholy - from the man who was afraid to urinate in case he drowned his town to the girl who purged a live eel - as a way into exploring the many facets of this mental affliction. A User's Guide to Melancholy presents in an accessible and illustrated format the colourful variety of Renaissance melancholy, and contributes to contemporary discussions about wellbeing by revealing the earlier history of mental health conditions.

The significance of human anatomy to the most physical of art forms, the theatre, has hitherto been an under-explored topic. Filling this gap, Christian Billing questions conventional wisdom regarding the one-sex anatomical model and uses a range of medical treatises to delineate an emergent two-sex paradigm of human biology. The impact such a model had on the staging of the human form in English professional theatre is also explored in appraisals of: (i) the homo-erotic significance of a two-sex paradigm; (ii) social and theatrical cross-dressing; (iii) the uses of theatrical androgyny; (iv) masculine corporality and the representation of assertive women; and (v) the theatrical poetics of human dissection. Billing supports cultural and scientific study with close-readings of Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. The book provides a sophisticated and original analysis of the early modern stage body as a discursive site in wider debates concerning sexuality and gender.

Instrumental Lives is an account of instrument making at the cutting edge of contemporary science and technology in a modern Indian scientific laboratory. For a period of roughly two-and-half decades, starting the late 1980s, a research group headed by CV Dharmadhikari in the physics department at the Savitribai Phule University, Pune, fabricated a range of scanning tunnelling and scanning force microscopes including the earliest such microscopes made in the country. Not only were these instruments made entirely in-house, research done using them was published in the world's leading peer reviewed journals, and students who made and trained on them went on to become top class scientists in premier institutions. The book uses qualitative research methods such as open-ended interviews, historical analysis and laboratory ethnography that are standard in Science and Technology Studies (STS), to present the micro-details of this instrument making enterprise, the counter-intuitive methods employed, and the unexpected material, human and intellectual resources that were mobilised in the process. It locates scientific research and innovation within the social, political and cultural context of a laboratory's physical location and asks important questions of the dominant narratives of innovation that remain fixated on quantitative metrics of publishing, patenting and generating commerce. The book is a story as much of the lives of instruments and their deaths as it is of the instrumentalities that make those lives possible and allow them to live on, even if with a rather precarious existence.

The Peckham Experiment, conducted between 1935 and 1950 in the London Pioneer Health Centre, was one of the most talked-about social experiments of the 20th century. Families from the South London neighbourhood of Peckham were invited to use the facilities of a radiantly modern building. They were encouraged to freely choose and organize their leisure activities, taking advantage of a swimming pool, a gymnasium, and a self-service cafeteria. In doing so, both their health status and interaction with other members of the nascent centre-community were closely observed by a team of physicians. The first research monograph on the history of the experiment building on archival sources, this book combines a micro-historical perspective with methods from the history of science. It shows how bio-medical holism and evolutionary theories typical of the interwar years informed research on social life in the centre. But it also reveals that the "guinea pigs", too, were trying to make sense of the research they were taking part in. The outcome was an ambiguous social laboratory that generated new insights into the power of social groups to self-organize, which were soon discussed all over the world - and continue to haunt British political debates today.

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Cybernetics-the science of communication and control as it applies to machines and to humans-originates from efforts during World War II to build automatic antiaircraft systems. Following the war, this science extended beyond military needs to examine all systems that rely on information and feedback, from the level of the cell to that of society. In The Cybernetics Moment, Ronald R. Kline, a senior historian of technology, examines the intellectual and cultural history of cybernetics and information theory, whose language of "information," "feedback," and "control" transformed the idiom of the sciences, hastened the development of information technologies, and laid the conceptual foundation for what we now call the Information Age. Kline argues that, for about twenty years after 1950, the growth of cybernetics and information theory and ever-more-powerful computers produced a utopian information narrative-an enthusiasm for information science that influenced natural scientists, social scientists, engineers, humanists, policymakers, public intellectuals, and journalists, all of whom struggled to come to grips with new relationships between humans and intelligent machines. Kline traces the relationship between the invention of computers and communication systems and the rise, decline, and transformation of cybernetics by analyzing the lives and work of such notables as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Herbert Simon. Ultimately, he reveals the crucial role played by the cybernetics moment-when cybernetics and information theory were seen as universal sciences-in setting the stage for our current preoccupation with information technologies.

Guicciardini presents a comprehensive survey of both the research and teaching of Newtonian calculus, the calculus of "fluxions," over the period between 1700 and 1810. Although Newton was one of the inventors of calculus, the developments in Britain remained separate from the rest of Europe for over a century. While it is usually maintained that after Newton there was a period of decline in British mathematics, the author's research demonstrates that the methods used by researchers of the period yielded considerable success in laying the foundations and investigating the applications of the calculus. Even when "decline" set in, in mid century, the foundations of the reform were being laid, which were to change the direction and nature of the mathematics community. The book considers the importance of Isaac Newton, Roger Cotes, Brook Taylor, James Stirling, Abraham de Moivre, Colin Maclaurin, Thomas Bayes, John Landen and Edward Waring. This will be a useful book for students and researchers in the history of science, philosophers of science and undergraduates studying the history of mathematics.

It may be surprising to us now, but the taxidermists who filled the museums, zoos, and aquaria of the twentieth century were also among the first to become aware of the devastating effects of careless human interaction with the natural world. Witnessing firsthand the decimation caused by hide hunters, commercial feather collectors, whalers, big game hunters, and poachers, these museum taxidermists recognized the existential threat to critically endangered species and the urgent need to protect them. The compelling exhibits they created-as well as the scientific field work, popular writing, and lobbying they undertook-established a vital leadership role in the early conservation movement for American museums that persists to this day. Through their individual research expeditions and collective efforts to arouse demand for environmental protections, this remarkable cohort-including William T. Hornaday, Carl E. Akeley, and several lesser-known colleagues-created our popular understanding of the animal world and its fragile habitats. For generations of museum visitors, they turned the glass of an exhibition case into a window on nature-and a mirror in which to reflect on our responsibility for its conservation.

This book, first available in 1994, was published to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of Heinrich Hertz's death at the terribly young age of thirty-six. The introductory biography together with eleven papers by Hertz and seven about him are intended to highlight the importance of Hertz's contributions to physics and at the same time to serve the needs of anyone interested in doing research on this highly gifted scientist.

First published in 1925. This study examines the advances in engineering and science in the nineteenth century. The author examines topics on locomotion and sea travel, photography, chemistry, electricity amongst many other industrial and scientific developments. This title will be of interest to historians as well as scientists and engineers.

This book analyses the impact computerization has had on contemporary science and explains the origins, technical nature and epistemological consequences of the current decisive interplay between technology and science: an intertwining of formalism, computation, data acquisition, data and visualization and how these factors have led to the spread of simulation models since the 1950s. Using historical, comparative and interpretative case studies from a range of disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the case of plant studies, the author shows how and why computers, data treatment devices and programming languages have occasioned a gradual but irresistible and massive shift from mathematical models to computer simulations.

Gilbert White's name is known universally but, as Ted Dadswell insists in this book, important aspects of his work have frequently been overlooked even by scholarly editors. The Selborne naturalist (1720-1793) has been described as 'a prince of personal observers'; but a shrewd analytical questioning and comparing was also typical of his 'natural knowledge'. Exceptional even in his general aims, White studied the behaviour, the 'manners' and 'conversation', of his animals and plants. He saw, moreover, that an animal or plant and indeed a parish such as his own, was unitary in operation; again and again, a cause had numerous effects and an effect numerous causes. Observation could go forward in circumstances such as these, if one was both sharp-eyed and patient, but how could true investigation be managed? How could a particular cause or effect be isolated or tested? Here what Dadswell calls White's 'comparative habit' was put to good use. Gilbert White was a careful keeper of records, and using these comparatively he 'appealed to controls' while examining his living creatures. Questioning and testing even the 'entirely usual', White was brought back repeatedly to the notion of adaptability. His zoological findings often concerned 'changed or changing' animals (or birds) and their social and inter-personal relationships. Today, we can seem particularly well placed to appreciate his methods and factual claims; our 'ethologists' and ecologists have - seemingly - corroborated much of what he did. And yet just this corroboration renders him the more mysterious. To properly assess White as naturalist, we must be able to approach him not only scientifically but also historically. He hoped for the emergence of teams of behavioural workers but did not try to pre-empt what would be achieved only by such teams, and while he 'saw with his own eyes', as his friend John Mulso says, he was substantially affected by certain of his contemporaries and predecessors. His journals and notebooks show us the naturalist at work. When a perhaps unexpected combination of influences is allowed for, his 'unique' activities can be at least partially explained.

A foundational work on historical and social studies of quantification What accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust in Numbers questions whether such success in the study of stars, molecules, or cells should be an attractive model for research on human societies, and examines why the natural sciences are highly quantitative in the first place. Theodore Porter argues that a better understanding of the attractions of quantification in business, government, and social research brings a fresh perspective to its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Quantitative rigor is not inherent in science but arises from political and social pressures, and objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts. In a new preface, the author sheds light on the current infatuation with quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy.

CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES AND DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A riveting chronicle of faulty science, false promises, arrogance, greed, and shocking disregard for the wellbeing of patients suffering from mental disorders. An eloquent, meticulously documented, clear-eyed call for change' Dirk Wittenborn In this masterful work, Andrew Scull, one of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry, sheds light on its troubled history For more than two hundred years, disturbances of reason, cognition and emotion - the sort of things that were once called 'madness' - have been described and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, it is said, is an illness like any other - a disorder that can treated by doctors, whose suffering can be eased, and from which patients can return. And yet serious mental illness remains a profound mystery that is in some ways no closer to being solved than it was at the start of the twentieth century. In this clear-sighted and provocative exploration of psychiatry, acclaimed sociologist Andrew Scull traces the history of its attempts to understand and mitigate mental illness: from the age of the asylum and surgical and chemical interventions, through the rise and fall of Freud and the talking cure, and on to our own time of drug companies and antidepressants. Through it all, Scull argues, the often vain and rash attempts to come to terms with the enigma of mental disorder have frequently resulted in dire consequences for the patient. Deeply researched and lucidly conveyed, Desperate Remedies masterfully illustrates the assumptions and theory behind the therapy, providing a definitive new account of psychiatry's and society's battle with mental illness.

Contemporary interest in Darwin rises from a general ideal of what Darwin's books ought to contain: a theory of transformation of species by natural selection. However, a reader opening Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, today may be struck by the fact that this "selectionist" view does not deliver the key to many aspects of the book. Without contesting the importance of natural selection to Darwinism, much less supposing that a fully-formed "Darwinism" stepped out of Darwin's head in 1859, this innovative volume aims to return to the text of the Origin itself. Revisiting the 'Origin of Species' focuses on Darwin as theorising on the origin of variations; showing that Darwin himself was never a pan-selectionist (in contrast to some of his followers) but was concerned with "other means of modification" (which makes him an evolutionary pluralist). Furthermore, in contrast to common textbook presentations of "Darwinism", Hoquet stresses the fact that On the Origin of Species can lend itself to several contradictory interpretations. Thus, this volume identifies where rival interpretations have taken root; to unearth the ambiguities readers of Darwin have latched onto as they have produced a myriad of Darwinian legacies, each more or less faithful enough to the originator's thought. Emphasising the historical features, complexities and intricacies of Darwin's argument, Revisiting the 'Origin of Species' can be used by any lay readers opening Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This volume will also appeal to students and researchers interested in areas such as Evolution, Natural Selection, Scientific Translations and Origins of Life.

The letters, most of which are published for the first time, include all that have been preserved from Darwin's correspondence with family, undergraduate friends as well as others in Shropshire and Staffordshire. voyage.

Science and faith are often seen as being in opposition. In this book, award-winning sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund questions this assumption based on research she has conducted over the past fifteen years. She highlights the ways these two spheres point to universal human values, showing readers they don't have to choose between science and Christianity. Breathing fresh air into debates that have consisted of more opinions than data, Ecklund offers insights uncovered by her research and shares her own story of personal challenges and lessons. In the areas most rife with conflict--the origins of the universe, evolution, climate change, and genetic technology--readers will find fascinating points of convergence in eight virtues of human existence: curiosity, doubt, humility, creativity, healing, awe, shalom, and gratitude. The book includes discussion questions for group use and to help pastors, small group leaders, and congregants broach controversial topics and bridge the science-faith divide.

Knowledge and Power presents and explores science not as something specifically for scientists, but as an integral part of human civilization, and traces the development of science through different historical settings from the Middle Ages through to the Cold War. Five case studies are examined within this book: the creation of modern science by Muslims, Christians and Jews in the medieval Mediterranean; the global science of the Jesuit order in the early modern world; the relationship between "modernization" and "westernization" in Russia and Japan from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century; the role of science in the European colonization of Africa; and the rivalry in "big science" between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Each chapter includes original documents to further the reader's understanding, and this second edition has been enhanced with a selection of new images and a new chapter on Big Science and the Superpowers during the Cold War. Since the Middle Ages, people have been working in many civilizations and cultures to advance knowledge of, and power over, the natural world. Through a combination of narrative and primary sources, Knowledge and Power provides students with an understanding of how different cultures throughout time and across the globe approached science. It is ideal for students of world history and the history of science.

This volume explores the relationship between physics and metaphysics in Descartes' philosophy. According to the standard account, Descartes modified the objects of metaphysics and physics and inverted the order in which these two disciplines were traditionally studied. This book challenges the standard account in which Descartes prioritizes metaphysics over physics. It does so by taking into consideration the historical reception of Descartes and the ways in which Descartes himself reacted to these receptions in his own lifetime. The book stresses the diversity of these receptions by taking into account not only Cartesianisms but also anti-Cartesianisms, and by showing how they retroactively highlighted different aspects of Descartes' works and theoretical choices. The historical aspect of the volume is unique in that it not only analyzes different constructions of Descartes that emerged in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, but also reflects on how his work was first read by philosophers across Europe. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a fresh and up-to-date contribution to this important debate in early modern philosophy.

When originally published in 1952, this book filled a gap in the history of philosophy and science and remains an important work today, because it puts the main mathematical and physical discoveries of Descartes in an accessible form, for the benefit of English readers. Descartes is acknowledged to be the founder of modern mathematics, through his invention of analytical geometry and this volume charts Descartes' role in bringing a unity into algebra and geometry and the development of mathematics into a discipline which could be properly analysed. Carefully paraphrasing the Geometrie, this volume retains much of Descartes' original notation as well as the original diagrams. The volume also discusses the considerable contribution that Descartes made to the physical sciences which involved accurate work in optics, light, sight and colour.

The deep sea covers more than half the surface of the Earth, but until the circumnavigation made by the HMS Challenger almost nothing was known about the animals that live there. Full Fathom 5000 gives an account of the remarkable discoveries that were made during the voyage and describes the strange and bizarre creatures that live in perpetual darkness a kilometer or more below the surface of the sea. Until the early 1870s, very little was known about the creatures lurking in the depths of our oceans. People had found a few things trapped in fishing gear or caught on the anchors of ships, but those who tried to venture to the bottom of the seafloor often died before they made it there. The first systematic investigation into life in our oceans was made during the circumnavigation of the HMS Challenger. Scientists credit this voyage as the beginning of modern oceanography, and the story of it is full of twists and turns. It led to the discovery of a whole new fauna previously unknown, which Full Fathom 5000 describes for the first time in one place for readers. In this book, Graham Bell takes readers through the voyage station by station, following the progress of the expedition and introducing some of the new and strange animals that were hauled up from the depths of the ocean and seen by human eyes for the first time. You will meet, among others, the ugliest fish in the world, flesh-eating clams, dwarf males, sea devils, and an octopus that wears lipstick. The book begins with a description of the first attempts scientists made to explore the deep sea, leading up to the plan for a voyage around the world on the HMS Challenger. The chapters take readers from station to station, though all of the world's oceans, visiting every continent and crossing the Equator five times. Bell details what was discovered during hundreds of stops to take samples, and he describes around a hundred stations where remarkable animals were hauled from the sea. The book ends with a description of what came after the end of this journey, explaining what they did with the animals that were collected and what became of the scientists and sailors who planned the voyage and traveled together around the world.

The letters, most of which are published for the first time, include all that have been preserved from Darwin's correspondence with family, undergraduate friends as well as others in Shropshire and Staffordshire. voyage.

Population health has recently grown from a series of loosely connected critiques of twentieth-century public health and medicine into a theoretical framework with a corresponding field of research-population health science. Its approach is to promote the public's health through improving everyday human life: afford-able nutritious food, clean air, safe places where children can play, living wages, etc. It recognizes that addressing contemporary health challenges such as the prevalence of type 2 diabetes will take much more than good hospitals and public health departments. Blending philosophy of science/medicine, public health ethics and history, this book offers a framework that explains, analyses and largely endorses the features that define this relatively new field. Presenting a philosophical perspective, Valles helps to clarify what these features are and why they matter, including: searching for health's "upstream" causes in social life, embracing a professional commitment to studying and ameliorating the staggering health inequities in and between populations; and reforming scientific practices to foster humility and respect among the many scientists and non- scientists who must work collaboratively to promote health. Featuring illustrative case studies from around the globe at the end of all main chapters, this radical monograph is written to be accessible to all scholars and advanced students who have an interest in health-from public health students to professional philosophers.