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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > History of science
Covering a rich array of global aspects, ranging from individuals
as ideational entrepreneurs to transnational intellectual
trajectories, this volume deals with multiple dimensions of global
and transnational backgrounds pertaining to Turkey's intellectual
history, starting with the 19th and reaching the 21st-century. The
book engages with the late Ottoman and republican Turkish periods
through topics such as the transnational processes that contributed
to the development of modern Turkish philosophy, the Bosnian and
Bulgarian intellectuals at the end times of the Ottoman imperial
order, Wilsonianism's impact, the role of Westerners in promoting
Ottoman political agendas, the global connections and ramifi
cations of Turkish Islamism as well as Turkish anticlericalism and
leftism. The aim is to globalize late Ottoman and republican
Turkish intellectual histories by presenting distinct frameworks
for advancing the Global Intellectual History agenda in this
distinct setting.
This is the first transnational study of British, Norwegian, and
Swedish engagement with the Antarctic, from the years before the
Great War to the early years of the Cold War. Rather than charting
how Europeans unveiled the Antarctic, it uses the history of
Antarctic activity as a window into the political and cultural
worlds of twentieth-century Britain and Scandinavia. Science was a
resource for states attempting to reveal - and control - the
Antarctic and its resources. But it was also a source of personal
and institutional capital, a means of earning civic status and
professional advancement. The book ranges from the politics of
whaling management to the changing value of geographical
exploration in the academy and the rise of specialized,
state-sponsored research, presenting an episodic rather than a
linear narrative focused on historically specific networks and
strategies. Drawing upon scholarship in critical geopolitics,
imperial environmental history, and the cultural history of
science, author Peder Roberts argues that despite its splendid
geographical isolation, the Antarctic was a field for distinctly
local European dreams.
The technical problems confronting different societies and periods,
and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this
annual collection of essays. Volumes contain technical articles
ranging widely in subject, time and region, as well as general
papers on the history of technology. In addition to dealing with
the history of technical discovery and change, History of
Technology also explores the relations of technology to other
aspects of life -- social, cultural and economic -- and shows how
technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the
society in which it occurred.
In Making the New World Their Own, Qiong Zhang offers a systematic
study of how Chinese scholars in the late Ming and early Qing came
to understand that the earth is shaped as a globe. This notion
arose from their encounters with Matteo Ricci, Giulio Aleni and
other Jesuits. These encounters formed a fascinating chapter in the
early modern global integration of space. It unfolded as a series
of mutually constitutive and competing scholarly discourses that
reverberated in fields from cosmology, cartography and world
geography to classical studies. Zhang demonstrates how scholars
such as Xiong Mingyu, Fang Yizhi, Jie Xuan, Gu Yanwu, and Hu Wei
appropriated Jesuit ideas to rediscover China's place in the world
and reconstitute their classical tradition. Winner of the Chinese
Historians in the United States (CHUS) "2015 Academic Excellence
Award"
The Poet's Mind is a major study of how Victorian poets thought and
wrote about the human mind. It argues that Victorian poets,
inheriting from their Romantic forerunners the belief that
subjective thoughts and feelings were the most important materials
for poetry, used their writing both to give expression to mental
processes and to scrutinise and analyse those processes. In this
volume Gregory Tate considers why and how psychological analysis
became an increasingly important element of poetic theory and
practice in the mid-nineteenth century, a time when the discipline
of psychology was emerging alongside the growing recognition that
the workings of the mind might be understood using the analytical
methods of science. The writings of Victorian poets often show an
awareness of this psychology, but, at the same time, the language
and tone of their psychological verse, and especially their
ambivalent use of terms such as 'brain', 'mind', and 'soul', voice
an unresolved tension, felt throughout Victorian culture, between
scientific theories of psychology and metaphysical or religious
accounts of selfhood. The Poet's Mind considers the poetry of
Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, and George Eliot, offering
detailed readings of several major Victorian poems, and presenting
new evidence of their authors' interest in contemporary
psychological theory. Ranging across lyric verse, epic poetry, and
the dramatic monologue, the book explores the ways in which poetry
simultaneously drew on, resisted, and contributed to the spread of
scientific theories of mind in Victorian Britain.
In this volume, a distinguished set of international scholars
examine the nature of collaboration between life partners in the
sciences, with particular attention to the ways in which personal
and professional dynamics can foster or inhibit scientific
practice. Breaking from traditional gender analyses which focus on
divisions of labor and the assignment of credit, the studies
scrutinize collaboration as a variable process between partners
living in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were married
and divorced, heterosexual and homosexual, aristocratic and
working-class and politically right and left. The contributors
analyze cases shaped by their particular geographical locations,
ranging from retreat settings like the English countryside and
Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to university laboratories and urban
centers in Berlin, Stockholm, Geneva and London. The volume
demonstrates how the terms and meanings of collaboration, variably
shaped by disciplinary imperatives, cultural mores, and the agency
of the collaborators themselves, illuminate critical intellectual
and institutional developments in the modern sciences.
Christoph Laucht offers the first investigation into the roles
played by two German-born emigre atomic scientists, Klaus Fuchs and
Rudolf Peierls, in the development of British nuclear culture,
especially the practice of nuclear science and the political
implications of the atomic scientists' work, from the start of the
Second World War until 1959.
Set in the context of Counter-Reformation Rome, this book focuses
on the twenty-year long relationship (1611-1630) between Galileo
Galilei and Federico Cesi, the founder of the Academy of the
Lynx-eyed. Contrary to the historiographical tradition, it
demonstrates that the visions of Galileo and Cesi were not at all
convergent. In the course of the events that led to the adoption of
the anti-Copernican decree of 1616, Galileo realized that the
Lynceans were not prepared to support his battle for freedom of
thought. In addition to identifying the author of the anonymous
denunciation of Galileo's Assayer, Paolo Galluzzi offers an
original reconstruction of the dynamics which culminated in the
Church's condemnation of the famous Tuscan scientist in 1633. This
book was originally published in Italian as Liberta di filosofare
in naturalibus: I mondi paralleli di Cesi e Galileo (Storia
dell'Accademia dei Lincei, Studi 4). Rome: Scienze e Lettere,
Editore Commerciale, 2014.
This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact
on the history and practice of mathematics, and the ways in which
his legacy has been preserved or transformed in recent decades,
looking ahead to the directions in which the study of the history
of science will head in the twenty-first century. Neugebauer, more
than any other scholar of recent times, shaped the way we perceive
premodern science. Through his scholarship and influence on
students and collaborators, he inculcated both an approach to
historical research on ancient and medieval mathematics and
astronomy through precise mathematical and philological study of
texts, and a vision of these sciences as systems of knowledge and
method that spread outward from the ancient Near Eastern
civilizations, crossing cultural boundaries and circulating over a
tremendous geographical expanse of the Old World from the Atlantic
to India.
The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), is the
cornerstone of non-proliferation and disarmament efforts.Yet its
negotiation and success were not inevitable. This book aims to
address the developments that led to the negotiation of the treaty,
examine its implementation, and address challenges that the NPT
faces going forward.
This book describes the origins and evolution of the chemical
elements we and the cosmos are made of. The story starts with the
discovery of the common elements on Earth and their subsequent
discovery in space. How do we learn the composition of the distant
stars? How did progress in quantum theory, nuclear physics,
spectroscopy, stellar structure and evolution, together with
observations of stars, converge to provide an incredibly detailed
picture of the universe? How does research in the micro-world
explain the macro-world? How does progress in one affect the other,
or lack of knowledge in one inhibit progress in the other? In
short, Shaviv describes how we discovered the various pieces of the
jigsaw that form our present picture of the universe; and how we
sometimes put these in the wrong place before finding in the right
one. En route we meet some fascinating personalities and learn
about heated controversies. Shaviv shows how science lurched from
one dogma to the next, time and again shattering much of what had
been considered solid knowledge, until eventually a stable
understanding arose. Beginning with generally accepted science, the
book ends in today's terra incognita of nuclear physics,
astrophysics and cosmology. A monumental work that will fascinate
scientists, philosophers, historians and lay readers alike.
Archival Afterlives explores the posthumous fortunes of scientific
and medical archives in early modern Britain. If early modern
natural philosophers claimed all knowledge as their province,
theirs was a paper empire. But how and why did naturalists engage
with archives, and in particular, with the papers of their dead
predecessors? This volume makes a firm case for expanding what
counts as scientific labour, integrating scribes, archivist,
library keepers, editors, and friends and family of deceased
naturalists into the history of science. It shows how early modern
natural philosophers pursued new natural knowledge in dialogue with
their recent material past. Finally, it demonstrates the sustaining
importance of archival institutions in the growth and development
of the "New Sciences." Contributors are: Arnold Hunt, Michael
Hunter, Vera Keller, Carol Pal, Anna Marie Roos, Richard
Serjeantson, Victoria Sloyan, Alison Walker, and Elizabeth Yale.
Historians often look to ancient Greece as the wellspring of
Western civilization. Perhaps the most ingenious achievement of the
Hellenic mind was the early development of the sciences. The names
we give to science's many branches today--from physics and
chemistry to mathematics, biology, and psychology--echo the Greek
words that were first used to define these disciplines in ancient
times and remain a testament to the groundbreaking discoveries of
these pioneering thinkers. What was it about the Greeks, as opposed
to the far older civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and
China, that gave rise to the uniquely Western, scientific mindset?
This author explores this intriguing question in this authoritative
yet accessible and eloquently told story about the origins of
science. Going beyond individual Greek discoveries in the various
branches of science, Bertman emphasizes why these early
investigators were able to achieve what they did. Among the
exceptional characteristics of Greek culture that created the
seedbed for early science were:
- the Greek emphasis on rationalism--a conviction that human reason
could successfully unravel the mysteries of nature and make sense
of the cosmos
- an early form of humanism--a pride and confidence in human
potential despite the frailty and brief tenure of individual lives
- the drive to excel in every arena from the battlefield to the
Olympic games and arts competitions
- an insatiable curiosity that sought understanding of both human
nature and the world
- a fierce love of freedom and individualism that promoted freedom
of thought--the prelude to science.
Focusing on ten different branches of science, the author shows why
the Greeks gravitated to each specialty and explains the
fascinating theories they developed, the brilliant experiments they
performed, and the practical applications of their discoveries. He
concludes by recounting how these early insights and
achievements--transmitted over the course of two thousand
years--have shaped the scientific attitude that is the hallmark of
today's world. This lively narrative captures the Greek genius and
demonstrates the indelible influence of their discoveries on modern
science and technology.
Surveillance is a key notion for understanding power and control in
the modern world, but it has been curiously neglected by historians
of science and technology. Using the overarching concept of the
"surveillance imperative," this collection of essays offers a new
window on the evolution of the environmental sciences during and
after the Cold War.
The female authors highlighted in this monograph represent a
special breed of science writer, women who not only synthesized the
science of their day (often drawing upon their own direct
experience in the laboratory, field, classroom, and/or public
lecture hall), but used their works to simultaneously educate,
entertain, and, in many cases, evangelize. Women played a central
role in the popularization of science in the 19th century, as
penning such works (written for an audience of other women and
children) was considered proper "women's work." Many of these
writers excelled in a particular literary technique known as the
"familiar format," in which science is described in the form of a
conversation between characters, especially women and children.
However, the biological sciences were considered more "feminine"
than the natural sciences (such as astronomy and physics), hence
the number of geological "conversations" was limited. This, in
turn, makes the few that were completed all the more crucial to
analyze.
This book offers the most complete and up-to-date overview of the
philosophical work of Evandro Agazzi, presently the most important
Italian philosopher of science and one of the most influential in
the world. Scholars from seven countries explore his contributions
in areas ranging from philosophy of physics and general philosophy
of science to bioethics, philosophy of mathematics and logic,
epistemology of the social sciences and history of science,
philosophy of language and artificial intelligence, education and
anthropology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Agazzi
developed a complete and coherent philosophical system,
anticipating some of the turns in the philosophy of science after
the crisis of logical empiricism and exerting an equal influence on
continental hermeneutic philosophy. His work is characterized by an
original synthesis of contemporary analytic philosophy,
phenomenology and classical philosophy, including the scholastic
tradition and these threads are reflected in the different
backgrounds of the contributors to this book. While upholding the
epistemological value of science against scepticism and relativism,
Agazzi eschews scientism by stressing the equal importance of
non-scientific forms of thought, such as metaphysics and religion.
While defending the freedom of research as a cognitive enterprise,
he argues that as a human and social practice it must nonetheless
respect ethical constraints.
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