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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > History of science
In 1979, Abdus Salam became the first Muslim, and the first citizen
of Pakistan, to win a Nobel Prize. Branded a heretic at home, he
pioneered the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in
Trieste, a vital focus of Third World science which remains as his
monument. A staunch Muslim, he was ashamed of the decline of
science in the heritage of Islam, and struggled doggedly to restore
it to its former glory. Salam's truly remarkable multi-faceted
character is well mirrored here. The book is beautifully written,
and handles many delicate political and personal issues with
sensitivity and understanding. Very authoritative and insightful,
giving a rounded picture of a very complex man. -- Tom Kibble,
Imperial College London
This book is devoted to the scientific legacy of Professor Victor
Ambartsumian - one of the distinguished scientists of the last
century. He obtained very essential results not only in
astrophysics, but also in mathematics and theoretical physics. One
can recall his fundamental results concerning the Sturm-Liouville
inverse problem, quantum field theory, structure of atomic nuclei
etc. Nevertheless, his revolutionary ideas in astrophysics and
corresponding results are known more widely and have predetermined
the further development of this science. The concept about the
activity phenomena and objects' evolution, particularly,
determination of the age of our Galaxy, ideas about the stars'
formation nowadays in stellar associations, the activity of
galactic nuclei appeared to be exceptionally fruitful. These
directions are being elaborated at many astronomical centers all
over the world.
The design, construction and verification of complex two- and
three-dimensional shapes in architecture and ship geometry have
always been a particularly demanding part of the art of
engineering. Before science-based structural design and analysis
were applied in the construction industries, i.e., before 1800, the
task of conceiving, documenting and fabricating such shapes
constituted the most significant interface between practitioner's
knowledge and learned knowledge, above all in geometry. The history
of shape development in these two disciplines therefore promises
especially valuable insights into the knowledge history of shape
creation. This volume is a collection of contributions by
outstanding scholars in their fields of study, archaeology, history
of architecture and ship design, in classic antiquity, the Middle
Ages and the early modern period. The volume presents a comparative
knowledge history in these two distinct branches of construction
engineering.
In A Sincere and Teachable Heart: Self-Denying Virtue in British
Intellectual Life, 1736-1859, Richard Bellon demonstrates that
respectability and authority in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Britain were not grounded foremost in ideas or specialist skills
but in the self-denying virtues of patience and humility. Three
case studies clarify this relationship between intellectual
standards and practical moral duty. The first shows that the
Victorians adapted a universal conception of sainthood to the
responsibilities specific to class, gender, social rank, and
vocation. The second illustrates how these ideals of
self-discipline achieved their form and cultural vigor by analyzing
the eighteenth-century moral philosophy of Joseph Butler, John
Wesley, Samuel Johnson, and William Paley. The final reinterprets
conflict between the liberal Anglican Noetics and the conservative
Oxford Movement as a clash over the means of developing habits of
self-denial.
The Kitab Tahrim dafn al-ahya', the Book on the Prohibition to Bury
the Living, written by the Nestorian physician 'Ubaidallah Ibn
Buhtisu' (d. c. 1060 CE), deals with the causes, signs and
treatments of apparent death. Based on a short pseudo-Galenic
treatise, whose Greek original is lost, 'Ubaidallah's Arabic
commentary is a comprehensive and in many ways unique piece of
scientific writing that moreover promotes a psychological
understanding of physical illness. Oliver Kahl's present book
offers a critical Arabic edition with annotated English translation
of 'Ubaidallah's work on apparent death, framed by a detailed
introductory study and extensive glossaries covering all relevant
terms; for comparative purposes, the Arabic and Hebrew recensions
of the lost Greek prototype are presented in an appendix.
This volume draws a balanced picture of the Rationalists by
bringing their intellectual contexts, sources and full range of
interests into sharper focus, without neglecting their core
commitment to the epistemological doctrine that earned them their
traditional label. The collection of original essays addresses
topics ranging from theodicy and early modern music theory to
Spinoza's anti-humanism, often critically revising important
aspects of the received picture of the Rationalists. Another
important contribution of the volume is that it brings out aspects
of Rationalist philosophers and their legacies that are not
ordinarily associated with them, such as the project of a Cartesian
ethics. Finally, a strong emphasis is placed on the connection of
the Rationalists' philosophy to their interests in empirical
science, to their engagement in the political life of their era,
and to the religious background of many of their philosophical
commitments.
In 1859, an amateur British naturalist published a book of findings
that shook the scientific community to its core and changed the
structure of religion and science as we know them. The product of
over 20 years of research, The Origin of Species challenged the
popular belief that species could not evolve and argued that
species can adapt to their environment and develop accordingly.
Although other scientists had observed some of the phenomena that
Charles Darwin addressed, he was the first to theorize that natural
selection, and later, evolution, were viable explanations for the
origins of life. The implications of Darwin's findings still
reverberate today, in the classroom, in the courtroom, and at the
highest legislative levels. Lively thematic chapters explore how
Darwin came to the conclusions published in The Origin of
Species-and in later works such as The Descent of Man-from his
early years at Cambridge, to his observations of species on the HMS
Beagle voyages, through the 20 years of research that culminated in
Origin. Also included is an insightful discussion of Darwin's
impact as it is felt today, from movies and popular culture to the
current Intelligent Design controversy. Biographies of influential
figures, primary source letters and selections from Origin, a
glossary of terms, and an extensive annotated bibliography round
out this accessible work.
E.F.F. Chladni's experiments and observations with sound and
vibrations profoundly influenced the development of the field of
Acoustics. The famous Chladni diagrams along with other
observations are contained in Die Akustik, published in German in
1802 and Traite d'Acoustique, a greatly expanded version, published
in French in 1809. This is the first comprehensive translation of
the expanded French version of Traite d'Acoustique, using the 1802
German publication for reference and clarification. The translation
was undertaken by Robert T. Beyer, PhD (1920-2008), noted
acoustician, Professor of Physics at Brown University, and Gold
Medal recipient of the Acoustical Society of America. Along with
many other projects completed over the course of his career, Dr.
Beyer translated Von Neumann's seminal work, Mathematical
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics from the original German, spent 30
years translating Russian physics treatises and journals, served as
editor of the English translation of the Soviet Journal of
Experimental and Theoretical Physics, and also authored Sounds of
our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics.
This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. The authors focus on changes in the style, organization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. This outstanding resource is the definitive study on the rhetoric of science.
This volume gathers essays that focus on the worldliness of
science, its inseparable engagement in the major institutional
bases of social life: law, market, church, school, and nation. With
a chronological span reaching from the Renaissance to Big Science,
its topics range from sundials to genetic sequences, from
calculating instruments to devices that simulate human behavior,
from early cartography to techniques for tracing radioactive
fallout on a global scale. The book aims to show readers, with
episodes drawn from the span of their modern history, the sciences
in action throughout human society.
Up to now there have been scarcely any publications on Leibniz
dedicated to investigating the interrelations between philosophy
and mathematics in his thought. In part this is due to the
previously restricted textual basis of editions such as those
produced by Gerhardt. Through recent volumes of the scientific
letters and mathematical papers series of the Academy Edition
scholars have obtained a much richer textual basis on which to
conduct their studies - material which allows readers to see
interconnections between his philosophical and mathematical ideas
which have not previously been manifested. The present book draws
extensively from this recently published material. The contributors
are among the best in their fields. Their commissioned papers cover
thematically salient aspects of the various ways in which
philosophy and mathematics informed each other in Leibniz's
thought.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1958.
The account in this inaugural volume of the series covers the
period 1900 to 1960, but also outlines the principal developments
in earlier centuries from which biochemistry emerged. Findings are
considered in the light of present knowledge, rather than in a
rigid historical framework.
There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical
criticism had its main source in Ionia. . . It thus leads the
tradition which created the rational or scienti?c attitude, and
with it our Western civilization, the only civilization, which is
based upon science (though, of course, not upon science alone).
Karl Popper, Back to the Presocratics Harvard University physicist
and historian of Science, Gerald Holton, coined the term "Ionian
Enchantment," an expression that links the idea back in the 6th c-
tury B. C. to the ancient Ionians along the eastern Aegean coast,
while capturing its fascination. Approximately within a seventy- ve
year period (600-525 B. C. ) -a split second in the history of
humanity- the three Milesian thinkers, Thales, Anaximander and
Anaximenes, without plain evidence, but with an unequalled power of
critical abstraction and intuition, had achieved a true
intellectual re- lution; they founded and bequeathed to future
generations a new, unprecedented way of theorizing the world; it
could be summarized in four statements: beneath the apparent
disorder and multiplicity of the cosmos, there exists order, unity
and stability; unity derives from the fundamental primary
substratum from which the cosmos originated; this, and,
consequently, the cosmic reality, is one, and is based not on
supernatural, but on physical causes; they are such that man can -
vestigate them rationally. These four statements are neither
self-evident nor se- explanatory.
This book describes how the growing awareness of the strategic
importance of science in the 1930s caused the Allied and German
leadership to build scientific information supply systems that
survived into the postwar era. Using archival materials from five
countries, Richards traces the successes and failures of these
early scientific intelligence agencies. She focuses on the OSS unit
supplying copy for the US government's wartime program to reprint
current German scientific journals. She describes as well the
methods used by the OSS to spirit individual journal issues from
inside the Reich to microfilm squads on Germany's periphery, and
gives special attention to the Allied quest for information about
the mythical German atomic bomb. Richards also describes the supply
system set up by the Nazi government, and how its increasing
desperation for Allied scientific news led in the last year of the
war to a submarine landing of Abwehr agents on the U.S. coast to
microfilm periodicals at the New York Public Library. The final
chapter of her book looks at how the wartime experience with
scientific information influenced postwar patterns of scientific
documentation and librarianship in each country.
It all began with Markus Jochum approaching one of us (HvS) - "when
you guys are doing interviews with senior scientists from
oceanography and related sciences, why are you not doing Walter
Munk?" Indeed, why not? Walter Munk, an icon in oceanography, had
just given a wonderful talk in a symposium in honor of his 90th
birthday, sweeping a grand circle from his earliest work with Chip
Cox on airborne measurements of ocean surface roughness to the
latest satellite data - not simply a review, but the struggle of an
active scientist opening up new perspectives - as inspiring and
stimulating as when one of us (KH) rst met him at the Ocean Waves
Conference in Easton in 1961 (Fig. I. 1). Walter immediately agreed
to share with us his recollections on the nearly seventy years of
his path-breaking contributions in a sheer amazing range of topics,
from ocean waves, internal waves, ocean currents, tides, tsunamis,
sea level, microseisms and the rotation of the earth to ocean
acoustic tomography. With "you guys" Markus was referring to HvS
and the various partners HvS had 1 invited to join him in
conducting a series of interviews of retired colleagues.
Logic networks and automata are facets of digital systems. The
change of the design of logic networks from skills and art into a
scientific discipline was possible by the development of the
underlying mathematical theory called the Switching Theory. The
fundamentals of this theory come from the attempts towards an
algebraic description of laws of thoughts presented in the works by
George J. Boole and the works on logic by Augustus De Morgan. As
often the case in engineering, when the importance of a problem and
the need for solving it reach certain limits, the solutions are
searched by many scholars in different parts of the word,
simultaneously or at about the same time, however, quite
independently and often unaware of the work by other scholars. The
formulation and rise of Switching Theory is such an example. This
book presents a brief account of the developments of Switching
Theory and highlights some less known facts in the history of it.
The readers will find the book a fresh look into the development of
the field revealing how difficult it has been to arrive at many of
the concepts that we now consider obvious . Researchers in the
history or philosophy of computing will find this book a valuable
source of information that complements the standard presentations
of the topic.
Ptolemy was the most important physical scientist of the Roman
Empire, and for a millennium and a half his writings on astronomy,
astrology, and geography were models for imitation, resources for
new work, and targets of criticism. Ptolemy in Perspective traces
reactions to Ptolemy from his own times to ours. The nine studies
show the complex processes by which an ancient scientist and his
work gained and subsequently lost an overreaching reputation and
authority.
This book is the translated and commented autobiography of Wilhelm
Ostwald (1853-1932), who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909.
It is the first translation of the German original version
"Lebenslinien: Eine Selbstbiographie," published by Ostwald in
1926/27, and has been painstakingly translated. The book includes
comments and explanations, helping readers to understand Ostwald's
text in the historical context of Germany at the beginning of the
20th century.In his autobiography, Ostwald describes his impressive
research career and his life from his own personal view. Readers
will find information on how Ostwald immortalized himself through
his research on catalysis, chemical equilibria, technical
chemistry, and especially as one of the founders of modern physical
chemistry. His broad interests in science, ranging from philosophy
to the theory of colors and the idea of a universal scientific
language are further remarkable aspects covered.This work will
appeal to a broad audience of contemporary scientists: Wilhelm
Ostwald has been tremendously influential for the development of
chemistry and science, and many of today's best-known international
scientific schools can be traced back to Ostwald's students.
Ostwald was active in Germany and what is now Latvia and Estonia,
while also travelling to the USA, England and France. In his
discussions and analyses of the working conditions of the time,
readers will find many issues reflected that continue to be of
relevance today.
In 1644 the Qing dynasty seized power in China. Its Manchu elite
were at first seen by most of their subjects as foreigners from
beyond the Great Wall, and the consolidation of Qing rule presented
significant cultural and political problems, as well as military
challenges. It was the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722) who set the
dynasty on a firm footing, and one of his main stratagems to
achieve this was the appropriation for imperial purposes of the
scientific knowledge brought to China by the Jesuit mission
(1582-1773). For almost two centuries, the Jesuits put the sciences
in the service of evangelization, teaching and practising what came
to be known as 'Western learning' among Chinese scholars, many of
whom took an active interest in it. After coming to the throne as a
teenager, Kangxi began his life-long intervention in mathematical
and scientific matters when he forced a return to the use of
Western methods in official astronomy. In middle life, he studied
astronomy, musical theory and mathematics, with Jesuits as his
teachers. In his last years he sponsored a great compilation
covering these three disciplines, and set several of his sons to
work on this project. All of this activity formed a vital part of
his plan to establish Manchu authority over the Chinese. This book
explains why Kangxi made the sciences a tool for laying the
foundations of empire, and to show how, as part of this process,
mathematics was reconstructed as a branch of imperial learning.
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