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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > History of science
In 1998 the chairman of the Russian National Committee of TMM Professor Arcady Bessonov, recommended one of authors of this book to be come a member of the IFToMM Permanent Commission on the History of Mechanisms and Machines Sciences (PC HMMS). Willy-nilly from this time the history of technique, as hobby passed on to a serious the employment in the history of engineering science. Interest history of a subject is natural for Professor, a leading a course of Theory of Mechanisms and Machines in Bauman University. This interest is supported by the fact that Bauman University is one of the oldest technical universities in Russia, and the course "Applied Mechanics" - later "Theory of Mechanisms and Machines" was the first systematic course in Russia. The second author supervises a cycle of laboratory works on TMM. Models of mechanisms are placed in laboratory in show-windows of ancient cases quite possibly coevals of the first course. He became interested in contents of these cases: firstly in models, and then in their origin. Later he occupied himself with the creation of a web-site "The Collection of mechanisms in department TMM in Bauman University". Gradually both authors had the idea of cooperation, although several years previously, we could not imagine this happening. We took an active part in the work of PC HMMS from 2000. It was promoted by of chairman of the commission Professor Marco Ceccarelli.
Students in an introductory physics class learn a variety of different, and seemingly unconnected, concepts. Gravity, the laws of motion, forces and fields, the mathematical nature of the science - all of these are ideas that play a central role in understanding physics. And one thing that connects all of these physical concepts is the impetus the great scientists of the past had to develop them - the desire to understand the motion of the planets of the solar system. This desire led to the revolutionary work of Copernicus and Galileo, Kepler and Newton. And their work forever altered how science is practiced and understood. Planetary Motions: A Historical Perspective enables students to understand how the discoveries of the luminaries of the Scientific Revolution impact the way physics is practiced today. BLNicolas Copernicus - his revolutionary work On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres that placed the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of the universe forever altered how people would see our place in the cosmos BLGalileo - his work did not prove Copernicus correct, but did destroy the ancient physics of Aristotle BLJohannes Kepler - his painstaking work eventually led to his laws regarding how the planets revolve around the sun BLIsaac Newton -his work remains the center of classical physics as studied in classrooms today Jargon and mathematics is kept to a minimum, and the volume includes a timeline and an annotated bibliography of useful print and online works for further research. Planetary Motions is an ideal introduction for students studying physics and astronomy and who need to understand the history and nature of the scientific enterprise.
This book is a biography of a scientist who pioneered the development of plant pathology in Australia in the 19th and early 20th century, and was internationally acclaimed. After 20 years as a plant pathologist, he was asked to find the cause and cure of a serious physiological disorder of apples. While the cause eluded him, and everyone else for another 60 years, he again won international gratitude for the improvements he brought to the apple industry. However because he did not find the cause, he was deemed to have failed by his political masters who were malignantly influenced by a jealous rival. The discovery in 2012-2013 of government files covering the period of the bitter pit investigation, from 1911 to 1916; reveal the extent of the unjust criticism of McAlpine while history has vindicated the management recommendations made to reduce bitter-pit losses. The focus on bitter-pit management late in McAlpine's Career also meant that those who value his memory have been less aware of the remarkable achievements of McAlpine in the time before he left Great Britain - the brilliance of his teaching and drawing skills -featured in the early teaching texts for botany and zoology (the latter with his brother) which are now accessible on-line. The objective of this book is to demonstrate that (i) the view that McAlpine had failed in his quest was wrong and seriously unjust (ii) McAlpine achievements extend beyond plant pathology and include significant contributions to the 19th century teaching of botany and zoology, contributions which reinforce the adage - a picture is worth a 1,000 words.
'Never since the Black Death has such a plague swept over the face of the world,' commented the Times , '[and] never, perhaps, has a plague been more stoically accepted.' When the Great Influenza pandemic finally ended, in April 1919, 228,000 people in Britian alone were dead. This book tells the story of the Great Influenza pandemic.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book breaks new ground by situating animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine, it offers important insights into past animal lives, and reveals that what we think of as 'human' medicine was in fact deeply zoological. Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain's zoos, sick sheep on Scottish farms, unproductive livestock in developing countries, and the tapeworms of California and Beirut, they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich historical connections with biology, zoology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern movement for One Health - whose history is also analyzed - is therefore revealed as just the latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines. This book will appeal to historians of animals, science and medicine, to those involved in the promotion and practice of One Health today.
Albert Einstein is an icon of the twentieth century. Born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879, he is most famous for his theory of relativity, which is considered the founding principle of modern physics. He also made enormous contributions to quantum mechanics and cosmology, and for his work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. A self-pronounced pacifist, humanist, and, late in his life, democratic socialist, Einstein was also deeply concerned with the social impact of his discoveries. Much of Einstein's life is shrouded in legend. From popular images and advertisements to various works of theater and fiction, he has come to signify so many things: the quintessential absent-minded professor; the gentle eccentric; the pacifist; the super-human genius. In Einstein: A Biography, Jurgen Neffe presents a clear and probing portrait of the man behind the myth. He recounts Einstein's life with detail and accuracy, presenting a comprehensive account of the educational, religious, psychological and historical conditions that enabled Einstein to become the ber-physicist of all time. Unearthing new documents, including a series of previously unknown letters from Einstein to his sons, which shed a new light on his role as a father, Neffe also paints a rich portrait of the tumultuous years in which Einstein lived and worked. With a background in the sciences, Neffe describes and contextualizes Einstein's enormous contributions to our scientific legacy. He leads his readers through today's institutes and laboratories worldwide, where Einstein's work continues to thrill researchers and scholars. A bestseller in Germany, Einstein is sure to be a classic biography of the man and proverbial genius who has been called the brain of the [twentieth] century.
What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying from the discipline's ethical foundations, Psychology as a Moral Science argues that psychological phenomena are inherently moral, and that psychology, as prescriptive and interventive practice, reflects specific moral principles. The book cites normative moral standards, as far back as Aristotle, that give human thoughts, feelings, and actions meaning, and posits psychology as one of the critical methods of organizing normative values in society; at the same time it carefully notes the discipline's history of being sidetracked by overemphasis on theoretical constructs and physical causes-what the author terms "the psychologizing of morality." This synthesis of ideas brings an essential unity to what can sometimes appear as a fragmented area of inquiry at odds with itself. The book's "interpretive-pragmatic approach" Revisits core psychological concepts as supporting normative value systems. Traces how psychology has shaped society's view of morality. Confronts the "naturalistic fallacy" in contemporary psychology. Explains why moral science need not be separated from social science. Addresses challenges and critiques to the author's work from both formalist and relativist theories of morality. With its bold call to reason, Psychology as a Moral Science contains enough controversial ideas to spark great interest among researchers and scholars in psychology and the philosophy of science."
Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the publication of Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning (1605), this collection examines Bacon's recasting of proto-scientific philosophies and practices into early modern discourses of knowledge. Like Bacon, all of the contributors to this volume confront an essential question: how to integrate intellectual traditions with emergent knowledges to forge new intellectual futures. The volume's main theme is Bacon's core interest in identifying and conceptualizing coherent intellectual disciplines, including the central question of whether Bacon succeeded in creating unified discourses about learning. Bacon's interests in natural philosophy, politics, ethics, law, medicine, religion, neoplatonic magic, technology and humanistic learning are here mirrored in the contributors' varied intellectual backgrounds and diverse approaches to Bacon's thought.
The critically acclaimed laboratory standard, Methods in Enzymology, is one of the most highly respected publications in the field of biochemistry. Since 1955, each volume has been eagerly awaited, frequently consulted, and praised by researchers and reviewers alike. The series contains much material still relevant today - truly an essential publication for researchers in all fields of life sciences.
This highly multidisciplinary collection discusses an increasingly important topic among scholars in science and technology studies: objectivity in science. It features eleven essays on scientific objectivity from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy of science, history of science, and feminist philosophy. Topics addressed in the book include the nature and value of scientific objectivity, the history of objectivity, and objectivity in scientific journals and communities. Taken individually, the essays supply new methodological tools for theorizing what is valuable in the pursuit of objective knowledge and for investigating its history. The essays offer many starting points, while suggesting new avenues of research. Taken collectively, the essays exemplify the very virtues of objectivity that they theorize-in reading them together, the reader can sense various anxieties about the dangerously subjective in our age and locate commonalities of concern as well as differences of approach. As a result, the volume offers an expansive vision of a research community seeking a communal understanding of its own methods and its own epistemic anxieties, struggling to enunciate the key problems of knowledge of our time and offer insight into how to overcome them.
"To earn a degree, every doctoral candidate should go out to Harvard Square, find an audience, and explain his or her] dissertation." Everett Mendelsohn's worldly advice to successive generations of students, whether apocryphal or real, has for over forty years spoken both to the essence of his scholarship, and to the role of the scholar. Possibly no one has done more to establish the history of the life sciences as a recognized university discipline in the United States, and to inspire a critical concern for the ways in which science and technology operate as central features of Western society. This book is both an act of homage and of commemoration to Professor Mendelsohn on his 70th birthday. As befits its subject, the work it presents is original, comparative, wide-ranging, and new. Since 1960, Everett Mendelsohn has been identified with Harvard Univer sity, and with its Department of the History of Science. Those that know him as a teacher, will also know him as a scholar. In 1968, he began- and after 30 years, has just bequeathed to others - the editorship of the Journal of the History of Biology, among the earliest and one of the most important publications in its field. At the same time, he has been a pioneer in the social history and sociology of science. He has formed particularly close working relationships with colleagues in Sweden and Germany - as witnessed by his editorial presence in the Sociology of Science Yearbook."
Catastrophes are part of Earth's real history. Its grim disasters, acting as a backdrop against which human dramas have been played out, have been recorded in many ancient writings. As Milne shows, doomsday catastrophism, once the prerogative of 18th-century geologists steeped in the Biblical memory of the Great Flood, has now regained respectability. Catastrophism applies to many disciplines such as planetary science, biology, climatology, and evolutionary theory. The universe itself, we now believe, is a product of a giant cosmic catastrophe. Indeed life itself may have arisen when the moon may have crystallized out of a crashing mini-planet that enabled organisms to emerge into tidal pools. Floods and natural disasters seem to be on the increase everywhere and are no longer just a Third World problem. The fear of climatic disturbances are the source of regular international conferences, and it is seriously suggested that the U.S. military shoot down plummeting comets before they destroy civilization, as they once destroyed the dinosaurs. Milne provides a contemporary look at catastrophism in its scientific and in its disastrous earth-shattering sense. Within one volume a wide range of up-to-date scientific facts and concepts are examined. Milne gives readers interested in scientific controversies, contemporary affairs and environmental issues an important document that chronicles the end of a turbulent and disturbing 2,000 years.
The articles selected for this volume explore emergent issues in the contemporary relationship between Islam and science and present studies of eight major voices in the discourse. Also included is a section on the operationalization of Islamic science in the modern world and a section on studies in traditional Islamic cosmology.
The author, a well-known astronomer himself, describes the evolution of astronomical ideas, touching only lightly on most of the instrumental developments. Richly illustrated, the book starts with the astronomical ideas of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian philosophers, moves on to the Greek period and then on to the golden age of astronomy, that of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Finally, Pecker concludes with modern theories of cosmology. Written with astronomy undergraduates in mind, this is a fascinating survey of astronomical thinking.
50 years of DNA double helix; what was before, and afterwards The present book, although written mainly for science students and research scientists, is also aimed at those readers who look at science, not for its own sake, but in search of a better understanding of our world in general. What were the fundamental questions asked by the early pioneers of molecular biology? What made them tick for decades, trying to elucidate the basic mechanisms of heredity and life itself? In each chapter, the development of a particular aspect of modern biology is described in a historical and logical context, not missing to take into account human aspects of the protagonists of the story. At the end of each chapter, there are some excursus with additional information, technical and otherwise, which can be read separately. The book is enriched with many illustrations, including facsimile reproductions from the original descriptions of key experiments.
This is the compelling story of the two biggest events in the evolution of ideas: the revolutions of Galileo and Darwin. The ideological shifts that resulted from their work were crucial not only to science. Their impact on society and culture has been equally decisive up to the current century. Mark Brake captures the adventure and excitement of these two scientists--one who overturned humanity's central place in the universe and another who challenged the very notion of the origins of humankind. Their discoveries in a sense became "weapons of science," that challenged the long-held views of creation and human origins promoted by the Church for centuries. At a time when creationism and intelligent design are again in the news, this is a timely examination of the ways in which faith and science clash, and how the battle for "truth" is a perennial one.
This book is the summation of many decades of work by Peter L. Berger, an internationally renowned sociologist of religion. Secularization theory-which saw modernity as leading to a decline of religion-has been empirically falsified. It should be replaced by a nuanced theory of pluralism. In this new book, Berger outlines the possible foundations for such a theory, addressing a wide range of issues spanning individual faith, interreligious societies, and the political order. He proposes a conversation around a new paradigm for religion and pluralism in an age of multiple modernities. The book also includes responses from three eminent scholars of religion:Nancy Ammerman, Detlef Pollack, and Fenggang Yang.
Francis BACON, in his Novum Organum, Robert BOYLE, in his Skeptical Chemist and Rene DESCARTES, in his Discourse on Method; all of these men were witnesses to the th scientific revolution, which, in the 17 century, began to awaken the western world from a long sleep. In each of these works, the author emphasizes the role of the experimental method in exploring the laws of Nature, that is to say, the way in which an experiment is designed, implemented according to tried and tested te- niques, and used as a basis for drawing conclusions that are based only on results, with their margins of error, taking into account contemporary traditions and prejudices. Two centuries later, Claude BERNARD, in his Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, made a passionate plea for the application of the experimental method when studying the functions of living beings. Twenty-first century Biology, which has been fertilized by highly sophisticated techniques inherited from Physics and Chemistry, blessed with a constantly increasing expertise in the manipulation of the genome, initiated into the mysteries of information techn- ogy, and enriched with the ever-growing fund of basic knowledge, at times appears to have forgotten its roots."
Despite its long history and stunning experimental successes, the mathematical foundation of perturbative quantum field theory is still a subject of ongoing research. This book aims at presenting some of the most recent advances in the field, and at reflecting the diversity of approaches and tools invented and currently employed. Both leading experts and comparative newcomers to the field present their latest findings, helping readers to gain a better understanding of not only quantum but also classical field theories. Though the book offers a valuable resource for mathematicians and physicists alike, the focus is more on mathematical developments. This volume consists of four parts: The first Part covers local aspects of perturbative quantum field theory, with an emphasis on the axiomatization of the algebra behind the operator product expansion. The second Part highlights Chern-Simons gauge theories, while the third examines (semi-)classical field theories. In closing, Part 4 addresses factorization homology and factorization algebras.
Haldane, Mayr, and Beanbag Genetics presents a summary of the
classic exchange between two great biologists - J.B.S. Haldane and
Ernst Mayr - regarding the value of the contributions of the
mathematical school represented by J.B.S. Haldane, R.A. Fisher and
S. Wright to the theory of evolution. Their pioneering
contributions from 1918 to the 1960s dominated and shaped the field
of population genetics, unique in the annals of science. In 1959,
Mayr questioned what he regarded as the beanbag genetic approach of
these pioneers to evolutionary theory, "an input or output of
genes, as the adding of certain beans to a beanbag and the
withdrawing of others." In 1964, Mayr's contention was refuted by
Haldane in a remarkably witty, vigorous and pungent essay, "A
defense of beanbag genetics" which compared the mathematical theory
to a scaffolding within which a reasonably secure theory
expressible in words may be built up. Correspondence between
Haldane and Mayr is included.
Gregor Johann Mendel continues to fascinate the general public as well as scholars, the former for his life and the latter for his achievements. "Solitude of a Humble Genius" is a two-volume biography presenting Mendel in the context of the history of biology and philosophy, and in the context of the setting in which he lived and worked. In this first volume the authors set the stage for a new interpretation of Mendel s achievements and personality. The period of Mendel s life covered by this volume is critical to understanding why he saw what other biologists, including Charles Darwin, for example, didn t. In searching for clues to Mendel s thinking, the authors discuss at length the origin of his genes; the history of the region of his birth; they also spend a day and then the four seasons of the year with his family; and finally they examine the schooling he received, as well as the cultural and political influences he was exposed to. An indispensible part of the work is Norman Klein s artwork. In this first volume alone, it comprises nearly 80 original drawings and includes cartoons that enliven the narration, scenes from Mendel s life, portraits, and plans and drawings of the cities and buildings in which he lived, studied, and worked."
Eclipses have long been seen as important celestial phenomena, whether as omens affecting the future of kingdoms, or as useful astronomical events to help in deriving essential parameters for theories of the motion of the moon and sun. This is the first book to collect together all presently known records of timed eclipse observations and predictions from antiquity to the time of the invention of the telescope. In addition to cataloguing and assessing the accuracy of the various records, which come from regions as diverse as Ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Europe, the sources in which they are found are described in detail. Related questions such as what type of clocks were used to time the observations, how the eclipse predictions were made, and how these prediction schemes were derived from the available observations are also considered. The results of this investigation have important consequences for how we understand the relationship between observation and theory in early science and the role of astronomy in early cultures, and will be of interest to historians of science, astronomers, and ancient and medieval historians. |
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