How did we make reliable predictions before Pascal and Fermat's discovery of the mathematics of probability in 1654? What methods in law, science, commerce, philosophy, and logic helped us to get at the truth in cases where certainty was not attainable? In The Science of Conjecture, James Franklin examines how judges, witch inquisitors, and juries ......
The biotech arena emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when molecular biology, one of the fastest-moving areas of basic science in the twentieth century, met the business world. Gene Jockeys is a detailed study of the biotech projects that led to five of the first ten recombinant DNA drugs to be approved for medical use in the United States: human ......
For centuries naturalists have endeavored to name, order, and explain biological diversity. Karl Jordan (18611959) dedicated his long life to this effort, describing thousands of new species in the process. Ordering Life explores the career of this prominent figure as he worked to ensure a continued role for natural history museums and the field ......
From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization
People have pondered conflicts between science and religion since at least the time of Christ. The millennia-long debate is well documented in the literature in the history and philosophy of science and religion in Western civilization. Science and Eastern Orthodoxy is a departure from that vast body of work, providing the first general overview ......
Science, Risk, and the Politics of Hazard Mitigation
In 1906, after an earthquake wiped out much of San Francisco, leading California officials and scientists described the disaster as a one-time occurrence and assured the public that it had nothing to worry about. California Earthquakes explains how, over time, this attitude changed, and Californians came to accept earthquakes as a significant ......
Historian Edward Grant illuminates how today's scientific culture originated with the religious thinkers of the Middle Ages. In the early centuries of Christianity, Christians studied science and natural philosophy only to the extent that these subjects proved useful for a better understanding of the Christian faith, not to acquire knowledge for ......
Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics
Today, we associate the relationship between feedback, control, and computing with Norbert Wiener's 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlier, between the two world wars. In Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing ......
The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age
''He was a man who often was incapable of conducting himself properly in the most elementary social interactions. His only continuing contacts with women were limited to his mother, nieces, and housekeepers. He was a man who knew the power of money and desired it, but refused to work for it, preferring to live off the sweat of his family and ......
As one of the most gifted and prolific writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Asimov became legendary for his talent for explaining complex subjects in clear, concise prose. This book is a condensation of his three-volume autobiography, which spans Asimovs life.
The late twentieth century is trumpeted as the Information Age by pundits and politicians alike, and on the face of it, the claim requires no justification. But in Information Ages, Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman challenge this widespread assumption. In a sweeping and captivating history of information technology from the ancient ......
Explores the visual idioms that made, sustained, revised, and resisted Cartesian philosophy. Locates Descartes's physics and its reception in a panoramic visual culture, where knowledge of the invisible depended on what could be seen.
Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, is renowned as one of the world's most ingenious and influential scientists. Nonetheless, he remains misunderstood and enigmatic, his history shrouded in controversy and myth. Escaping poverty, he joined a scholarly community of Augustinian friars in a monastery and studied at the University of Vienna under ......
Scientific Revolution and the Materialist Dialectic
This book articulates Soviet philosopher Boris Hessen's groundbreaking analysis of socioeconomic development, technological progress, and natural scientific theory; reassesses Hessen's legacy to the history and philosophy of science; and reflects on Hessen's enduring significance in today's world of social inequality and technological progress.
Beginning around 1500, in the decades following Columbus's voyages, the Atlantic Ocean moved from the periphery to the center on European world maps. This brief but highly significant moment in early modern European history marks not only a paradigm shift in how the world was mapped but also the opening of what historians call the Atlantic ......
Today's scientists, policymakers, and citizens are all confronted by numerous dilemmas at the nexus of technology and the environment. Every day seems to bring new worries about the dangers posed by carcinogens, ""superbugs,"" energy crises, invasive species, genetically modified organisms, groundwater contamination, failing infrastructure, and ......
Recent polls show that a quarter of Americans claim to have no religious affiliation, identifying instead as atheists, agnostics, or ""nothing in particular."" A century ago, a small group of American intellectuals who dubbed themselves humanists tread this same path, turning to science as a major source of spiritual sustenance. In The ......
Beginning around 1650, the emergence of a number of new scientific concepts, methods, and instruments'including Copernicanism, the mechanical philosophy, and the microscope'challenged existing syntheses of science and religion. Physico-theology, which embraced the values of personal, empirical observation, was an international movement of the ......
Science, Scale, and Spatiality in the Nineteenth Century
Over the past twenty years, scholars have increasingly questioned not just historical presumptions about the putative rise of modern science during the long nineteenth century but also the geographical contexts for and variability of science during the era. In Geographies of Knowledge, an internationally distinguished array of historians ......
Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the new mathematical techniques to sailors. As these experts debated the value of theory and practice, memory and ......
Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not because our ancestors had no impact on naturenor because they were ......
Science, Exploration, and the Theory of Continental Drift
Alfred Wegener aimed to create a revolution in science which would rank with those of Nicolaus Copernicus and Charles Darwin. After completing his doctoral studies in astronomy at the University of Berlin, Wegener found himself drawn not to observatory science but to rugged fieldwork, which allowed him to cross into a variety of disciplines. ......
How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight
As aircraft flew higher, faster, and farther in the early days of flight, pilots were exposed as vulnerable, inefficient, and dangerous. They asphyxiated or got the bends at high altitudes; they fainted during high-G maneuvers; they spiraled to the ground after encountering clouds or fog. Their capacity to commit fatal errors seemed ......
Since its publication in 2002, Science and Religion has proven to be a widely admired survey of the complex relationship of Western religious traditions to science from the beginning of the Christian era to the late twentieth century. In the second edition, eleven new essays expand the scope and enhance the ......
Since 2000, the National Science Foundation has depended upon its pioneering FastLane e-government system to manage grant applications, peer reviews, and reporting. In this behind-the-scenes account Thomas J. Misa and Jeffrey R. Yost examine how powerful forces of science and computing came together to create this influential ......
A contemporary of Galileo and a forerunner of Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a pioneering German scientist and a pivotal figure in the history of astronomy. This colorful, well-researched biography brings the man and his scientific discoveries to life, showing how his contributions were every bit as important as those of Copernicus, ......
Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science
'The belief that Aristotles philosophy is incompatible with Christianity is hardly controversial today,' writes Craig Martin. Yet 'for centuries, Christian culture embraced Aristotelian thought as its own, reconciling his philosophy with theology and church doctrine. The image of Aristotle as source of religious truth withered in the seventeenth ......
How Shocking Experiments with Strongly Electric Fish Powered Scientific Discovery
Spark from the Deep tells the story of how human beings came to understand and use electricity by studying the evolved mechanisms of strongly electric fish. These animals have the ability to shock potential prey or would-be predators with high-powered electrical discharges.William J. Turkel asks completely fresh questions about the evolutionary, ......
In Nature Exposed, Jennifer Tucker studies the intersecting trajectories of photography and modern science in late Victorian Britain. She examines the role of photograph as witness in scientific investigation and explores the interplay between photography and scientific authority. Almost immediately after the invention of photography in 1839, ......
Albert Einstein may be best known as the wire-haired whacky physicist who gave us the theory of relativity, but that's just one facet of this geniuss contribution to human knowledge and modern science. As József Illy expertly shows in this book, Einstein had an eminently practical side as well. As a youth, Einstein was an inveterate tinkerer in ......
Imagine biology and medicine today without computers. What would laboratory work be like without electronic databases and statistical software? Would disciplines like genomics even be feasible without the means to manage and manipulate huge volumes of digital data? How would patients fare in a world without CT scans, programmable pacemakers, and ......
Why do female animals select certain mates, and how do scientists determine the answer? In considering these questions, Erika Lorraine Milam explores the fascinating patterns of experiment and interpretation that emerged as twentieth-century researchers studied sexual selection and female choice. Approaching the topic from both biological and ......
From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853-1931
In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France, a number of groups turned to the wondrous and occult as a means of understanding and explaining the world. Investigating the Supernatural examines these varied efforts through the phenomena witnessed at sÚances. SÚances were wildly popular in France between 1850 and 1930, among the general ......
From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas
This book explores changing American views of race mixing in the twentieth century, showing how new scientific ideas transformed accepted notions of race and how those ideas played out on college campuses in the 1960s.In the 1930s it was not unusual for medical experts to caution against miscegenation, or race mixing, espousing the common opinion ......
Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe
Change in human understanding of the natural world during the early modern period marks one of the most important episodes in intellectual history. This era is often referred to as the scientific revolution, but recent scholarship has challenged traditional accounts. Here, in Reconfiguring the World, Margaret J. Osler treats the development of the ......
For better or worse, television has been the dominant medium of communication for fifty years. Yet it is a relatively recent invention, one that required passionate inventors, determined businessmen, government regulators, and willing consumers. This volume covers the history of television from nineteenth-century European conceptions of ......
