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Charles Withers' book brings together work on the history of geography and the history of science with extensive archival analysis to explore how geographical knowledge has been used to shape an understanding of the nation. Using Scotland as an exemplar, the author places geographical knowledge in its wider intellectual context to afford insights into perspectives of empire, national identity and the geographies of science. In so doing, he advances a new area of geographical enquiry, the historical geography of geographical knowledge, and demonstrates how and why different forms of geographical knowledge have been used in the past to constitute national identity, and where those forms were constructed and received. The book will make an important contribution to the study of nationhood and empire and will therefore interest historians, as well as students of historical geography and historians of science. It is theoretically engaging, empirically rich and beautifully illustrated.
The geography of the book is as old as the history of the book, though far less thoroughly explored. Yet research has increasingly pointed to the spatial dimensions of book history, to the transformation of texts as they are made and moved from place to place, from authors to readers and within different communities and cultures of reception. Widespread recognition of the significance of place, of the effects of movement over space and of the importance of location to the making and reception of print culture has been a feature of recent book history work, and draws in many instances upon studies within the history of science as well as geography. 'Geographies of the Book' explores the complex relationships between the making of books in certain geographical contexts, the movement of books (epistemologically as well as geographically) and the ways in which they are received.
In Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this significant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning, authority, and identity. Chapters from a distinguished range of contributors explore the places of creation, the paths of knowledge transmission and reception, and the import of exchange networks at various scales. Studies range from the inspection of the places of London science, which show how different scientific sites operated different moral and epistemic economies, to the scrutiny of the ways in which the museum space of the Smithsonian Institution and the expansive space of the American West produced science and framed geographical understanding. This volume makes clear that the science of this era varied in its constitution and reputation in relation to place and personnel, in its nature by virtue of its different epistemic practices, in its audiences, and in the ways in which it was put to work.
This book, originally published in 1988, examines the Highlands and Islands of Scotland over several centuries and charts their cultural transformation from a separate region into one where the processes of anglicisation have largely succeeded. It analyses the many aspects of change including the policies of successive governments, the decline of the Gaelic language, the depressing of much of the population into peasantry and the clearances.
The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized—its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance—the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. Placing the Enlightenment contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions to its content and concerns. Investigating the role space and location played in the creation and reception of Enlightenment ideas, Charles ...
Exploring both the Enlightenment as a geographical phenomenon and the place of geography in the Enlightenment, 14 papers from a July 1996 conference in Edinburgh survey the many ways in which the world of the long 18th century was shaped through map, text, exploration, and argument and within and across spatial and intellectual borders. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Surprisingly little is known of the geographical history of Gaelic: where and when it was spoken in the past, and how and why the Gaelic-speaking area of Scotland – the Gaidhealtachd – has retreated and the language declined. A hundred years ago there were 250,000 Gaelic speakers. Now there are 80,000. This book answers four broad questions: What has been the geography of Gaelic in the past? How has that geography changed over time and space? What have been the patterns of language use within the Gaedhealtachd in the past? And what have been the processes of language change? Emphasis is upon the changing geography of the spoken language from 1698 to 1981: from the earliest date for which it is possible to document the expanse of the Gaelic language area to the most recent census to record the numbers speaking Gaelic.
Charles Withers explains how the choice of Greenwich to mark 0° longitude solved problems of global measurement that had engaged geographers, astronomers, and mariners since ancient times. This history is a testament to the power of maps, the challenges of global measurement, and the role of scientific authority in creating the modern world.
A term with myriad associations, revolution is commonly understood in its intellectual, historical, and sociopolitical contexts. Until now, almost no attention has been paid to revolution and questions of geography. Geography and Revolution examines the ways that place and space matter in a variety of revolutionary situations. David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers assemble a set of essays that are themselves revolutionary in uncovering not only the geography of revolutions but the role of geography in revolutions. Here, scientific revolutions—Copernican, Newtonian, and Darwinian—ordinarily thought of as placeless, are revealed to be rooted in specific sites and spaces. Technical...
Focusing on aspects of the functioning of technology, and by looking at instruments and at instrumental performance, this book addresses the epistemological questions arising from examining the technological bases to geographical exploration and knowledge claims. Questions of geography and exploration and technology are addressed in historical and contemporary context and in different geographical locations and intellectual cultures. The collection brings together scholars in the history of geographical exploration, historians of science, historians of technology and, importantly, experts with curatorial responsibilities for, and museological expertise in, major instrument collections. Ranging in their focus from studies of astronomical practice to seismography, meteorological instruments and rockets, from radar to the hand-held barometer, the chapters of this book examine the ways in which instruments and questions of technology - too often overlooked hitherto - offer insight into the connections between geography and exploration.