Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Ideology and Evolution in Nineteenth Century Britain
Written over several decades and collected together for the first time, these richly detailed contextual studies by a leading historian of science examine the diverse ways in which cultural values and political and professional considerations impinged upon the construction, acceptance and applications of nineteenth century evolutionary theory. They include a number of interrelated analyses of the highly politicised roles of embryos and monsters in pre- and post- Darwinian evolutionary theorizing, including Darwin’s; several studies of the intersection of Darwinian science and its practitioners with issues of gender, race and sexuality, featuring a pioneering contextual analysis of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection; and explorations of responses to Darwinian science by notable Victorian women intellectuals, including the crusading anti-feminist and ardent Darwinian, Eliza Lynn Linton, the feminist and leading anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe, and Annie Besant, the bible-bashing, birth-control advocate who confronted Darwin’s opposition to contraception at the notorious Knowlton Trial.
Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection
Darwin’s concept of natural selection has been exhaustively studied, but his secondary evolutionary principle of sexual selection remains largely unexplored and misunderstood. Yet sexual selection was of great strategic importance to Darwin because it explained things that natural selection could not and offered a naturalistic, as opposed to divine, account of beauty and its perception. Only now, with Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection, do we have a comprehensive and meticulously researched account of Darwin’s path to its formulation—one that shows the man, rather than the myth, and examines both the social and intellectual roots of Darwin’s theory. Drawing on the minutiae of ...
Victorian Science in Context
Victorians were fascinated by the flood of strange new worlds that science was opening to them. Exotic plants and animals poured into London from all corners of the Empire, while revolutionary theories such as the radical idea that humans might be descended from apes drew crowds to heated debates. Men and women of all social classes avidly collected scientific specimens for display in their homes and devoured literature about science and its practitioners. Victorian Science in Context captures the essence of this fascination, charting the many ways in which science influenced and was influenced by the larger Victorian culture. Contributions from leading scholars in history, literature, and the history of science explore questions such as: What did science mean to the Victorians? For whom was Victorian science written? What ideological messages did it convey? The contributors show how practical concerns interacted with contextual issues to mold Victorian science—which in turn shaped much of the relationship between modern science and culture.
Romanticism and the Sciences
This book presents a series of essays which focus on the role of Romantic philosophy and ideology in the sciences.
Human Forms
A major rethinking of the European novel and its relationship to early evolutionary science The 120 years between Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871) marked both the rise of the novel and the shift from the presumption of a stable, universal human nature to one that changes over time. In Human Forms, Ian Duncan reorients our understanding of the novel's formation during its cultural ascendancy, arguing that fiction produced new knowledge in a period characterized by the interplay between literary and scientific discourses—even as the two were separating into distinct domains. Duncan focuses on several crisis points: the contentious formation of a natural...
Vitamin C and Cancer
A study of the development and rejection of vitamin C as a treatment for cancer, this text also explores the evaluation process of such a contentious treatment. Based on social, economic and financial considerations, it sees these decisions as political rather than objective assessments.
Sparks of Life
How, asks James E. Strick, could spontaneous generation--the idea that living things can suddenly arise from nonliving materials--come to take root for a time (even a brief one) in so thoroughly unsuitable a field as British natural theology? No less an authority than Aristotle claimed that cases of spontaneous generation were to be observed in nature, and the idea held sway for centuries. Beginning around the time of the Scientific Revolution, however, the doctrine was increasingly challenged; attempts to prove or disprove it led to important breakthroughs in experimental design and laboratory techniques, most notably sterilization methods, that became the cornerstones of modern microbiolog...
Facts, Values, and Methodology
Science is not value-free and ethics is not fact-free. Science and ethics should be similar, but they are not. The author indicates how research in ethics is to change in the face of this. Ethicists should accommodate empirical work in their programs and they should take heed of methodologies developed in science and philosophy of science. They should abandon the search for a single overarching theory of morality. Controversies in ethics are often spurious for lack of articulate methodological key concepts. For example, disagreements over the value of general theories are misguided since disputants implicitly use different notions of generality and different notions of theory. An appropriate methodology does not suffice for the resolution of controversies but it is indispensable for consensus. The book argues these theses in a general way and applies them to the subject of egoism and altruism in ethics. Further case studies concern the environment and psychiatric disorders.
The Dark Side of Charles Darwin
A single man stands behind the greatest deception in history. Charles Darwin's ideas still penetrate every aspect of our culture, including science, religion, and education. And while much has been made of his contribution to the evolutionary hypothesis, little has been publicized about the dark side of the man himself and how this may have impacted the quality and legitimacy of his research. This daring and compelling book takes its readers behind the popular facade of a man revered worldwide as a scientific pioneer, and unveils what kind of person Darwin really was. The book reveals disturbing facts that will help you: Perceive Darwin firsthand through the eyes of family and friends, and his own correspondence Discern this darkly troubled man, struggling with physical and mental health issues Uncover his views on eugenics and racism, and his belief that women were less evolved than men Thoroughly documented, this book reveals Darwin's less-than-above board methods of attempting to prove his so-called scientific beliefs, and his plot to "murder God" by challenging the then-dominant biblical worldview.
The Wider Domain of Evolutionary Thought
Only in fairly recent years has History and Philosophy of Science been recognized - though not always under that name - as a distinct field of scholarly endeavour. Previously, in the Australasian region as elsewhere, those few individuals working within this broad area of inquiry found their base, both intellectually and socially, where they could. In fact, the institutionalization of History and Philosophy of Science began compara tively early in Australia. An initial lecturing appointment was made at the University of Melbourne immediately after the Second World War, in 1946, and other appointments followed as the subject underwent an expansion during the 1950s and '60s similar to that whi...
