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This volume is put together in honor of a distinguished historian of science, Kostas Gavroglu, whose work has won international acclaim, and has been pivotal in establishing the discipline of history of science in Greece, its consolidation in other countries of the European Periphery, and the constructive dialogue of these emerging communities with an extended community of international scholars. The papers in the volume reflect Gavroglu’s broad range of intellectual interests and touch upon significant themes in recent history and philosophy of science. They include topics in the history of modern physical sciences, science and technology in the European periphery, integrated history and philosophy of science, historiographical considerations, and intersections with the history of mathematics, technology and contemporary issues. They are authored by eminent scholars whose academic and personal trajectories crossed with Gavroglu’s. The book will interest historians and philosophers of science and technology alike, as well as science studies scholars, and generally readers interested in the role of the sciences in the past in various geographical contexts.
Selling Science in the Age of Newton explores an often ignored avenue in the popularization of science. It is an investigation of how advertisements in London newspapers (from approximately 1687 to 1727) enticed consumers to purchase products relating to science: books, lecture series, and instruments. London's readers were among the first in Europe to be exposed to regular newspapers and the advertisements contained in them. This occurred just as science began to captivate the nation's imagination due, in part, to Isaac Newton's rising popularity following the publication of his Principia (1687). This unique moment allows us to see how advertising helped shape the initial public reception o...
This book examines how non-fictional travel accounts were rewritten, reshaped, and reoriented in translation between 1750 and 1850, a period that saw a sudden surge in the genre's popularity. It explores how these translations played a vital role in the transmission and circulation of knowledge about foreign peoples, lands, and customs in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. The collection makes an important contribution to travel writing studies by looking beyond metaphors of mobility and cultural transfer to focus specifically on what happens to travelogues in translation. Chapters range from discussing essential differences between the original and translated text to relations between ...
"Beautifully written. Reveals the vicissitudes of an extraordinarily interesting life."--Michael J. Neufeld, author of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War "Willy Ley has been a mystery among spaceflight historians for many years. His role as science writer, advocate, and popularizer is known to many but understood by few. This book unpacks that story."--Roger D. Launius, associate director of collections and curatorial affairs, National Air and Space Museum "Ley lit the fire of interplanetary enthusiasm in the hearts of generations of young space cadets. Long overdue, this biography establishes the details and the ups and downs of his career."--Tom D. Crouch, author of Lighter Than ...
In this ambitious new interdisciplinary study, Useche proposes the metaphor of the social foundry to parse how industrialization informed and shaped cultural and national discourses in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain. Across a variety of texts, Spanish writers, scientists, educators, and politicians appropriated the new economies of industrial production—particularly its emphasis on the human capacity to transform reality through energy and work—to produce new conceptual frameworks that changed their vision of the future. These influences soon appeared in plans to enhance the nation’s productivity, justify systems of class stratification and labor exploitation, or suggest state organizational improvements. This fresh look at canonical writers such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, Concha Espina, Benito Pérez Galdós, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, and José Echegaray as well as lesser known authors offers close readings of their work as it reflected the complexity of Spain’s process of modernization.
Overlooked, even despised by historians of chemistry for many years, the genre of biography has enjoyed a revival since the beginning of this century. The key to its renaissance is the use of the biographical form to provide a contextual analysis of important themes in contrast to the uncritical, almost hagiographic, lives of chemists written in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Bringing together the contributions of scholars active in several different countries, Perspectives on Chemical Biography in the 21st Century leads the reader through emerging questions around sources, and the generic problems faced by authors of biographies, before moving on to discuss aspects more related with physical, theoretical and inorganic chemistry, and facets of 19th century chemistry. In contrast to the letters and diaries of earlier chemists, we are now faced with scientists who communicate by telephone and email, and compose their documents on computers. Are we facing a modern equivalent of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria where all our sources are wiped out electronically?
How scientific discoveries and practice were integrated into nineteenth-century French culture and thought. Winner of the Sarton Medal for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement of the History of Science Society There has been a tendency to view science in nineteenth-century France as the exclusive territory of the nation’s leading academic centers and the powerful Paris-based administrators who controlled them. Ministries and the great savants and institutions of the capital seem to have defined the field, while historians have ignored or glossed over traditions on the periphery of science. In The Savant and the State, Robert Fox charts new historiographical territory by synthesizing the practice...
This book focuses on sciences in the universities of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the chapters in it provide an overview, mostly from the point of view of the history of science, of the different ways universities dealt with the institutionalization of science teaching and research. A useful book for understanding the deep changes that universities were undergoing in the last years of the 20th century. The book is organized around four central themes: 1) Universities in the longue durée; 2) Universities in diverse political contexts; 3) Universities and academic research; 4) Universities and discipline formation. The book is addressed at a broad readership which includes scholars and researchers in the field of General History, Cultural History, History of Universities, History of Education, History of Science and Technology, Science Policy, high school teachers, undergraduate and graduate students of sciences and humanities, and the general interested public.
Written by 30 authors from all over the world, this book provides a unique overview of exciting discoveries and surprising developments in human genetics over the last 50 years. The individual contributions, based on seven international workshops on the history of human genetics, cover a diverse range of topics, including the early years of the discipline, gene mapping and diagnostics. Further, they discuss the status quo of human genetics in different countries and highlight the value of genetic counseling as an important subfield of medical genetics.
4e de couv.: Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers began making films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. Excavating this largely unknown genre of early cinema, Devices of curiosity traces its development from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910. Oliver Gaycken investigates how such films both relied upon previous traditions and created novel visual paradigms that led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. Gaycken also discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade's crime melodramas. Drawing on the insights of the history of science as well as the history of cinema, Devices of curiosity reveals the extent to which popular-science films impacted the formation of documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas.