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Making Natural Knowledge
Arguably the best available introduction to constructivism, a research paradigm that has dominated the history of science for the past forty years, Making Natural Knowledge reflects on the importance of this theory, tells the history of its rise to prominence, and traces its most important tensions. Viewing scientific knowledge as a product of human culture, Jan Golinski challenges the traditional trajectory of the history of science as steady and autonomous progress. In exploring topics such as the social identity of the scientist, the significance of places where science is practiced, and the roles played by language, instruments, and images, Making Natural Knowledge sheds new light on the relations between science and other cultural domains. "A standard introduction to historically minded scholars interested in the constructivist programme. In fact, it has been called the 'constructivist's bible' in many a conference corridor."—Matthew Eddy, British Journal for the History of Science
The Sciences in Enlightened Europe
Radically reorienting our understanding of the Enlightenment, this book explores the complex relations between "englightened" values and the making of scientific knowledge. Here monsters and automata, barometers and botanical gardens, polite academics and boisterous clubs, plans for violent wars and for universal peace, are all relocated in the landscape of enlightened Europe. The contributors show how changing forms of discipline, machinery, and instrumentation affected the emergence of new kinds of knowledge; consider how institutions of public rate taste and conversation helped provide a common frame for the study of human and nonhuman natures; and explore the regional operations of scien...
Making Natural Knowledge
In Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science, Jan Golinski reviews recent writing on the history of science and shows how it has been dramatically reshaped by a new understanding of science itself. In the last few years, scientific knowledge has come to be seen as a product of human culture, an approach that has challenged the tradition of the history of science as a story of steady and autonomous progress. New topics have emerged in historical research, including: the identity of the scientist, the importance of the laboratory, the role of language and instruments, and the connections with other realms of culture and society. Golinski has written a sympathetic but critical survey of this exciting field of research, at a level that can be appreciated by students or anyone else who wants an introduction to contemporary thinking in the development of the sciences.
Science as Public Culture
Examines the development of chemistry in Britain 1760-1820 and relates it to civic life.
Making Natural Knowledge
This book reviews recent writing on the history of science and shows how it has been dramatically reshaped by a new understanding of science itself. In the last few years, scientific knowledge has come to be seen as a product of human culture. This new approach has challenged the tradition of the history of science as a story of steady and autonomous progress.
The Experimental Self
How did someone become a scientist before the profession itself existed? Jan Golinski finds an answer in the remarkable career of Humphry Davy (1778-1829), one of the foremost British men of science of the nineteenth century. Originally a country boy from a modest background, Davy s remarkable accomplishments propelled him to a knighthood and the presidency of the Royal Society. He was a brilliant and celebrated lecturer, and his chemical investigations led to the discoveries of sodium, potassium, and other elements and to the invention of the miners safety lamp. He was also a poet, a friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth, who wrote philosophical dialogues, a book on salmon-fishing, and narrati...
British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment
Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the eighteenth century from the systematic recording of the weather, and how it was deployed in discussions of the health and welfare of the population. Enlightened intellectuals hailed climate’s role in the development of civilization but acknowledged that human existence depended on natural forces that would never submit to rational control. Reading the Enlightenment through the ideas, beliefs, and practices concerning the weather, Jan Golinski aims to reshape our understanding of the movement and its legacy for modern environmental thinking. With its combination of cultural history and the history of science, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment counters the claim that Enlightenment progress set humans against nature, instead revealing that intellectuals of the age drew characteristically modern conclusions about the inextricability of nature and culture.
Discussing Chemistry and Steam
This book contains an edition of the Minutes of the Coffee House Philosophical Society 1780-1787, as transcribed by William Nicholson, the secretary to the society. The 1780s were exciting years for science and for its applications, and experimental philosophy and industrial development wereclosely interwoven. This coffee house society provided a group of natural philosophers with the oppotunity to discuss the topics that most interested them. The minutes themselves, unique in their completeness, constitute a continuous record of the fortnightly meetings of a group of leading naturalphilosophers, instrument makers, physicians, and industrialist entrepreneurs. They are an important resource f...
The Values of Precision
The Values of Precision examines how exactitude has come to occupy such a prominent place in Western culture. What has been the value of numerical values? Beginning with the late eighteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, the essays in this volume support the view that centralizing states--with their increasingly widespread bureaucracies for managing trade, taxation, and armies--and large-scale commercial enterprises--with their requirements for standardization and mass production--have been the major promoters of numerical precision. Taking advantage of the resources available, scientists and engineers have entered a symbiotic relationship with state and industry, which in turn h...
The Arsenal of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry
The first complete and detailed catalogue of Lavoisier’s collection of instruments preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The story of the collection is carefully reconstructed and its instruments (all illustrated) are described in detail.
