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A noted historian of science examines the Coperican revolution, the anatomical work of Vesalius, the work of Paracelsus, Harvey's discovery of the circulatory system, the effects of Galileo's telescopic discoveries, more.
"To earn a degree, every doctoral candidate should go out to Harvard Square, find an audience, and explain his [or her] dissertation". Everett Mendelsohn's worldly advice to successive generations of students, whether apocryphal or real, has for over forty years spoken both to the essence of his scholarship, and to the role of the scholar. Possibly no one has done more to establish the history of the life sciences as a recognized university discipline in the United States, and to inspire a critical concern for the ways in which science and technology operate as central features of Western society. This book is both an act of homage and of commemoration to Professor Mendelsohn on his 70th bir...
This collection of original essays honors Richard S. Westfall, a highly influential scholar in the history of the physical sciences and their relations with religion. It is divided into three parts: the life, work, and influence of Newton; science and religion; and historiographical and social studies of science.
Henry Oldenburg, born in 1619 in Bremen, Germany, first came to England as a diplomat on a mission to see Oliver Cromwell. He stayed on in England and in 1662 became the Secretary of the Royal Society, and its best known member to the entire learned world of his time. Through his extensive correspondence, now published, he disseminated the Society's ideals and methods at home and abroad. He fostered and encouraged the talents of many scientists later to be far more famous than he, including Newton, Flamsteed, Malpighi, and Leeuwenhoek with whom, as with many others, he developed real friendship. He founded and edited the Philosophical Transactions, the world's oldest scientific journal. His career sheds new light on the intellectual world of his time, especially its scientific aspects, and on the development of the Royal Society; his private life expands our knowledge of social mobility, the urban society, and the religious views of his time.
First published in 1962, this volume collects together some of Newton's most important scientific papers. Chosen primarily to illustrate Newton's ideas on the nature of matter, the papers afford valuable insights into Newton's development as a scientist and his ideas of the world that science explores. The six sections are entitled: Mathematics, Mechanics, Theory of Matter, Manuscripts related to the Principia, Education and Notes. Each section has a critical introduction to set the manuscripts in perspective and to discuss their implications. English translations of the Latin documents are given.
Fifteen readable essays examine topics such as editorial policy in the early journals, the economic side of scientific publishing in the 17th and 18th centuries, aspects of journal indexing, early modern scientific networks, and the issues of authorship and authority. The whole constitutes a body of work that reveals both the richness and scope for further inquiry that has motivated Kronick for decades.
A collection of fifteen essays on some of the problems associated with the Scientific Revolution.
Walter Charleton is an intriguing character—he flits through the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn, the correspondence of Margaret Cavendish, and his texts appear in the libraries of better-known contemporaries. We catch sight of him 1 conversing with Pepys about teeth, arguing with Inigo Jones about the origin of 2 Stonehenge, being lampooned in contemporary satire, stealing from the Royal Society, and embarrassing himself in anatomical procedures. While extremely active in a broad range of Royal Society investigations, his main discovery there seems to have been that tadpoles turned into frogs. As a practising physician of limited means, Walter Charleton was reliant for his living upon patrons...
What begins with an unlikely collection of unrelated phenomena--mechanical dolls, weather, atoms, lyric poetry--blossoms in the course of Toy Medium into a subtle and persuasive meditation on one of Western philosophy's biggest puzzles: the relation of mind and matter. What is the role of the imagination in defining material substance? In a dazzling study of the poetics of materialist philosophy and of the materialism of lyric poetry, Daniel Tiffany traces the historical conjunction of matter and metaphor through a remarkable range of topics: automata in classical antiquity and the eighteenth century; Kepler's treatise on snowflakes; animal magnetism; fireworks and cloud-chamber photographs; the origins of the microscope as a philosophical toy and its bearing on the figure of the virtuoso. At critical junctures in modern Western culture, Tiffany finds uncanny parallels between the metaphorics of science and visions of material substance rooted in popular culture and lyric poetry. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000
Sky Loom offers a dazzling introduction to Native American myths, stories, and songs drawn from previous collections by acclaimed translator and poet Brian Swann. With a general introduction by Swann, Sky Loom is a stunning collection that provides a glimpse into the intricacies and beauties of story and myth, placing them in their cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts. Each of the twenty-six selections is translated and introduced by a well-known expert on Native oral literatures and offers entry into the cultures and traditions of several different tribes and bands, including the Yupiit and the Tlingits of the polar North; the Coast Salish and the Kwakwaka’wakw of the Pacific Northwest; the Navajos, the Pimas, and the Yaquis of the Southwest; the Lakota Sioux and the Plains Crees of the Great Plains; the Ojibwes of the Great Lakes; the Naskapis and the Eastern Crees of the Hudson Bay area in Canada; and the Munsees of the Northeast. Sky Loom takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey through literary traditions older than the “discovery” of the New World.