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Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe
This book is an essay about the character of technology. It tries to argue two points: -Technology as a fundamental human activity is intimately related to all other human activities and thus is an integral, indispensable part of all human culture and is not, as one often hears, an alien, inhuman force unleashed upon mankind by some external agent. -The interactive relationship between technology and all the other manifestations of human life and culture can be proven, even interactions as intractable and elusive as that between the political, social, economic, or religious ideas dominant in a given society and contemporary preferences and designs of technological hardware.
The Origins of Feedback Control
A case study in the intellectual history of technology, the book spans the invention of feedback control devices in all degrees of realization, from the verbally expressed idea to the industrially proved apparatus.
Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy
This book is the first detailed biography of Ernst Mayr. He was an ‘architect’ of the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, and the greatest evolutionary biologist since Charles Darwin. He is one of the most widely known biologists of the 20th century.
Miracles and Machines
An abundantly illustrated narrative that draws from the history of art, science, technology, artificial intelligence, psychology, religion, and conservation in telling the extraordinary story of a Renaissance robot that prays. This volume tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.” The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earliest extant ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to legend connected to the court of Philip II of Spain, the monk represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a hum...
Paths of Fire
Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human life. Here Robert McC. Adams, renowned anthropologist and Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, builds a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular nature. The result is nothing less than a sweeping history of technological transformation from ancient times until now. Rare in antiquity, the bursts of innovations that mark the advance of technology have gradually accelerated and now have become an almost continuous feature of our culture. Repeatedly...
The Enola Gay and the Smithsonian Institution
On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which ushered on the end of World War II. For the 50th anniversary of this major event in world history, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution produced an exhibit. A controversy erupted, however, over the exhibit's historical authenticity. Veterans, for example, complained that the museum displayed a misrepresented version of history. After concisely covering the background of the Enola Gay and its mission, this study focuses on the controversy surrounding the museum exhibit. Issues covered include casualty figures, ethical questions, and political correctness, among others. The viewpoints of such groups as museum personnel, exhibit organizers, veterans, and historians are covered. Appendices offer information on content analysis of the National Air and Space Museum exhibit script, non-museum materials that were intended to complement the exhibit script, and the importance of full disclosure in research.
The Antechamber
Helmut Puff invites readers to visit societies and spaces of the past through the lens of a particular temporal modality: waiting. From literature, memoirs, manuals, chronicles, visuals, and other documents, Puff presents a history of waiting anchored in antechambers—interior rooms designated and designed for people to linger. In early modern continental Western Europe, antechambers became standard in the residences of the elites. As a time-space infrastructure these rooms shaped encounters between unequals. By imposing spatial distance and temporal delays, antechambers constituted authority, rank, and power. Puff explores both the logic and the experience of waiting in such formative spac...
Prevention of Injuries and Overuse in Sports
This book, published in cooperation with ESSKA, is a comprehensive, evidence-based manual on the prevention of injuries and overuse in sports that will assist physicians, physiotherapists, and trainers in providing excellent mental and physical guidance to athletes. The causes of overuse and sports injuries are carefully analyzed, explaining the medical basis for prevention. In addition, detailed attention is paid to the relationship between sport motivation, risk willingness, tendency to overload, and tendency to increased risk of injury. The reader is effectively trained in mental and physical analysis of the athlete and will gain an appreciation of the influence of the athlete’s envi...
Making Marvels
Featuring more than 150 treasures from several of the world’s most prestigious collections, Making Marvels explores the vital intersection of art, technology, and political power at the courts of early modern Europe. It was there, from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, that a remarkable outpouring of creativity and learning gave rise to exquisite objects that were at once beautiful works of art and technological wonders. By amassing vast, glittering collections of these ingeniously crafted objects, princes flaunted their wealth and competed for mastery over the known world. More than mere status symbols, however, many of these marvels ushered in significant advancements that have had a lasting influence on astronomy, engineering, and even international politics. Incisive texts by leading scholars situate these works within the rich, complex symbolism of life at court, where science and splendor were pursued with equal vigor and together contributed to a culture of magnificence.
A General History of Horology
The text provides a general history of horology, covering time-keeping worldwide and at all periods throughout history, from antiquity (Assyria and Egypt included) to the present day.
