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Darwin’s theory of evolution transformed the life sciences and made profound claims about human origins and the human condition, topics often viewed as the prerogative of religion. As a result, evolution has provoked a wide variety of religious responses, ranging from angry rejection to enthusiastic acceptance. While Christian responses to evolution have been studied extensively, little scholarly attention has been paid to Jewish reactions. Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism is the first extended meditation on the Jewish engagement with this crucial and controversial theory. The contributors to Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism—from several academic disciplines...
The Cold War ended long ago, but the language of science and freedom continues to shape public debates over the relationship between science and politics in the United States. Scientists like to proclaim that science knows no borders. Scientific researchers follow the evidence where it leads, their conclusions free of prejudice or ideology. But is that really the case? In Freedom's Laboratory, Audra J. Wolfe shows how these ideas were tested to their limits in the high-stakes propaganda battles of the Cold War. Wolfe examines the role that scientists, in concert with administrators and policymakers, played in American cultural diplomacy after World War II. During this period, the engines of ...
This title examines the history of biotechnology when it was new, especially when synonymous with recombinant DNA technology. It focuses on the academic community in the San Francisco Bay Area where recombinant DNA technology was developed and adopted as the first major commercial technology for genetic engineering at Stanford in the 1970s. The book argues that biotechnology was initially a hybrid creation of academic and commercial institutions held together by the assumption of a positive relationship between private ownership and the public interest.
This volume examines the international impact of Lysenkoism in its namesake’s heyday and the reasons behind Lysenko’s rehabilitation in Russia today. By presenting the rise and fall of T.D. Lysenko in its various aspects, the authors provide a fresh perspective on one of the most notorious episodes in the history of science.
While iconic popular images celebrated family life during the 1950s and 1960s, American families were simultaneously regarded as potentially menacing sources of social disruption. The history of family therapy makes the complicated power of the family at midcentury vividly apparent. Clinicians developed a new approach to psychotherapy that claimed to locate the cause and treatment of mental illness in observable patterns of family interaction and communication rather than in individual psyches. Drawing on cybernetics, systems theory, and the social and behavioral sciences, they ambitiously aimed to cure schizophrenia and stop juvenile delinquency. With particular sensitivity to the importanc...
"This book tracks the life history of insecticide-treated nets to explain how and why this technology became a cornerstone of global malaria control in the twenty first century"--
Biographies of scientists carry an increasingly prominent role in today's publishing climate. Traditional historical and sociological accounts of science are complemented by narratives that emphasize the importance of the scientific subject in the production of science. Not least is the realization that the role of science in culture is much more accessible when presented through the lives of its practitioners. Taken as a genre, such biographies play an important role in the public understanding of science. In recent years there has been an increasing number of monographs and collections about biography in general and literary biography in particular. However, biographies of scientists, engi...
The past quarter-century has seen an explosion of interest in the history of science and religion. But all too often the scholars writing it have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Christian experience, with only passing reference to other traditions of both science and faith. At a time when religious ignorance and misunderstanding have lethal consequences, such provincialism must be avoided and, in this pioneering effort to explore the historical relations of what we now call "science" and "religion," the authors go beyond the Abrahamic traditions to examine the way nature has been understood and manipulated in regions as diverse as ancient China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Science and Religion around the World also provides authoritative discussions of science in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- as well as an exploration of the relationship between science and the loss of religious beliefs. The narratives included in this book demonstrate the value of plural perspectives and of the importance of location for the construction and perception of science-religion relations.
Will revolutionize reader's understanding of the principles of modern genetics, Nazi racial policies and the relationship between them.