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Even in his lifetime, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley, who died at Gallipoli in 1915, was widely regarded as the most promising British physicist of his generation. Had he survived, he could well have won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1916. His death provoked in Britain a reassessment of the role that scientists might play in war. This book of essays by eleven scholars is a commemoration of his life, his work, and his ongoing legacy. Linked with the 2015 exhibition 'Dear Harry ... Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War, held at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. This book charts his brief career, military service and his lasting influence in a field of science which is rapidly developing, and foreshadowing the innovation of new materials. For Science, King and Country speaks to both historians and to scientists, and draws on a wealth of newly discovered archival material, artefacts, and interpretations. Together, it presents a comprehensive account of a young scientist whose brief but mercurial career led the way to a new understanding of nature, and to shaping the future of chemistry and physics ever since.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the British sought to master the physical properties of the oceans; in the second half, they lorded over large portions of the oceans’ outer rim. The dominance of Her Majesty’s navy was due in no small part to collaboration between the British Admiralty, the maritime community, and the scientific elite. Together, they transformed the vast emptiness of the ocean into an ordered and bounded grid. In the process, the modern scientist emerged. Science itself expanded from a limited and local undertaking receiving parsimonious state support to worldwide and relatively well financed research involving a hierarchy of practitioners. Analyzing the econ...
Was Western medicine a positive benefit of colonialism or one of its agents of oppression? This question has prompted a vigorous historical and political debate and is explored here in the context of the 'model' British colony of Ceylon. In this study, Margaret Jones emphasises the need for both a broad perspective and a more complex analysis. Colonial medicine is critiqued not merelyu in the political and economic context of imperialism but also against the background of human needs and rights. Her research is underscored by a detailed analysis of public health measures and services in Ceylon. One of its key findings is the accommodation achieved between Western and indigenous medicine. Throughout this work, Jones provides nuanced readings of the categories of colonised and coloniser, as well as the concept of colonial medicine. Health Policy in Britain's Model Colony provides an understanding of historical trends while simultaneously avoiding generalisations that subsume events and actions. Written in a compelling and lucid style, it is a path-breaking contribution to the history of medicine.
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A defining feature of Victorian Britain was its fascination with statistics, and this study shows how data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration, and the arguments and conflicts between social classes.
During the twentieth century, medicine has been radically transformed and powerfully transformative. In 1900, western medicine was important to philanthropy and public health, but it was marginal to the state, the industrial economy and the welfare of most individuals. It is now central to these aspects of life. Our prospects seem increasingly dependent on the progress of bio-medical sciences and genetic technologies which promise to reshape future generations. The editors of Medicine in the Twentieth Century have commissioned over forty authoritative essays, written by historical specialists but intended for general audiences. Some concentrate on the political economy of medicine and health as it changed from period to period and varied between countries, others focus on understandings of the body, and a third set of essays explores transformations in some of the theatres of medicine and the changing experiences of different categories of practitioners and patients.
Worries about scientific objectivity just won t go away, but by now, it s safe to say, no one who reflects on the appropriate role of values and interests in scientific research thinks it is or could be free of them. It now seems obvious that social, political, and economic values and interests influence research on weapons, for example, or health and the environment. Yet the dominant late twentieth-century philosophies of science have tended to conceptualize the reliability and predictive power of the results of research as damaged by such values and interests, and they continue to do so in spite of powerful analyses of how sciences operate in practice and in spite of the rise around the gl...
SCHOLARS AT WAR is the first scholarly publication to examine the effect World War II had on the careers of Australasian social scientists. It links a group of scholars through geography, transnational, national and personal scholarly networks, and shared intellectual traditions, explores their use, and contextualizes their experiences and contributions within wider examinations of the role of intellectuals in war. SCHOLARS AT WAR is structured around historical portraits of individual Australasian social scientists. They are not a tight group; rather a cohort of scholars serendipitously involved in and affected by war who share a point of origin. Analyzing practitioners of the social sciences during war brings to the fore specific networks, beliefs and institutions that transcend politically defined spaces. Individual lives help us to make sense of the historical process, helping us illuminate particular events and the larger cultural, social and even political processes of a moment in time.
Cookstove Chronicles examines India's handcrafted, wood-burning cooking stoves, the rural women who use them, and outsiders who try to improve them by engineering a range of "clean" cooking devices. Khandelwal adopts a transnational feminist, anthropological, and STS perspective to reimagine the humble mud stove as both villain and hero of this story and to suggest pathways for collaboration across radical disciplinary divides.
European expansion began in the early modern period, but in the 18th century Europeans were still far from establishing their rule in Africa or Asia. Many attempts at expansion failed miserably. Nevertheless, the belief in European supremacy and civilizing charisma was consolidated. This study examines the reasons for these unrealistic plans and shows how a gap developed between imperial aspirations and the reality of intercultural encounters. Using the history of French attempts at expansion in Madagascar as an example, it analyses the unfolding of colonial fantasy, the production of bureaucratic knowledge and the role of the Enlightenment in the development of colonialism.