History of science Books

This volume explores problems in the history of science at the intersection of life sciences and agriculture, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Taking a comparative national perspective, the book examines agricultural practices in a...

This book explores the interactions between science and music in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century. It examines and evaluates the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Max Planck, Shohé Tanaka, and Adriaan Fokker, leading physicists and...

This book investigates the development of mechanical sciences with a focus on epistemological issues. It examines the precursors and fundamental milestones of Newton's theory of motion, a geometry of motion since Greek antiquity, the influences of Robert...

This book examines British eugenics from its origins in 1865 to the early 1990s. It considers the two institutions promoting the doctrine: the Galton Laboratory attached to the University of London; and the Eugenics Society. It charts internal and...

This book offers innovative historical scholarship on Feyerabend's take on topics such as realism, empiricism, pluralism, materialism, and incommensurability. In addition to discussing certain debates in the philosophy of physics, it also considers the...

This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of Galileo Galilei's engagement with the Almagest, Claudius Ptolemy's second-century scientific work on the motions of stars and planetary paths. Contrary to the belief that Galileo had little interest in...

This monograph presents a detailed analysis of the beginning and rapid establishment of blood group research in the first half of the twentieth century. The main theme of this book is how blood groups were used as a scientific explanation of differences...

This book examines the search for 'occult' or hidden forces in the two centuries after Newton's theory of gravity. It investigates how history has simplified the work of some of the key figures of the age, presenting them as 'legitimate' and removing...

This book builds on recent scholarship highlighted in the edited collections, Philosophie, histoire, biologie: mélanges offerts à Jean Gayon (Merlin & Huneman, 2018) and Knowledge of Life Today (Gayon & Petit 2018/2019). While...

The relationship between alcohol consumption and liver cirrhosis has long been contested by doctors and medical professionals, creating numerous implications for the public reputation of alcohol in Britain. Despite this, it was not until the 1970s that...

This book examines the latest manifestations of resource competition. The energy transition and the digitalization of the global economy are both accelerating even as geopolitics driven by Sino-American hyper-competition become increasingly contentious...

This book provides the first comprehensive treatment of Albert the Great's (c. 1193-1280) notion of virtus formativa, a shaping force responsible for crucial dynamics in the formation of living beings. Crossing the boundaries between theology and...

This collection of 15 accessible essays on neglected philosophical figures and traditions aims to provide readers with concrete access points to less familiar philosophical sources and methods. Showcasing the latest research by both up-and-coming and...

Behavioral neuroendocrinologists are interested in the interactions between hormones and behaviors. This unique book tracks the development of behavioral neuroendocrinology from the first recognized paper in the field by Arnold Berthold in 1849 to...

This book explores continuity and ruptures in the historical use of visual representations in science and related disciplines such as art history and anthropology. The book also considers more recent developments that attest to the unprecedented...

This book examines the British Admiralty's engagement with science and technological innovation in the nineteenth century. It is a book about people, and gross misunderstanding, about the dreams and disappointments of scientific workers and inventors in...

The epistemological synthesis of the various theories of evolution, since the first formulation in 1802 with the transmission of the inherited characters by J.B. Lamarck, shows the need for an alternative synthesis to that of Princeton (1947). This new...

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of core areas of investigation and theory relating to the history of women and science. Bringing together new research with syntheses of pivotal scholarship, the volume acknowledges and integrates history,...

This book provides an English translation of the early fundamental contributions of Lothar Meyer (1830-1895) regarding his independent discovery, coincident with that of Dmitrii Mendeleev, of the periodic system of the elements. Although an English...

This book explores the idea that there is a certain performativity of thought connecting Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. On this view, we make judgments and use propositions because we presuppose that our...

This handbook features essays written by both literary scholars and mathematicians that examine multiple facets of the connections between literature and mathematics. These connections range from mathematics and poetic meter to mathematics and modernism...

This book sheds new light on the biographical approach in the history of physics by including the biographies of scientific objects, institutions, and concepts. What is a biography? Can biographies also be written for non-human subjects like scientific...

A modern reproduction of perhaps the most important scientific text of all time-- Newton's original 1687 edition of "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica." (Latin)

This open access book charts how South Africa's gold mines have systematically suppressed evidence of hazardous work practices and the risks associated with mining.For most of the twentieth century, South Africa was the world's largest producer of gold...

This book traces the history of how evolutionary biology transformed its understanding of females from being coy, reserved and sexually passive, to having active sexual strategies and often mating with multiple males. Why did it take so long to discover...

Has anyone ever seen with their own eyes that the Earth goes around the sun? Even to this day, no one has. However, 500 and even 2000 years ago, some astronomers managed to point out that this is the case. At that time, people's range of activities was...

Why Stuff Falls Down is the story of how we have understood gravity, from the time of the ancient Greeks right up to the current efforts to unify Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics.It's also the story of science. How did science grow to...

Science and History Collide: True Stories of the People Who Powered Our WorldIn this physics and engineering chronicle disguised as an electric time-travel adventure, Kathy Joseph, physicist, educator, and creator of the popular Kathy Loves Physics...

Exploring the Cosmic Tapestry: A Comparative Examination of Earthly and Extraterrestrial CivilizationsThis tome embarks on an intricate exploration of the development of civilizations on Earth, juxtaposing and contrasting these with the conceivable...

This volume provides a wide-ranging introduction to Kepler's work, with essays on his religion, his cosmological theories, his work in astronomy, astrology, optics and mathematics and his interactions with Tycho Brahe and Galileo Galilei.Kepler is a...

Grete Hermann (1901-1984) was a pupil of mathematical physicist Emmy Noether, follower and co-worker of neo-Kantian philosopher Leonard Nelson, and an important intellectual figure in post-war German social democracy. She is best known for her work on...

This edited volume explores the interplay between philosophies in a wide-ranging analysis of how technological applications in science inform our systems of thought. Beginning with a historical background, the volume moves on to explore a host of topics,...

This book analyzes scientific problems within the history of physics, engineering, chemistry, astronomy and medicine, correlated with technological applications in the social context. When and how is tension between disciplines explicitly practised? What...

This book focuses on sciences in the universities of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the chapters in it provide an overview, mostly from the point of view of the history of science, of the different ways universities dealt with the...

This book brings together in a unique perspective aspects of natural history dioramas, their history, construction and rationale, interpretation and educational importance, from a number of different countries, from the west coast of the USA, across...

In the Homeric Epics, important references to specific autonomous systems and mechanisms of very advanced technology, such as automata and artificial intelligence, as well as to almost modern methods of design and production are included. Even if those...

This book reconstructs key aspects of the early career of Descartes from 1618 to 1633; that is, up through the point of his composing his first system of natural philosophy, Le Monde, in 1629-33. It focuses upon the overlapping and intertwined...

This volume is aimed at all those who wonder about the mechanisms and effects of the disclosure of knowledge. Whether they have a professional interest in understanding these processes generally, or they wish to conduct targeted investigations in the...

Lazare Carnot was the unique example in the history of science of someone who inadvertently owed the scientific recognition he eventually achieved to earlier political prominence. He and his son Sadi produced work that derived from their training as...

Up to now there have been scarcely any publications on Leibniz dedicated to investigating the interrelations between philosophy and mathematics in his thought. In part this is due to the previously restricted textual basis of editions such as those...

This fascinating book will be of as much interest to engineers as to art historians, examining as it does the evolution of machine design methodology from the Renaissance to the Age of Machines in the 19th century. It provides detailed analysis,...

This book uses the reaction of a number of biologists in the United States and Great Britain to provide an overview of one of the most important controversies in Twentieth Century biology, the "Lysenko Affair." The book is written for advanced...

Describes the development and the ultimate demise of the practice of mathematics in sixteenth century Antwerp. Against the background of the violent history of the Religious Wars the story of the practice of mathematics in Antwerp is told through the...

This volume addresses the cultural, technical and ethical motivations of the history of drawing of machines and its developments step by step. First it treats drawings without any technical character; then the Renaissance with its new forms of drawing;...

This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O...

This book is the first to offer a systematic account of the role of language in the development and interpretation of physics. An historical-conceptual analysis of the co-evolution of mathematical and physical concepts leads to the classical/quatum...

Mature sciences have been long been characterized in terms of the "successfulness", "reliability" or "trustworthiness" of their theoretical, experimental or technical accomplishments. Today many philosophers of science talk of "robustness", often without...

The book surveys the key metaphysical contributions of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614-1687). It deals with such interwoven topics as: the natures of body and spirit, and the question of whether or not there is a sharp ontological division...