Search results

Richard Pulteney (1730-1801) was a Leicestershire physician whose medical career suffered both from a lack of aristocratic patronage and from his dissenting religious background. However, his lifelong interest in botany and natural history, and particularly his work on the new Linnaean system of botanical classification, led to publications in the Gentleman's Magazine and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1762. His book on Linnae...

How were Chinese pots made, glazed and fired? Why did China discover porcelain more than one thousand years before the West? What are the effects of China's influence on world ceramics? These questions (and many more) are answered in this lavishly-illustrated history of Chinese ceramic technology. The scene is set through the use of historical texts, archaeological excavation, and the principles of ceramic science. Chapters follow on the formation of clays and their relation to the underlying ge...

What new insights become available for historians when emotions are included as an analytical category? This volume of Osiris explores the historical interrelationships between science and its cultures and cultures of emotions. It argues that a dialogue between the history of emotions and the history of science leads to a rethinking of our categories of analysis, our subjects, and our periodizations. The ten case studies in the volume explore these possibilities and interrelationships across Nor...

Creating Prehistory deals even-handedly and sympathetically with the creation of several different sorts of prehistory during the volatile period between the two World Wars. Investigates the origins of professional archaeology in Britain during the inter-war period Brings to life many fascinating and controversial personalities and their creeds, including the archaeologists O. G. S. Crawford, Mortimer Wheeler and Gordon Childe; Grafton Elliot Smith and W. H. R. Rivers (of 'Regeneration' fame);...

Picture your twenty-first birthday. Did you have a party? If so, do you remember who was there? Now step back: how clear are those memories? Should we trust them to be accurate, or is there a chance that you're remembering incorrectly? And where have the many details you can no longer recall gone? Are they hidden somewhere in your brain, or are they lost forever? Such questions have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years, and, as Alison Winter shows in "Memory: Fragments of a Modern History...

Essays on evolvability from the perspectives of quantitative and population genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, systems biology, macroevolution, and the philosophy of science. Evolvability—the capability of organisms to evolve—wasn’t recognized as a fundamental concept in evolutionary theory until 1990. Though there is still some debate as to whether it represents a truly new concept, the essays in this volume emphasize its value in enabling new research programs and facilitating comm...

Die Nation als Max Webers letzter Wert: genugt diese Erklarung, um das - scheinbare? - Paradoxon aufzuloesen, dass der scharfsinnigste deutsche Sozialwissenschaftler seiner Zeit 1914 ganz offensichtlich die Kriegsbegeisterung zahlloser Akademiker und Intellektueller teilte, noch Ende 1918 den Krieg rechtfertigte und erklarte, zur Wiederaufrichtung Deutschlands wurde er sich auch mit dem leibhaftigen Teufel verbunden? Auf der Grundlage seiner Kriegspublizistik, seiner Reden, sowie der privaten un...

Was Darwin theoretically wrong in his world shattering conclusions and can his errors be proven on a straightforward scientific basis? Conventional criteria for a scientific theory include empiricism, logic and testability. The theory of evolution is said traditionally to meet these criteria by the mainstream scientific community. A reviewer for a medical journal evaluated the evidence for evolution within its several sub disciplines. There is found to be universally a logical disconnect between...

The calculus has served for three centuries as the principal quantitative language of Western science. In the course of its genesis and evolution some of the most fundamental problems of mathematics were first con- fronted and, through the persistent labors of successive generations, finally resolved. Therefore, the historical development of the calculus holds a special interest for anyone who appreciates the value of a historical perspective in teaching, learning, and enjoying mathematics and i...