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Reveals Both the Gendered and Material Dimensions of Knowledge Production

A Political and Comparative History of Environmentalism and Environmental Policy in the Communist and Capitalist Worlds During the Cold War Years

Combining biographical and institutional history, Thomas C. Lassman examines the professional career of theoretical physicist Edward Condon at Princeton University, Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse Electric Company and Manufacturing Company, and the National Bureau of Standards to illuminate contested visions of the usefulness of science that played out during The Great Depression, the Second World War, and the early Cold War.

These detailed yet interlocking studies consider whether knowledge evolved more through recurring intercultural links or through localized innovations; or whether it arose more from endogenous scientific study or from exogenous shifts in the world order.

Auguste Comte’s doctrine of positivism was both a philosophy of science and a political philosophy designed to organize a new, secular, stable society based on positive or scientific, ideas, rather than the theological dogmas and metaphysical speculations associated with the ancien regime. This volume offers the most comprehensive English-language overview of Auguste Comte’s philosophy, the relation of his work to the sciences of his day, and the extensive, continuing impact of his thinking on philosophy and especially secular political movements in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

In the period covered by this volume, Tyndall completed his degree, published his first scientific papers, became a regular participant in the British Association meetings, established friendships with leading men of science in Berlin and London, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. As the volume ends, he was preparing his first lecture to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the catalyst for a profound transition in his life. The letters offer a behind-the-scenes view of nineteenth-century publishing processes, the practices and challenges of diamagnetic research, the application procedures for university positions, the use of patronage in establishing a scientific career, and the often anxious and weary-worn personality of Tyndall, the ambitious protagonist.

Winner of the Marc-Auguste Pictet Prize, 2010

The textbooks written by Adolphe Ganot (1804-1887) played a major role in shaping the way physics was taught in the nineteenth century. Ganot’s books were translated from their original French into more than ten languages, including English, allowing their adoption as standard works in Britain and spreading their influence as far as North America, Australia, India and Japan.

Simon’s Franco-British case study looks at the role of Ganot’s two textbooks: Traite elementaire de physique experimentale et appliquee (1851) and Cours de physique purement experimentale (1859), and their translations into English by Edmund Atkinson. The study is novel for its international comparison of nineteenth-century physics, its acknowledgement of the role of book production on the impact of the titles and for its emphasis on the role of communication in the making of science.

The first anthology to offer a contemporary overview of the problem of laws—an area of study that has become increasingly central to the philosophy of science. The book covers a broad range of views, and consists exclusively of articles that have proven to be influential.

An in-depth study of the English neurologist and polymath Sir Henry Head (1861-1940). Head bridged the gap between science and the arts. He was a published poet who had close links with such figures as Thomas Hardy and Siegfried Sassoon. His research into the nervous system and the relationship between language and the brain broke new ground.

Prominent philosophers analyze the work of Thomas Kuhn, including his monumental study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, from a broad perspective, comparing earlier logical empiricism and logical positivism with the new philosophy inspired by Kuhn in the early 1960s.

The 161 letters in this volume encompass a period of dramatic change for the young John Tyndall, who would become one of Victorian Britain’s most famous physicists. They begin in September 1843, in the midst of a fiery public conflict with the Ordnance Survey of England, and end in December 1849 with him as a doctoral student of mathematics and experimental science at the University of Marburg, Germany.

A Complex and Innovative Analysis of Discipline Formation in Nineteenth-Century Science

Calls for an Honest Reckoning of the Successes, Failures, and Unanticipated Results of International Developments

Traces the Early Evolution of Britain’s System of Scientific Advice

A Tribute to the Communicative Practices of Physicists in the Twentieth Century