Subject: Science / History

Subject: Science / History

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Edward Condon’s Cooperative Vision

|9780822945345|Science, Industry, and Innovation in Modern America|Born in 1902, Edward Condon made significant contributions to quantum theoretical physics. Nearly ten years at Princeton University sealed his reputation as a leading figure in the field. Then, in 1937, he gave it all up to pursue an industrial career, first at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and then, by way of the federal government, the National Bureau of Standards. In a radical departure from professional norms, Condon sought to redefine the relationship between academic science and technological innovation in industry. He envisioned intimate cooperation with the universities to serve the needs…

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The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 5

|9780822945321|The Correspondence, January 1855–October 1856|This volume contains 266 letters covering a period of twenty-two months, when Tyndall was in his midthirties and had been employed by the Royal Institution as professor of natural philosophysince September 1853. Many of the letters printed here concern the lectures he delivered at the RI and other institutions and his attempt to establish his reputation as a researcher. Although he published in several other areas—including the cleavage of rocks, colorblindness, and glaciers—the main focus of his research was the newly discovered and problematic phenomenon of diamagnetism. Tyndall reported his experimental results and theoretical views on…

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Logodaedalus

|9780822945413|Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe|Before Romantic genius, there was ingenuity. Early modern ingenuity defined every person—not just exceptional individuals—as having their own attributes and talents, stemming from an “inborn nature” that included many qualities, not just intelligence. Through ingenuity and its family of related terms, early moderns sought to understand and appreciate differences between peoples, places, and things in an attempt to classify their ingenuities and assign professions that were best suited to one’s abilities. Logodaedalus, a prehistory of genius, explores the various ways this language of ingenuity was defined, used, and manipulated between 1470 and 1750….

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A New Order of Medicine

|9780822945604|The Rise of Physicians in Reformation Nuremberg|The sixteenth century saw an unprecedented growth in the number of educated physicians practicing in German cities. Concentrating on Nuremberg, A New Order of Medicine follows the intertwined careers of municipal physicians as they encountered the challenges of the Reformation city for the first time. Although conservative in their professed Galenism, these men were eclectic in their practices, which ranged from book collecting to botany to subversive anatomical experimentations. Their interests and ambitions lead to local controversy. Over a twenty-year campaign, apothecaries were wrested from their place at the forefront of medical practice, no…

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Mechanism

|9780822945475|A Visual, Lexical, and Conceptual History|The mechanical philosophy first emerged as a leading player on the intellectual scene in the early modern period—seeking to explain all natural phenomena through the physics of matter and motion—and the term mechanism was coined. Over time, natural phenomena came to be understood through machine analogies and explanations and the very word mechanism, a suggestive and ambiguous expression, took on a host of different meanings. Emphasizing the important role of key ancient and early modern protagonists, from Galen to Robert Boyle, this book offers a historical investigation of the term mechanism from the late Renaissance…

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