Subject: Science / History

Subject: Science / History

Comments

Imperial Bodies in London

|9780822946861|Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880–1914|Since the eighteenth century, European administrators and officers, military men, soldiers, missionaries, doctors, wives, and servants moved back and forth between Britain and its growing imperial territories. The introduction of steam-powered vessels, and deep-docks to accommodate them at London ports, significantly reduced travel time for colonists and imperial servants traveling home to see their families, enjoy a period of study leave, or recuperate from the tropical climate. With their minds enervated by the sun, livers disrupted by the heat, and blood teeming with parasites, these patients brought the empire home and, in…

Read more

Comments

The Voice of Science

|9780822946816|British Scientists on the Lecture Circuit in Gilded Age America|For many in the nineteenth century, the spoken word had a vivacity and power that exceeded other modes of communication. This conviction helped to sustain a diverse and dynamic lecture culture that provided a crucial vehicle for shaping and contesting cultural norms and beliefs. As science increasingly became part of public culture and debate, its spokespersons recognized the need to harness the presumed power of public speech to recommend the moral relevance of scientific ideas and attitudes. With this wider context in mind, The Voice of Science explores the efforts of…

Read more

Comments

Ingenuity in the Making

|9780822946885|Matter and Technique in Early Modern Europe|Ingenuity in the Making explores the myriad ways in which ingenuity shaped the experience and conceptualization of materials and their manipulation in early modern Europe. Contributions range widely across the arts and sciences, examining objects and texts, professions and performances, concepts and practices. The book considers subjects such as spirited matter, the conceits of nature, and crafty devices, investigating the ways in which ingenuity acted in and upon the material world through skill and technique. Contributors ask how ingenuity informed the “maker’s knowledge” tradition, where the perilous borderline between the genius of invention and…

Read more

Comments

Forgotten Clones

|9780822946274|The Birth of Cloning and the Biological Revolution|Long before scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, American embryologist and aspiring cancer researcher Robert Briggs successfully developed the technique of nuclear transplantation using frogs in 1952. Although the history of cloning is often associated with contemporary ethical controversies, Forgotten Clones revisits the influential work of scientists like Briggs, Thomas King, and Marie DiBerardino, before the possibility of human cloning and its ethical implications first registered as a concern in public consciousness, and when many thought the very idea of cloning was experimentally impossible. By focusing…

Read more

Comments

The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 10

|9780822946588|The Correspondence, January 1867–December 1868|The tenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall spans from January 1867 to December 1868. It begins with Tyndall publicly enmeshed in a controversy that revealed his views on race, politics, and justifiable violence. Further pressure is exerted on him personally by the death of his mother Sarah, and the numerous calls on him to support relatives in Ireland. Michael Faraday’s death in August 1867 adds to these demands, as Tyndall assumes Faraday’s responsibilities at the Royal Institution. In this period, Tyndall writes his popular book Sound, as well as Faraday as a Discoverer, his…

Read more