Subject: Science / History

Subject: Science / History

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From Virile to Sterile

|9780822948520|Science, Masculinity, and Modernity in Argentina, 1776–1852|As rigorous scientific and philosophical discourse circulated during the Enlightenment, aided by the Republic of Letters, a revolutionary understanding of gender emerged that would impact nation building in Europe and the Americas. In From Virile to Sterile, Adriana Novoa analyzes the cosmopolitan citizens of this metaphysical republic—an international community of scholars and literary figures—and the first universal modern male identity it established. By the end of the eighteenth century, she reveals, men’s role in society had fundamentally changed. This “man of letters” possessed a masculinity that was learned and shared―different from the warrior model…

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The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 15

|9780822948346|The Correspondence, November 1875-December 1877|The fifteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall contains 466 letters covering the period from November 1875 to December 1877. Tyndall was by now an established man of science with a far-reaching reputation. The most significant work he undertook in this period involved his experiments on spontaneous generation and his consulting for Trinity House on lighthouse illuminations and sound-signaling. Alongside these projects, he married Louisa Hamilton in a small ceremony in London on February 29, 1876. This event offers a brief respite from the intense scientific and technical communications that dominate his life in the…

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Commercial and Sublime

|9780822967811|Popular Astronomy Lectures in Britain, 1780–1860|The astronomy lecturing trade in Britain experienced a theatrical turn in the early 1800s, as practitioners relied on larger and more elaborate visual aids to enhance the scenic and dramatic effects of their traveling spectacles. Commercial and Sublime explores this phenomenon in the long nineteenth century, a time when astronomical shows rose in popularity and the lecturing trade developed a commercial side where business, profits, and competition took center stage. Astronomy lecturing during this period, Hsiang-Fu Huang reveals, also heavily exploited the notion of the sublime, where displays and the rhetoric of awe and wonder…

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Commercial and Sublime

|9780822948735|Popular Astronomy Lectures in Britain, 1780–1860|The astronomy lecturing trade in Britain experienced a theatrical turn in the early 1800s, as practitioners relied on larger and more elaborate visual aids to enhance the scenic and dramatic effects of their traveling spectacles. Commercial and Sublime explores this phenomenon in the long nineteenth century, a time when astronomical shows rose in popularity and the lecturing trade developed a commercial side where business, profits, and competition took center stage. Astronomy lecturing during this period, Hsiang-Fu Huang reveals, also heavily exploited the notion of the sublime, where displays and the rhetoric of awe and wonder…

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Exoticizing Consumption

|9780822967750|European Drug Cultures, 1670-1740|Exotic drugs and spices, from tea to opium, were among the first fruits of European commercial expansion in the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth, many had become profitable products of the European empires that had spread across the globe. Often, they were objects of appropriation—substances whose curative virtues were known to Indigenous peoples and assimilated into European knowledge and commerce by missionaries, soldiers, and merchants. Exoticizing Consumption explores the many ways in which new global drugs disrupted the European medical marketplace, how they came to be known, described, valued, and used in Europe, how they reached European…

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