Subject: Science / History

Subject: Science / History

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Psychic Investigators

|9780822947073|Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age| Psychic Investigators examines British anthropology’s engagement with the modern spiritualist movement during the late Victorian era. Efram Sera-Shriar argues that debates over the existence of ghosts and psychical powers were at the center of anthropological discussions on human beliefs. He focuses on the importance of establishing credible witnesses of spirit and psychic phenomena in the writings of anthropologists such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Edward Burnett Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Edward Clodd. The book draws on major themes, such as the historical relationship between science and religion, the history of…

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Imagining the Darwinian Revolution

|9780822947080|Historical Narratives of Evolution from the Nineteenth Century to the Present| This volume considers the relationship between the development of evolution and its historical representations by focusing on the so-called Darwinian Revolution. The very idea of the Darwinian Revolution is a historical construct devised to help explain the changing scientific and cultural landscape that was ushered in by Charles Darwin’s singular contribution to natural science. And yet, since at least the 1980s, science historians have moved away from traditional “great man” narratives to focus on the collective role that previously neglected figures have played in formative debates of evolutionary theory….

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The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 11

|9780822946823|The Correspondence, January 1869-February 1871| The eleventh volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall covers the period from January 1869 to the end of February 1871 and contains 427 letters with more than 130 individual correspondents, as well as letters to several newspapers. These years find Tyndall an internationally established scientist with broad influence and feeling increasingly confident in that role. They were highly productive research years, and Tyndall had a wide scope of interests, publishing in scientific journals, popular magazines, and newspapers on a variety of topics, including diamagnetism, germ theory, comets, and atmospheric phenomena. The results of this…

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The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 9

|9780822946083|The Correspondence, February 1865—December 1866| This ninth volume of the Tyndall correspondence contains 314 letters. Tyndall was by now in his mid-forties and in the prime of life. His career as a man of science was firmly established and flourishing. He had been professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution for more than a dozen years. He had established himself as Michael Faraday’s successor, and during the intervening years had taken on an increasing number of Faraday’s wide range of duties. This volume also covers the period of Faraday’s increasing illness and withdrawal from public life, which had a…

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