|9780822948148|Rethinking the Specialization Thesis|The specialization thesis—the idea that nineteenth-century science fragmented into separate forms of knowledge that led to the creation of modern disciplines—has played an integral role in the way historians have described the changing disciplinary map of nineteenth-century British science. This volume critically reevaluates this dominant narrative in the historiography. While new disciplines did emerge during the nineteenth century, the intellectual landscape was far muddier, and in many cases new forms of specialist knowledge continued to cross boundaries while integrating ideas from other areas of study. Through a history of Victorian interdisciplinarity, this volume offers a more complicated…

|9780822947967|A Deep History of an Idea Four Hundred Years in the Making|The idea that a new technology could challenge human intelligence is as old as the warning from Socrates and Plato that written language eroded memory. With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence programs, we find ourselves once again debating how a new technology might influence human thought and behavior. Researchers, software developers, and “visionary” tech writers even imagine an AI that will equal or surpass human intelligence, adding to a sense of technological determinism where humanity is inexorably shaped by powerful new machines. But among the hundreds of essays,…

|9780822947905|In twenty-first-century Britain, scientific advice to government is highly organized, integrated across government departments, and led by a chief scientific adviser who reports directly to the prime minister. But at the end of the eighteenth century, when Roland Jackson’s account begins, things were very different. With this book, Jackson turns his attention to the men of science of the day—who derived their knowledge of the natural world from experience, observation, and experiment—focusing on the essential role they played in proffering scientific advice to the state, and the impact of that advice on public policy. At a time that witnessed huge…

|9780822947929|National, Transnational, and Global Perspectives, 1800–1920|Before the advent of radio, conceptions of the relationship between science and religion circulated through periodicals, journals, and books, influencing the worldviews of intellectuals and a wider public. In this volume, historians of science and religion examine that relationship through diverse mediums, geographic contexts, and religious traditions. Spanning within and beyond Europe and North America, chapters emphasize underexamined regions—New Zealand, Australia, India, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire—and major religions of the world, including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam; interactions between those traditions; as well as atheism, monism, and agnosticism. As they…

|9780822947424|The Correspondence, June 1872–September 1873|The 476 letters in the thirteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall document the period from June 1, 1872, to September 28, 1873, much of which was consumed by Tyndall’s lecture tour of the United States. We meet him in the midst of the Ayrton affair, which saw Tyndall coming to the defense of his friend and fellow X Club member Joseph Dalton Hooker against the First Commissioner of Works, Acton Smee Ayrton, in an acrimonious dispute over the governance of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Tyndall’s tour of the United States was a rousing…