The Cambridge History Of Science Modern Science In National And International Context

This volume in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to exploring the history of modern science using national, transnational, and global frames of reference. Organized by topic and culture, its essays by distinguished scholars offer the most comprehensive and up-to-date nondisciplinary history of modern science currently available. Essays are grouped together in separate sections that represent larger regions: Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and Latin America. Each of these regional groupings ends with a separate essay reflecting on the analysis in the preceding chapters. Intended to provide a balanced and inclusive treatment of the modern world, contributors analyze the history of science not only in local, national, and regional contexts but also with respect to the circulation of knowledge, tools, methods, people, and artifacts across national borders.

Publisher's description: This volume offers to general and specialist readers alike the fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century, exploring the implications of the 'scientific revolution' of the previous century and the major new growth-points, particularly in the experimental sciences. It is designed to be read as both a narrative and an interpretation, and also used as a work of reference. While prime attention is paid to western science, space is also given to science in traditional cultures and colonial science. The coverage strikes a balance between analysis of the cognitive dimension of science itself and interpretation of its wider social, economic and cultural significance. The contributors, world leaders in their respective specialities, engage with current historiographical and methodological controversies and strike out on positions of their own.

An account of the history of the social sciences since the late eighteenth century.

Originally published in 1938, this book contains ten lectures on subjects such as parasitology, radioactivity, astronomy and evolution theory.

The fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century.

"This book attempts to introduce to its readers major chapters in the history of science. It tries to present science as a human endeavor - a great achievement, and all the more human for it. In place of the story of progress and its obstacles or a parade of truths revealed, this book stresses the contingent and historical nature of scientific knowledge. Knowledge, science included, is always developed by real people, within communities, answering immediate needs and challenges shaped by place, culture, and historical events with resources drawn from their present and past. Chronologically, this book spans from Pythagorean mathematics to Newton's Principle. The book starts in the high Middle Ages and proceeds to introduce the readers to the historian's way of inquiry. At the center of this introduction is the Gothic Cathedral - a grand achievement of human knowledge, rooted in a complex cultural context, and a powerful metaphor for science. The book alternates thematic chapters with chapters concentrating on an era. Yet it attempts to integrate discussion of all different aspects of the making of knowledge: social and cultural settings, challenges and opportunities; intellectual motivations and worries; epistemological assumptions and technical ideas; instruments and procedures. The cathedral metaphor is evoked intermittently throughout, to tie the many themes discussed to the main lesson: that the complex set of beliefs, practices, and institutions we call science is a particular, contingent human phenomenon"--