Cambridge Studies in the History of Science – serie

Man and Nature in the Renaissance offers an introduction to science and medicine during the earlier phases of the scientific revolution, from the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. Renaissance science has frequently been approached in terms of the progress of the exact sciences of mathematics and astronomy, to the neglect of the broader intellectual context of the period. Conversely, those authors who have emphasized the latter frequently play down the importance of the technical scientific developments. In this book, Professor Debus amalgamates these approaches: The exact sciences of the period are discussed in detail, but reference is constantly made to religious and philosophical concepts that play little part in the science of our own time. Thus, the renewed interest in mystical texts and the subsequent impact of alchemy, astrology, and natural magic on the development of modern science and medicine are central to the account. Major themes that are followed throughout the book include the effects of humanism, the search for a new method of science, and the dialogue between proponents of the mystical-occult world view and the mathematical-observational approach to nature.

This book presents an evolutionary theory of technological change based upon recent scholarship in the history of technology and upon relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology. It challenges the popular notion that technology advances by the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions owing little or nothing to the technological past. Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies taken selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution. Three themes appear, and reappear with variations, throughout the study. The first is diversity: an acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things (artifacts) that have long been available to humanity; the second is necessity: the belief that humans are driven to invent new artifacts in order to meet basic biological requirements such as food, shelter, and defense; and the third is technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of novel artifacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological progress. Although the book is not intended to provide a strict chronological account of the development of technology, historical examples - including many of the major achievements of Western technology: the waterwheel, the printing press, the steam engine, automobiles and trucks, and the transistor - are used extensively to support its theoretical framework. The Evolution of Techology will be of interest to all readers seeking to learn how and why technology changes, including both students and specialists in the history of technology and science.

Science and the Enlightenment is a general history of eighteenth-century science covering both the physical and life sciences. It places the scientific developments of the century in the cultural context of the Enlightenment and reveals the extent to which scientific ideas permeated the thought of the age. The book takes advantage of topical scholarship, which is rapidly changing our understanding of science during the eighteenth century. In particular it describes how science was organized into fields that were quite different from those we know today. Professor Hankins's work is a much needed addition to the literature on eighteenth-century science. His study is not technical; it will be of interest to all students of the Enlightenment and the history of science, as well as to the general reader with some background in science.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the practice of medicine in the Western world was as much art as science. But, argues W. F. Bynum, 'modern' medicine as practiced today is built upon foundations that were firmly established between 1800 and the beginning of World War I. He demonstrates this in terms of concepts, institutions, and professional structures that evolved during this crucial period, applying both a more traditional intellectual approach to the subject and the newer social perspectives developed by recent historians of science and medicine. In a wide-ranging survey, Bynum examines the parallel development of biomedical sciences such as physiology, pathology, bacteriology, and immunology, and of clinical practice and preventive medicine in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Focusing on medicine in the hospitals, the community, and the laboratory, Bynum contends that the impact of science was more striking on the public face of medicine and the diagnostic skills of doctors than it was on their actual therapeutic capacities.

Science and the Enlightenment is a general history of eighteenth-century science covering both the physical and life sciences. It places the scientific developments of the century in the cultural context of the Enlightenment and reveals the extent to which scientific ideas permeated the thought of the age. The book takes advantage of topical scholarship, which is rapidly changing our understanding of science during the eighteenth century. In particular it describes how science was organized into fields that were quite different from those we know today. Professor Hankins's work is a much needed addition to the literature on eighteenth-century science. His study is not technical; it will be of interest to all students of the Enlightenment and the history of science, as well as to the general reader with some background in science.

By the 1980s the Soviet scientific establishment had become the largest in the world, but very little of its history was known in the West. What has been needed for many years in order to fill that gap in our knowledge is a history of Russian and Soviet science written for the educated person who would like to read one book on the subject. This book has been written for that reader. The history of Russian and Soviet science is a story of remarkable achievements and frustrating failures. That history is presented here in a comprehensive form, and explained in terms of its social and political context. Major sections include the tsarist period, the impact of the Russian Revolution, the relationship between science and Soviet society, and the strengths and weaknesses of individual scientific disciplines. The book also discusses the changes brought to science in Russia and other republics by the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

By focusing on the conceptual issues faced by nineteenth century physicists, this book clarifies the status of field theory, the ether, and thermodynamics in the work of the period. A remarkably synthetic account of a difficult and fragmentary period in scientific development.

The term 'biology' first appeared in a footnote in an obscure German medical publication of 1800, but a century of subsequent activity was needed to create a thriving science. This book offers a concise yet comprehensive examination of essential themes in this development. To one group of nineteenth-century biologists, largely comprised of anatomists, histologists and embryologists, the appearance and constituent structures of the plant or animal body seemed all-important; they studied organic form and the means by which it was brought into being. A second group concentrated on the vital processes diversely exhibited by all living creatures. They studied function, their self-assigned task as physiologists being to understand the innermost workings of the body. To a third group of workers the greatest concern was the relationship, past and present, between the various kinds of plants and animals and between living things and their changing environment; in studying the transformation of life over vast spans of time, they largely recast the scientific objectives of natural history. Form, function, and transformation thus offer useful vantage points from which to observe the development of the life sciences during the nineteenth century, and it is on a discussion of these themes and their interactions that Professor Coleman's account is based.

This concise introduction to the history of physical science in the Middle Ages begins with a description of the feeble state of early medieval science and its revitalization during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as evidenced by the explosion of knowledge represented by extensive translations of Greek and Arabic treatises. The content and concepts that came to govern science from the late twelfth century onwards were powerfully shaped and dominated by the science and philosophy of Aristotle. It is, therefore, by focussing attention on problems and controversies associated with Aristotelian science that the reader is introduced to the significant scientific developments and interpretations formulated in the later Middle Ages. The concluding chapter presents a new interpretation of the medieval failure to abandon the physics and cosmology of Aristotle and explains why, despite serious criticisms, they were not generally repudiated during this period. As detailed critical bibliography completes the work.

This introduction to the history of science in the seventeenth century examines the so-called 'scientific revolution' in terms of the interplay between two major themes. The Platonic-Pythagorean tradition looked on nature in geometric terms with the conviction that the cosmos was constructed according to the principles of mathematical order, while the mechanical philosophy conceived of nature as a huge machine and sought to explain the hidden mechanisms behind phenomena. Pursuing different goals, these two movements of thought tended to conflict with each other, and more than the obviously mathematical sciences were affected - the influence spread as far as chemistry and the life sciences. As this book demonstrates, the full fruition of the scientific revolution required a resolution of the tension between the two dominant trends.

Man and Nature in the Renaissance offers an introduction to science and medicine during the earlier phases of the scientific revolution, from the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. Renaissance science has frequently been approached in terms of the progress of the exact sciences of mathematics and astronomy, to the neglect of the broader intellectual context of the period. Conversely, those authors who have emphasized the latter frequently play down the importance of the technical scientific developments. In this book, Professor Debus amalgamates these approaches: The exact sciences of the period are discussed in detail, but reference is constantly made to religious and philosophical concepts that play little part in the science of our own time. Thus, the renewed interest in mystical texts and the subsequent impact of alchemy, astrology, and natural magic on the development of modern science and medicine are central to the account. Major themes that are followed throughout the book include the effects of humanism, the search for a new method of science, and the dialogue between proponents of the mystical-occult world view and the mathematical-observational approach to nature.

This book presents an evolutionary theory of technological change based upon recent scholarship in the history of technology and upon relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology. It challenges the popular notion that technology advances by the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions owing little or nothing to the technological past. Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies taken selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution. Three themes appear, and reappear with variations, throughout the study. The first is diversity: an acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things (artifacts) that have long been available to humanity; the second is necessity: the belief that humans are driven to invent new artifacts in order to meet basic biological requirements such as food, shelter, and defense; and the third is technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of novel artifacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological progress. Although the book is not intended to provide a strict chronological account of the development of technology, historical examples - including many of the major achievements of Western technology: the waterwheel, the printing press, the steam engine, automobiles and trucks, and the transistor - are used extensively to support its theoretical framework. The Evolution of Techology will be of interest to all readers seeking to learn how and why technology changes, including both students and specialists in the history of technology and science.