الصفحة 1
الصفحة 1
Virchows Eulogies : Rudolf Virchow in Tribute to his Fellow Scientists
Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902) was a leading figure in the medical, political and intellectual life of Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. He became the most famous pathologist of his time, especially through his book "Cellular Pathology" – which discussed pathology in terms of the functioning of the cells in the anatomic lesions of diseases. Virchow's writings were voluminous: he wrote many books and more than 2,000 articles on medicine and anthropology alone. Despite, or perhaps because of, the volume of his writings, only a small proportion is available in English translation. Furthermore, in the translated material there has been little revealed of the man himself and his relations to others.
Vegetative powers : The roots of life in ancient, medieval and early modern natural philosophy
The volume analyzes the natural philosophical accounts and debates concerning the vegetative powers, namely nutrition, growth, and reproduction. While principally focusing on the early modern approaches to the lower functions of the soul, readers will discover the roots of these approaches back to the Ancient times, as the volume highlights the role of three strands that help shape the study of life in the Medieval and early modern natural philosophies. From late antiquity to the early modern period, the vegetative soul and its cognate concepts have played a substantial role in specifying life, living functions, and living bodies, sometimes blurring the line between living and non-living nature, and, at other moments, resulting in a strong restriction of life to a mechanical system of operations and powers. Unearthing the history of the vegetative soul as a shrub of interconnected concepts, the 24 contributions of the volume fill a crucial gap in scholarship, ultimately outlining the importance of vegetal processes of incessant proliferation, generation, and organic growth as the roots of life in natural philosophical interpretations.
Two Cultures : Essays in Honour of David Speiser
Editor Kim Williams has assembled a group of notes where scholars contribute essays inspired by their contact with Prof David Speiser. In honour of his eightieth birthday. Topics range from history of sciences to history of art, from architecture theory to music theory, from particle physics to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to an essay on the very nature of interdisciplinary studies.
Theoretical Knowledge
In the book Theoretical Knowledge, an original conception of a structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge is proposed. A detailed analysis of the foundations of science allowed to develop new ideas and approaches, to demonstrate how sociocultural factors are incorporated in the process of yielding of new theories. He shows direct and inverse links between foundations of science and new theories and empirical facts evolved from those, how among many potentially possible histories of science a culture selects just those directions which become a real history of science. The author analyses mechanisms of the generation of scientific theories and shows that those are changed in the process of historical development of science. He displays three historical types of scientific rationality (classical, non-classical and post-non-classical, which appears in modern science) and shows features of their coexistence and interplay. It is shown that along with the emerging of post-non-classical rationality science increases the sphere of its worldview applications. Science begins to correlate not only with the basic values of technogenic civilization but also with some values and patterns of traditional cultures.
The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century : Patterns of Change in Early Modern Natural Philosophy
The papers in this collection focus on patterns of change in natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, aiming to encourage the use and articulation of this category in the historiography of science. The volume is intended for scholars and advanced students of early modern history of science, history of philosophy and intellectual history. Philosophers of science and sociologists of scientific knowledge concerned with historical issues will also find the volume of relevance. Above all, the volume is addressed to anyone interested in current debates about the origin and nature of modern science.
The Pathologisation of Homosexuality in Fascist Italy : The Case of 'G'
The book highlights how the dictatorship operated in a low-key, shadowy and undetectable manner, bending pre-existing legislation. Its brutality was - and still is - difficult to prove. It also emphasises the ways in which existing stereotypes on homosexuality were reinforced by the regime propaganda in support of its so-called moralising campaign and how families, the police and the medical professionals joined forces in implementing this form of repression.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, 1927–1945: Crossing Boundaries
The volume at hand traces the history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics between democracy and dictatorship. Special attention is turned to the transformation of the research program, the institute’s integration into the national and international science panorama, and its relationship to the ruling power as well as its interconnection to the political crimes of Nazi Germany.
The Innermost Kernel : Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics. Wolfgang Pauli's Dialogue with C.G. Jung
"The Innermost Kernel" recounts the physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli and his interest in Jungian psychology, philosophy and western world-view. It is also an exploration of the intellectual setting and context of Pauli's thinking, which has its starting point in the cultural and intellectual climate of fin-de-siècle Europe. As a contribution to the general history of quantum physics this study has a special focus on the psychological and philosophical issues discussed by physicists belonging to the Copenhagen school. The work is mainly based on the correspondence of the principle characters and explores some of the central issues discussed there, as for instance the subject-object relation, complementarity, the relation of conscious and unconscious, the process underlying concept-formation, the psychology of scientific discovery, the symbolic world of alchemy, the theories of archetypes and of synchronicity. Ultimately this book is about a remarkable scientist searching for a new understanding of the interrelatedness of man and world.
The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain
This book is the first academic study of the post-mortem practice of gibbeting (‘hanging in chains’), since the nineteenth century. Gibbeting involved placing the executed body of a malefactor in an iron cage and suspending it from a tall post. A body might remain in the gibbet for many decades, while it gradually fell to pieces. Hanging in chains was a very different sort of post-mortem punishment from anatomical dissection, although the two were equal alternatives in the eyes of the law. Where dissection obliterated and de-individualised the body, hanging in chains made it monumental and rooted it in the landscape, adding to personal notoriety. Focusing particularly on the period 1752-1832, this book provides a summary of the historical evidence, the factual history of gibbetting which explores the locations of gibbets, the material technologies involved in hanging in chains, and the actual process from erection to eventual collapse. It also considers the meanings, effects and legacy of this gruesome practice
The English Galileo : Thomas Harriot’s Work on Motion as an Example of Preclassical Mechanics
The English Galileo, the first book in series, investigates the shared knowledge of preclassical mechanics by relating the work of Thomas Harriot on motion, documented by a wealth of manuscripts, to that of Galileo and other contemporaries.
Tales of Mathematicians and Physicists
Contains a wealth of new information about the lives and accomplishments of more than a dozen scientists throughout five centuries of history: from the first steps in algebra up to new achievements in geometry in connection with physics. The heroes of the book are renowned figures from early eras, such as Cardano, Galileo, Huygens, Leibniz, Pascal, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, as well some scientists of the last century: Klein, Poincaré, and Ramanujan.
Storie di cose semplici = Stories of simple things
The nut, the thread, the key, the ring, the mirror, the button and the sphere are simple things that we encounter every day, but of which we often forget, because contemporary culture is more and more bewitched by the complexity of the systems and the lightness of virtual realities. This essay, countering Italo Calvino's five American Lectures, examines how "simple things" in fact often demonstrate their importance in simplicity, slowness, heaviness, singularity, in invisibility itself. But their "consistency" - this precisely should have been the sixth Lesson - lies precisely in the fact that their symbolic and real strength lies precisely in the fact that they are concrete things, which we can all touch, even when they take on a metaphorical meaning. The seven simple objects could have been accompanied by many other examples, but this book must remain above all a stimulus so that we can recover greater attention to the concreteness of things, which is not only important when they are placed in the windows of a museum of material culture, but because they are part of us. Literature and technique, art and philosophy, music and news, every day show how these "things" are the real protagonists of what the French call civilization: the Ring of the Nibelung, Pushkin's Button, and the "Brunelleschi's nut" are just a few examples of how these "things" have found a place of honor in history. And this is a book in which many stories are told, like fairy tales that introduce our things, to let us enter their world accompanied by fantasy.
Sophus Lie : Une pensée audacieuse = Sophus Lie : A Bold Thought
In this detailed biography, the writer Arild Stubhaug, drawing on Lie's voluminous correspondence, describes Norwegian man and society in the second half of the 19th century. The reader can thus follow his childhood in a rectory nestled at the bottom of a fjord, discover the educational reforms, travel in Europe, frequent the elite of the mathematical world.
Shaping Natural History and Settler Society : Mary Elizabeth Barber and the Nineteenth-Century Cape
It provides a lens into a range of subjects within the history of knowledge and science, gender and social history, postcolonial, critical heritage and archival studies. The book examines the international importance of a marginalized scientist, the instrumentalisation of science to settlers' political concerns and reveals the pivotal but largely silenced contribution of indigenous African experts. Including a variety of material, visual and textual sources, this study explores how these artefacts are archived in museums and critically analyses their content and silences.
Science and its History : A Reassessment of the Historiography of Science
Professor Joseph Agassi has published his Towards an Historiography of Science in 1963. It received many reviews by notable academics, including Maurice Finocchiaro, Charles Gillispie, Thomas S. Kuhn, Geroge Mora, Nicholas Rescher, and L. Pearce Williams. It is still in use in many courses in the philosophy and history of science. Here it appears in a revised and updated with responses to these reviews and with many additional chapters, some already classic, others new. They are all paradigms of the author’s innovative way of writing fresh and engaging chapters in the history of the natural sciences.
Ruggiero Boscovich’s Theory of Natural Philosophy : Points, Distances, Determinations
Drawing on published works, correspondence and manuscripts, this book offers the most comprehensive reconstruction of Boscovich’s theory within its historical context. It explains the genesis and theoretical as well as epistemological underpinnings in light of the Jesuit tradition to which Boscovich belonged, and contrasts his ideas with those of Newton, Leibniz, and their legacy. Finally, it debates crucial issues in early-modern physical science such as the concept of force, the particle-like structure of matter, the idea of material points and the notion of continuity, and shares novel insights on Boscovich’s alleged influence on later developments in physics.
Rise of the Self-Replicators : Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve
Provides a chronological survey and comprehensive archive of the early history of thought about machine self-reproduction and evolution. They discuss contributions from philosophy, science fiction, science and engineering, and uncover many examples that have never been discussed in the Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life literature before now. In the final chapter they provide a synthesis of the concepts discussed, offer their views on the field’s future directions, and call for a broad community discussion about the significant implications of intelligent evolving machines.
Remembering and disremembering the dead : Posthumous punishment, harm and redemption over time
This book is a multidisciplinary work that investigates the notion of posthumous harm over time. The question what is and when is death, affects how we understand the possibility of posthumous harm and redemption. Whilst it is impossible to hurt the dead, it is possible to harm the wishes, beliefs and memories of persons that once lived. In this way, this book highlights the vulnerability of the dead, and makes connections to a historical oeuvre, to add critical value to similar concepts in history that are overlooked by most philosophers. There is a long historical view of case studies that illustrate the conceptual character of posthumous punishment; that is, dissection and gibbetting of the criminal corpse after the Murder Act (1752), and those shot at dawn during the First World War. A long historical view is also taken of posthumous harm; that is, body-snatching in the late Georgian period, and organ-snatching at Alder Hey in the 1990s.
Recollections of "Tucson Operations" : The Millimeter-Wave Observatory of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
This book is a personal account of the evolution of millimeter-wave astronomy at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. It begins with the construction of the hugely successful, but flawed, 36 ft radio telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona, and continues through the funding of its ultimate successor, the Atacama Large Millimeter-wave Array (ALMA), being constructed on a 5.000 m (16.500 ft) site in northern Chile. The book describes the behind-the-scene activities of the NRAO Tucson staff. These include the identification and solution of technical problems, the scheduling and support of visiting astronomers, and the preparations and the politics of the proposal to replace the 36 ft telescope with a 25 m telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The book also describes the installation of a new 12 m surface and the involvement of the Tucson staff in the ALMA project. Finally, it describes events leading to the closing of the 36 ft telescope and, eventually, of the NRAO offices in Tucson.
Rationality and Reality : Conversations with Alan Musgrave
Musgrave’s writings have covered a wide range of topics in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, history of science, theories of truth, and economic theory. In this volume a group of internationally-renowned authors discuss themes that are relevant in one way or another to Musgrave’s work. This is not intended as a standard celebratory festschrift but rather as a new examination of topics of current interest in philosophy. The contributory essays are followed by responses from Alan Musgrave himself.
