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10306 results in History of science: general interest

Page 179 of 516

Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent
  • During the Years 1799–1804
  • Volume 6
  • Alexander von Humboldt, Aimé Bonpland
  • Translated by Helen Maria Williams
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    02 June 2011
    First published in:
    1826
  • The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was one of the most famous explorers of his generation. Charles Darwin called him 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. In 1799, Humboldt and the botanist Aimé Bonpland secured permission from the Spanish crown for a voyage to South America. They left from Madrid and spent five years exploring the continent. Humboldt reported his findings in a total of thirty volumes, published in French over a period of more than twenty years beginning in 1805. This English translation by Helen Maria Williams of one important component of Humboldt's account, the Relation historique du voyage (1814–1825), consists of seven volumes and was published in London between 1814 and 1829. Volume 6 (1826) summarises many of Humboldt's findings about the North-East of South America, its topography and geology, and compares the societies of the mainland with those of the West Indies.

The Natural History of Birds
  • From the French of the Count de Buffon; Illustrated with Engravings, and a Preface, Notes, and Additions, by the Translator
  • Volume 1
  • Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
  • Edited and translated by William Smellie
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010
    First published in:
    1793
  • Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) was a French mathematician who was considered one of the leading naturalists of the Enlightenment. An acquaintance of Voltaire and other intellectuals, he worked as Keeper at the Jardin du Roi from 1739, and this inspired him to research and publish a vast encyclopaedia and survey of natural history, the ground-breaking Histoire Naturelle, which he published in forty-four volumes between 1749 and 1804. These volumes, first published between 1770 and 1783 and translated into English in 1793, contain Buffon's survey and descriptions of birds from the Histoire Naturelle. Based on recorded observations of birds both in France and in other countries, these volumes provide detailed descriptions of various bird species, their habitats and behaviours and were the first publications to present a comprehensive account of eighteenth-century ornithology. Volume 1 covers birds of prey and flightless birds.

Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M., G.C.S.I.
  • Volume 1
  • Joseph Dalton Hooker
  • Edited by Leonard Huxley
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    01 May 2011
    First published in:
    1918
  • Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) was one of the most eminent botanists of the later nineteenth century. Educated at Glasgow, he developed his studies of plant life by examining specimens all over the world. After several successful scientific expeditions, first to the Antarctic and later to India, he was appointed to succeed his father as Director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Hooker was the first to hear of and support Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, and over their long friendship the two scientists exchanged many letters. Another close friend was the scientist T. H. Huxley, and it was the latter's son, Leonard (1860–1933), who published this standard biography in 1918. The first volume describes Hooker's early life and his career up to 1860. It includes many letters to Darwin as the two men discussed the new theories and the publication of On the Origin of Species.

My Life
  • A Record of Events and Opinions
  • Volume 2
  • Alfred Russel Wallace
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 June 2011
    First published in:
    1905
  • Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer and biologist, best remembered as the co-discoverer, with Darwin, of natural selection. His extensive fieldwork and advocacy of the theory of evolution led to him being considered one of the nineteenth century's foremost biologists. He was later moved by a variety of personal experiences to examine the concept of spirituality, but his exploration into the potential for compatibility between spiritualism and natural selection alienated him from the scientific community. He was also a social activist, highly critical of unjust social and economic systems in nineteenth-century Britain, and one of the first prominent scientists to express concern over the environmental impact of human activity. This autobiography was first published in 1905. Volume 2 deals with his many eminent acquaintances, including Darwin and Huxley, his lecture tour in America, and his involvement with spiritualism and with social activism.

The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller
  • Volume 1
  • Peter Bayne
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    02 June 2011
    First published in:
    1871
  • This biography, edited by the writer and critic Peter Bayne (1830–1896), was published in 1844. Miller (1802–1856), a Scottish geologist, palaeontologist and evangelical Christian, is best known for his geological arguments for the existence of God. Miller sought to demonstrate the accuracy of the biblical creation story by demonstrating that the seven days of creation correspond to seven geological periods. Volume 1 covers Miller's early life, family, education and apprenticeship as a stonemason, and includes a selection of letters, both private and public, including two that expound his developing views on religion. The work is a key source for the life and thought of this fascinating nineteenth-century man whose life was marked by a passionate commitment to both science and religion and the ongoing attempt to reconcile the two. It will invigorate and entertain the modern-day reader.

History of the Royal Society
  • From its Institution to the End of the Eighteenth Century
  • Thomas Thomson
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    19 May 2011
    First published in:
    1812
  • The Royal Society has been dedicated to scientific inquiry since the seventeenth century. In 1811, Thomas Thomson (1773–1852), a pioneering chemistry teacher who was elected a fellow of the society in the same year, undertook the project of writing a history of the organisation's illustrious past. In this book, published in 1812, Thomson explains how the group began in 1645, initiated by men who met once a week to discuss natural philosophy and mathematics. They were eventually granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1662. The society grew in number and prestige, and began publishing research in its Philosophical Transactions in 1665. Thomson's work focuses particularly on the development of the group's many scientific areas of interest and summarises various papers it published. He also includes a full list of the fellowship, from the society's foundation to 1812, and a copy of the society's original charter.

The Works of John Playfair
  • Volume 1
  • John Playfair
  • Edited by James G. Playfair
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    30 June 2011
    First published in:
    1822
  • John Playfair (1748–1819) was a Scottish mathematician and geologist best known for his defence of James Hutton's geological theories. He attended the University of St Andrews, completing his theological studies in 1770. In 1785 he was appointed joint Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1805 he was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was acquainted with continental scientific developments, and was a prolific writer of scientific articles in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Review. This four-volume edition of his works was published in 1822. Volume 1 includes a biography of Playfair, and his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, which did much to popularise Hutton's ideas.

  • BJH volume 45 issue 1 Cover and Back matter

  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 45 / Issue 1 / March 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 February 2012, pp. b1-b3
    Print publication:
    March 2012
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  • The Ivory Tower: the history of a figure of speech and its cultural uses

  • STEVEN SHAPIN
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 45 / Issue 1 / March 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 February 2012, pp. 1-27
    Print publication:
    March 2012

  • This is a historical survey of how and why the notion of the Ivory Tower became part of twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural vocabularies. It very briefly tracks the origins of the tag in antiquity, documents its nineteenth-century resurgence in literary and aesthetic culture, and more carefully assesses the political and intellectual circumstances, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, in which it became a common phrase attached to universities and to features of science and in which it became a way of criticizing practices and institutions deemed to be ‘irrelevant’. The paper concludes by reflecting on the tag's relationship to pervasive cultural tropes and how its modern history may be used to appreciate better where science and its academic setting now stand in the ancient debate between the active and contemplative lives.

Page 179 of 516