Considering Thoreau as a serious, committed scientist, this book offers an alternative understanding of his accomplishment and the place of science in American literature. It shows how Thoreau's experience reveals the interaction between Romanticism and the dynamic, law-seeking science of its day.

This remarkably ambitious work relates changes in scientific and medical thought during the Scientific Revolution (circa 1500-1700) to the emergence of new principles and practices for interpreting language, texts, and nature. An invaluable history of ideas about the nature of language during this period, The Word of God and the Languages of Man also explores the wider cultural origins and impact of these ideas. Its broad and deeply complex picture of a profound sociocultural and intellectual transformation will alter our definition of the scientific revolution.
James J. Bono shows...

John Canaday analyzes a variety of texts produced by physicists before, during, and after the Second World War, including Niels Bohr s "The Quantum Postulate"; the Blegdamsvej Faust, a parody of Goethe s Faust that cast physicists as its principle characters; The Los Alamos Primer, the technical lectures used for training at Los Alamos; scientists descriptions of their work and of the Trinity test; and Leo Szilard s post-war novella, The Voice of the Dolphins."