Kategoria BISAC: Science >> History

Just as America's domestic and international policies became inextricably linked during the Cold War, so did the nation's public and private technologies. The spread of the suburbs fed into demands for an interstate...

Naming his theory after the ancient Greek earth goddess, Lovelock's "Gaia hypothesis" argued that...

Ranging from alchemy to necromancy, "books of secrets" offered medieval readers an affordable and accessible collection of knowledge about the natural world. Allison Kavey's study traces the cultural relevance of these books and also charts their influence on the people who read them. Citing the importance of printers in choosing the books' contents, she points out how these books legitimized manipulating nature, thereby expanding cultural categories, such as masculinity, femininity, gentleman, lady, and...

Is Science Multicultural? explores what the last three decades of European/American, feminist, and postcolonial science and technology studies can learn from each other. Sandra Harding introduces and discusses an array of postcolonial science studies, and their implications for "northern" science. All three science studies strains have developed in the context of post-World War II science and technology projects. They illustrate how technoscientific projects mean different things to different groups. The meaning attached by the culture of the West may not be shared or may be diametrically...

"Crease's brilliantly exploited theatrical analogy places scientific theorizing back into the wider context of experimental inquiry." --Robert C. Scharff

Crease attacks the "mystical" account of experimentation embraced by the positivist and Kantian varieties of philosophy of science, according to which experimentation takes a backseat to theory.

How did the United States become the world's largest consumer of energy? David Nye shows that this is less a question about the development of technology than it is a question about the development of culture. In Consuming Power, Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. He looks at how these activities changed as new energy systems were constructed, from colonial times to recent years. He also shows how, as Americans incorporated new machines and processes into their lives, they became ensnared in power systems that were...

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) is one of the major figures of the English Enlightenment. A contemporary and friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, he exceeded even these polymaths in the breadth of his curiosity and learning. Yet no one has attempted an all-inclusive biography of Priestley, probably because he was simply too many persons for anyone easily to comprehend in a single study. Robert Schofield has devoted a lifetime of scholarship to this task. The result is a magisterial book, covering the life and works of Priestley during the critical first forty years of his life....