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HISTORY & PHILISOPHY OF SCIENCE
Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America's Long Cold War
Edited by Andra B. Chastain and Timothy W. Lorek Series: Intersections
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Argues for the importance of expertise in the Latin American Cold War.
Itineraries of Expertise contends that experts and expertise played fundamental roles in the Latin American Cold War. While traditional Cold War histories of the region have examined diplomatic, intelligence, and military operations and more recent studies have probed the cultural dimensions of the conflict, the experts who constitute the focus of this volume transcend these categories.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822945963 • Paperback 22 b/w illus. • 229 x 152mm • 480 pages • March 2020 • £30.00
Radiation Evangelists
Technology, Therapy, and Uncertainty at the Turn of the Century By , Jeffrey Womack A cautionary tale of technological medical progress and the consequences of human experimentation. Explores x-ray and radium therapy in the United States and Great Britain during a crucial period of its development, from 1896 to 1925. It focuses on the pioneering work of early advocates in the field, the “radiation evangelists” who, motivated by their faith in a new technology, trust in new energy sources, and hope for future breakthroughs, turned a blind eye to the dangers of radiation exposure.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822946090 • Hardback 43 b/w illus. • 229 x 152mm • 228 pages • March 2020 • £30.00
Weather, Climate, and the Geographical Imagination
Placing Atmospheric Knowledges Edited by Martin Mahony and Samuel Randalls Series: Intersections
The history of expertise, practice, and politics related to weather and climate.
As global temperatures rise, new questions are being asked of how societies make sense of their weather, of the cultural values which are afforded to climate, and of how environmental futures are imagined, feared, predicted, and remade. This book brings together a range of voices from history of science, historical geography, and environmental history, each speaking to a set of questions about the role of space and place in the production, circulation, reception, and application of knowledges about weather and climate.
Race, Evolution and the Discovery of Human Biology in the British World By Ross L. Jones Describes and closely examines key figures in Evolutionary Biology.
This book explores the 20th-century anatomists Grafton Elliot Smith, Frederic Wood Jones and Arthur Keith, who travelled the globe collecting, cataloguing and constructing morphologies of the biological world with the aim of weaving these into a new vision of bio-ecology that links humans to their deep past as well as their evolutionary niche. By changing popular views of race and environment, they moulded attitudes as to what it meant to be human in a post-Darwinian world - thus providing a potent critique of racism.
Arden • 9781925984705 • Paperback • 229 x 152mm 320 pages • September 2020 • £30.00
Astronomy in India, 1784-1876
Shows Indians as active participants in modern scientific observational astronomy. Indian scientific achievements in the early twentieth century are well known, with a number of heralded individuals making globally recognized strides in the field of astrophysics. Covering the period from the foundation of the Asiatic Society in 1784 to the establishment of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1876, Sen explores the relationship between Indian astronomers and the colonial British.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966470 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 282 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main
By Ayako Sakurai Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century A fascinating insight into Germany’s scientific history.
The nineteenth century saw science move from being the preserve of a small learned elite to a dominant force which influenced society as a whole. This book studies how scientific societies affected the social and political life of a city. As it did not have a university or a centralised government, Frankfurt am Main is an ideal case study of how scientific associations—funded by private patronage for the good of the local populace—became an important centre for natural history.
Placing Knowledges in Victorian England By Simon Naylor Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
A historical geography of regional science using Cornwall as a case study.
Victorian England, as is well known, produced an enormous amount of scientific endeavour, but what has previously been overlooked is the important role of geography on these developments. Taking an in-depth look at the county of Cornwall, questions on how science affected provincial Victorian society, how it changed people’s relationship with the landscape and how it shaped society are applied to the Cornish case study.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966463 • New in Paperback 229 x 152 • 248 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Edited by Joe Kember, John Plunkett and Jill A. Sullivan Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
A collection of essays exploring the Victorian phenomena of exhibitions. Victorian culture was characterised by a proliferation of shows and exhibitions. These were encouraged by the development of new sciences and technologies, together with changes in transportation, education and leisure patterns. The essays in this collection look at exhibitions and their influence in terms of location, technology and ideology.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966395 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 304 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914
Edited by Ben Marsden, Hazel Hutchinson and Ralph O'Connor Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
An exploration of the historical relationship between science and literature. Britain in the long nineteenth century developed an increasing interest in science of all kinds. Whilst poets and novelists took inspiration from technical and scientific innovations, those directly engaged in these new disciplines relied on literary techniques to communicate their discoveries to a wider audience. The essays in this collection uncover this symbiotic relationship between literature and science, at the same time bridging the disciplinary gulf between the history of science and literary studies.
By Claire L. Jones Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century Connects medicine and commerce by examining historical medical trade catalogues.
By the late nineteenth century, advances in medical knowledge, technology and pharmaceuticals led to the development of a thriving commercial industry. The medical trade catalogue became one of the most important means of promoting the latest tools and techniques to practitioners. Drawing on over 400 catalogues produced between 1870 and 1914, Jones presents a study of the changing nature of medical professionalism.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966388 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 280 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture
Edited by Louise Penner and Tabitha Sparks Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
An interdisciplinary study on the impact of scientific medicine on Victorian culture. This collection of essays explores the rise of scientific medicine and its impact on Victorian popular culture. Chapters include an examination of Charles Dickens’s involvement with hospital funding, concerns over milk purity and the theatrical portrayal of drug addiction, plus a whole section devoted to the representation of medicine in crime fiction. This is an interdisciplinary study involving public health, cultural studies, the history of medicine, literature and the theatre, providing new insights into Victorian culture and society.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966432 New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 200 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
The Age of Scientific Naturalism
Tyndall and His Contemporaries Edited by Bernard Lightman and Michael S. Reidy Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Examines how John Tyndall and his correspondents developed their ideas through writings.
Physicist John Tyndall and his contemporaries were at the forefront of developing the cosmology of scientific naturalism during the Victorian period. They rejected all but physical laws as having any impact on the operations of human life and the universe. Contributors focus on the way Tyndall and his correspondents developed their ideas through letters, periodicals and scientific journals and challenge previously held assumptions about who gained authority, and how they attained and defended their position within the scientific community.
By Jessica Ratcliff Series: Science & Culture in the Nineteenth Century Explores the nature of 'big science' in Victorian Britain
In the nineteenth century, the British Government spent money measuring the distance between the earth and the sun using observations of the transit of Venus. This book presents a narrative of the two Victorian transit programmes. It draws out their cultural significance and explores the nature of "big science" in late-Victorian Britain.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966449 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 232 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
The Science of History in Victorian Britain
Tyndall and His Contemporaries By Ian Hesketh Series: Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Draws on a variety of sources to challenge the notion of a single scientific approach to history.
New attitudes towards history in nineteenth-century Britain saw a rejection of romantic, literary techniques in favour of a professionalised, scientific methodology. The development of history as a scientific discipline was undertaken by several key historians of the Victorian period, influenced by German scientific history and British natural philosophy. This study examines parallels between the professionalisation of both history and science at the time, which have previously been overlooked.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966364 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 248 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Recreating Newton
Newtonian Biography and the Making of Nineteenth-Century History of Science
Higgitt examines Isaac Newton's changing legacy during the nineteenth century. She focuses on 1820–1870, a period that saw the creation of the specialised and secularised role of the "scientist." At the same time, researchers gained better access to Newton's archives. These were used both by those who wished to undermine the traditional, idealised depiction of scientific genius and those who felt obliged to defend Newtonian hagiography.
Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland
By Diarmid A. Finnegan Series: Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century Winner of the Frank Watson Prize in Scottish History, 2011
The relationship between science and civil society is essential to our understanding of cultural change during the Victorian era. Science was frequently packaged as an appropriate form of civic culture, inculcating virtues necessary for civic progress. In turn, civic culture was presented as an appropriate context for enabling and supporting scientific progress. Finnegan's study looks at the shifting nature of this process during the nineteenth century, using Scotland as the focus for his argument.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966357 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 248 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Science and Eccentricity
Collecting, Writing and Performing Science for Early Nineteenth-Century Audiences By Victoria Carroll Series: Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century The first scholarly history of eccentricity.
The concept of eccentricity was central to how people in the nineteenth century understood their world. This book explores how discourses of eccentricity were established to make sense of individuals who did not seem to fit within an increasingly organised social and economic order. It focuses on the self-taught natural philosopher William Martin, the fossilist Thomas Hawkins and the taxidermist Charles Waterton.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966333 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 272 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences
Shared Assumptions, 1820–1858 By James Elwick Series: Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century Explores how "compound individuality" brought together life scientists pre-Darwinian London.
Scientists conducting research in comparative anatomy, physiology, cellular microscopy, embryology and the neurosciences repeatedly stated that plants and animals were compounds of smaller independent units. Discussion of a "bodily economy" was widespread. But by 1860, the most flamboyant discussions of compound individuality had come to an end in Britain. Elwick relates the growth and decline of questions about compound individuality to wider nineteenth-century debates about research standards.
By Juliana Adelman Series: Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century Challenges historians to reassess the relationship between science and society.
The nineteenth century was an important period for both the proliferation of "popular" science and for the demarcation of a group of professionals that we now term scientists. For Ireland, the prominence of Catholicism posed various philosophical questions regarding research. This study examines the impact of the growth of science in these communities and on the country’s economy; the role of museums and exhibitions in spreading scientific knowledge, and the role that science had to play in Ireland’s turbulent political context.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966326 • New in Paperback 229 x 152mm • 240 pages • December 2020 • £26.50
American Dinosaur Abroad
A Cultural History of Carnegie's Plaster Diplodicus By Ilja Nieuwland Explores the influence of Andrew Carnegie’s prized skeleton on European culture. In 1899, a team of palaeontologists sponsored by Andrew Carnegie discovered the fossil remains of what was then the longest and largest dinosaur on record. Named after its benefactor, the Diplodocus carnegii—Dippy, as it’s known today— was later mounted and unveiled at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. This book explores Dippy’s influence on European culture through the dissemination, reception, and agency of his plaster casts, revealing much about the social, political, cultural, and scientific context of the early twentieth century.
University of Pittsburgh Press • 9780822966524 • Paperback 56 b/w illus. • 229 x 152mm • 336 pages • September 2020 • £16.99
Science Museums in Transition
Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America Edited by Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman Explores the transformation of scientific exhibitions and museums during the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the display and dissemination of natural knowledge across Britain and America. This book provides a nuanced, comparative study of the diverse places and spaces in which science was displayed during this period. Taken together, the chapters in this volume span the Atlantic, exploring private and public museums, short and long-term exhibitions, and museums built for entertainment, education, and research, and in turn raise a host of important questions, about expertise, and about who speaks for nature and for history.
