31 Products

Jim Endersby explores ‘the curious and unexpected variety of significances that people have ascribed to orchids’ in western cultures, from Theophrastus’ herbals in ancient Greece to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, deadly species in science-fiction and ongoing research into Spider Orchids on the South Downs. The book looks at our relationship with orchids in terms of science, sex and death, and examines the theme of empire, describing how European imperial expansion and wealth stimulated the search for ever rarer orchids.

Arguing that British science would not have developed very differently without Newton, the authors demonstrate his indebtedness to the achievements of his contemporaries, in particular Hooke, from whom he ‘borrowed’ many ideas, and Halley, who encouraged and paid for the publication of the Principia.

In 1983 Justin Schmidt recorded the degree of pain he felt when stung by different venomous insects, resulting in the ‘Schmidt Pain Index’. With chapters on medicine, psychology, society, and the universe, this book examines 100 experiments, ranging from the peculiar (like Schmidt’s) to the groundbreaking (the creation of Dolly the sheep), and appraises their significance for practical science.

John Henry assesses Francis Bacon’s ineluctable influence on the methodology, content and organization of science both in his own time and now, revealing how Bacon’s fascination with bureaucracy, magic and religion inspired his best-known works, including The New Organon.

Histories of Western science often begin their narrative with Galileo’s battle to gain acceptance for Copernicus’ heliocentric model. But physicist John Freely sets out ‘to right this historical injustice’ by showing how a succession of European scholars as far back as the Dark Ages paved the way for the exciting discoveries of later centuries. Discussing the influential work of such figures as the Venerable Bede and Albertus Magnus, he identifies those ‘giants’ on whose shoulders Newton said he was standing.

John Gribbin tells the story of how, in the 17th century, amid civil war, plague and fire, a group of ‘natural philosophers’ – Gilbert, Bacon, Harvey, Wren, Newton and Hooke – began a scientific revolution.

Thomas Levenson tells the all-but-forgotten story of Isaac Newton, Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier and the search for the planet Vulcan, and how Albert Einstein proved that it did not exist and went on to discover relativity.

When black holes collide, vast amounts of energy are emitted in the form of gravitational waves. Einstein predicted the existence of such waves in 1916, but not until a century later was it possible to create instruments of sufficient sensitivity to detect them from Earth. Reporting her own conversations with her fellow-astrophysicists, Levin’s lyrical, humorous account of this decades-long quest captures their ambitions and obsessions, struggles and disappointments as they endeavour to measure subtle shifts in the shape of spacetime. American-cut pages and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Patricia Fara follows the evangelists of the new science of electricity, including Benjamin Franklin and Luigi Galvani, and the ideas their demonstrations sparked in the popular culture of the 18th century.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is best known as Germany’s foremost poet and playwright, but he was also an accomplished all-round scientist, studying anatomy, geology, botany, zoology and colour theory. The extracts from his scientific writings reproduced in this book illustrate his belief that we should study our world as people at home in it rather than remotely, and are essential reading for anyone who feels we have lost our spiritual connection to nature.

The period between the European Renaissance and Enlightenment brought monumental scientific discoveries about gravity, the structure of the solar system and the circulation of the blood, but these coexisted with an almost universal belief in horoscopes and magic. In this book a Tudor historian explores how the great thinkers of the age responded to the entanglement of superstition and science, and shows how their work contributed to debate about the relationship between belief and knowledge.

The physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) was one of the ‘great men’ to emerge from the Scottish Enlightenment. Although prompted by Clerk Maxwell’s achievement, this study goes beyond his life to examine the family he emerged from and its wider connections. Covering the period following the religious and political turmoil of the 17th century, John Arthur explores how Scottish families such as the Clerk Maxwells and their associates produced the brilliant Scots of the Enlightenment and the 19th century.

These 15 studies in the early development of geology include papers on Nicholas Desmarest, natural law in 18th-century geology and Buffon’s Époques de la Nature (1778).

This series introduces the texts that have helped shape Western civilization, every volume providing a detailed examination of the central ideas and arguments of a seminal text and discussion of its lasting significance.

Physics is the science that ties together all others, aiming to explain the nature of the universe from the smallest subatomic particles to vast galaxies and the nature of space-time. Profiling the most important figures in the history of science and covering topics such as light and optics, energy and the Big Bang, this well-illustrated book traces the development of physics from the natural philosophers of the ancient world to cutting-edge experiments in quantum mechanics.

Showing how new scientific discoveries were presented to Victorian children through 'fairy tales of science', Keene's study introduces 19th-century debates about education, scientific progress and the role of fantasy.

In this 'long meditation on a single question', Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wilczek considers how ideas about beauty and art have always been intertwined with our scientific understanding of the cosmos. Taking as his starting-point Pythagoras' credo that 'all things are number', he follows the quest of figures such as Newton and Einstein who contributed to our present-day understanding of the equations and symmetries that reveal the fundamental purity, order and harmony of the entire universe.

Focusing on Galileo's invention of the telescope in 17th-century Europe, Huff presents a comparative study of contemporary scientific development in Western Europe, China, Mughal India and the Ottoman Empire.

This first detailed study of the British Association for the Advancement of Science examines the history and geography of science and the science of geography in 19th- and early 20th-century Britain and the Empire.

Ioan James profiles 38 remarkable biologists from the last 400 years. While the emphasis is on their life stories rather than details of their achievements, read in sequence the biographies convey something of the way in which biology has developed.

With more than 1,200 entries on both prominent and lesser-known figures, this major reference work offers a biographically detailed overview of the development of British science in the 19th century. No jacket.

Jessica Ratcliff describes the 1874 and 1882 programmes of observations of the transit, drawing out their cultural significance and exploring the nature of 'big science' in late Victorian Britain. No jacket.

This volume presents recent historical research into aspects of the complex relationship between the sciences and National Socialism, in many cases reaching back to the earlier years of the 20th century. Beginning with the editor's introductory essay and a study of Humboldt's concept of the university, the essays deal with disciplines including geography, eugenics, biochemistry and aeronautics; technologies such as bio-technology and area planning; and the careers of individual scientists.

Rom Harre gives a lively account of the many ways in which scientists have used animals and plants, whether alive or dead - or both (conceptually) in the case of Schrodinger's cat.