In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the "natural world" confronts us all and always has – but "Before Nature" explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of "nature" – no word, reference, or sense fo...

The debate over scientists' social responsibility is a topic of great controversy today. Peter J. Kuznick here traces the origin of that debate to the 1930s and places it in a context that forces a reevaluation of the relationship between science and...

In "Baroque Science", Ofer Gal and Raz Chen-Morris present a radically new perspective on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Instead of celebrating the triumph of reason and rationality, they study the paradoxes and anxieties that...

Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions".British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment" reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the...

Although largely unknown today, during his lifetime Mutio Oddi of Urbino (1569-1639) was a highly esteemed scholar, teacher, and practitioner of a wide range of disciplines related to mathematics. A prime example of the artisan-scholar so prevalent i...