Title: Darwin in Russian thought 
Author: Vucinich, Alexander 1914-
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Science | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Darwin in Russian Thought represents the first comprehensive and systematic study of Charles Darwin's influence on Russian thought from the early 1860s to the October Revolution. While concentrating on the role of Darwin's theory in the development of Russian science and philosophy, Vucinich also explores the dominant ideological and sociological interpretations of evolutionary thought, providing a deft analysis of the views held by the leaders of Russian nihilism, populism, anarchism, and marxism.Darwin's thinking profoundly influenced intellectual discourse in Russia: it effected the emergence of "theoretical theology," a modern effort to provide theological responses to the revolutionary changes in the natural sciences, contributed to the evolution of a modern scientific community, and spurred the rapidly growing concern with the epistemological and ethical foundations of science in general. Scholarly battles were waged among the critics of Darwin - Karl von Baer, Nikolai Iakovlevich Danilevskii and Sergei Ivanovich Korzhinskii, and others - and the defenders of the faith.Vucinich is able to delineate the distinctive national characteristics of Russian Darwinism: the strong influence of Lamarckian thought, the delayed recognition of the contributions of genetics, the near-universal rejection of Social Darwinism, the early anticipation of the triumph of "evolutionary synthesis," and the heavy concentration on the social and moral aspects of evolutionary thought. Vividly argued and rich in detail, Darwin in Russian Thought provides a unique glimpse into the Russian psyche.   [brief]
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Title: Lawrence and his laboratory: a history of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 
Author: Heilbron, J. L
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Science | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: The Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, was the birthplace of particle accelerators, radioisotopes, and modern big science. This first volume of its history is a saga of physics and finance in the Great Depression, when a new kind of science was born.Here we learn how Ernest Lawrence used local and national technological, economic, and manpower resources to build the cyclotron, which enabled scientists to produce high-voltage particles without high voltages. The cyclotron brought Lawrence forcibly and permanently to the attention of leaders of international physics in Brussels at the Solvay Congress of 1933. Ever since, the Rad Lab has played a prominent part on the world stage.The book tells of the birth of nuclear chemistry and nuclear medicine in the Laboratory, the discoveries of new isotopes and the transuranic elements, the construction of the ultimate cyclotron, Lawrence's Nobel Prize, and the energy, enthusiasm, and enterprise of Laboratory staff. Two more volumes are planned to carry the story through the Second World War, the establishment of the system of national laboratories, and the loss of Berkeley's dominance of high-energy physics.   [brief]
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Title: Inference, explanation, and other frustrations: essays in the philosophy of science 
Author: Earman, John
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Philosophy | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: These provocative essays by leading philosophers of science exemplify and illuminate the contemporary uncertainty and excitement in this changing field. The papers are rich in new perspectives, and their far-reaching criticisms challenge arguments long prevalent in classic philosophical problems of induction, empiricism, and realism. By turns empirical or analytic, historical or programmatic, confessional or argumentative, the authors' arguments both describe and demonstrate the fact that philosophy of science is in a ferment more intense than at any time since the heyday of logical positivism seventy years ago.   [brief]
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Title: The persistence of memory: organism, myth, text 
Author: Kuberski, Philip
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Literature | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: While memory is one of the most fascinating faculties of consciousness, it is also one of the most mysterious. Is it memory - our own marvelous personal computer or data base - that brings us the intense feelings prompted by a certain object or situation?Drawing on an expansive array of sources, from microbiology to cosmology, Ovid to Proust, Egyptology to the cinema, Philip Kuberski leads us on a brave and beguiling exploration of memory. He enables us to see it as a worldly process in which individuals both remember and are remembered, all in a network of associations that join our bodies, personal and cultural myths, and aesthetic and literary experiences. His essays will provide a tantalizing and thoughtful read for those interested in literature, psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy.   [brief]
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Title: Descartes's imagination: proportion, images, and the activity of thinking 
Author: Sepper, Dennis L
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Philosophy | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Renè Descartes is commonly portrayed as a strict rationalist, a philosopher who theorized a radical, unresolvable split between mind and body. In this long-overdue examination of the role of imagination in Descartes's thought, Dennis Sepper reveals a Descartes quite different from the usual dualistic portrayals and offers a critical reconception of the genesis and nature of the philosopher's thought.In a vigorous analysis of the less-known early works, Sepper finds that initially Descartes assigned the imagination a central role in the mind's activity. Although Descartes eventually lost confidence in the philosophy of imagination, an early understanding of its central role in cognition came to shape the most fundamental notions of his mature philosophy. Sepper's radical reassessment of Descartes ultimately raises new questions about the development of modern philosophy.   [brief]
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Title: The flux of history and the flux of science 
Author: Margolis, Joseph 1924-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Philosophy | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Does thinking have a history? If there are no necessarily changeless structures to be found in things and in our inquiry into them, then what knowledge of the world and ourselves is possible? In this boldly original and elegantly written study, Joseph Margolis argues for a radically historicized view of history that treats it as both a real process and a narrative account, each a product of continual change. Developing his argument through discussions of such influential philosophers of history and the natural sciences as Vico, Danto, Collingwood, Habermas, Hempel, Popper, Putnam, and Gadamer, he provides a coherent theory of flux and invariance that resolves several deep puzzles regarding human nature and understanding.While maintaining a thorough command of Anglo-American philosophy, Margolis challenges many of its most cherished assumptions and demonstrates the sense in which history and interpretation are one and the same. Exploring one of the master themes of this century, his book offers a novel theory of the human condition whose conclusions and concerns seem certain to inform philosophy in the next century as well.   [brief]
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Title: From c-numbers to q-numbers: the classical analogy in the history of quantum theory 
Author: Darrigol, Olivier
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science | Physics
Publisher's Description: The history of quantum theory is a maze of conceptual problems, through which Olivier Darrigol provides a lucid and learned guide, tracking the role of formal analogies between classical and quantum theory. From Planck's first introduction of the quantum of action to Dirac's formulation of quantum mechanics, Darrigol illuminates not only the history of quantum theory but also the role of analogies in scientific thinking and theory change.Unlike previous works, which have tended to focus on qualitative, global arguments, Darrigol's study follows the lines of mathematical reasoning and symbolizing and so is able to show the motivations of early quantum theorists more precisely - and provocatively - than ever before. Erudite and original, From c-Numbers to q-Numbers sets a new standard as a philosophically perceptive and mathematically precise history of quantum mechanics. For years to come it will influence historical and philosophical discussions of twentieth-century physics.   [brief]
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Title: Yorick's world: science and the knowing subject 
Author: Caws, Peter
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Philosophy | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Peter Caws provides a fresh and often iconoclastic treatment of some of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of science: explanation, induction, causality, evolution, discovery, artificial intelligence, and the social implications of technological rationality.Caws's work has been shaped equally by the insights of Continental philosophy and a concern with scientific practice. In these twenty-eight essays spanning more than a quarter of a century, he ranges from discussions of the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, to relations between science and surrealism, to the concept of intentionality, to the limits of quantitative description. A lively mix of history, theory, speculation, and analysis, Yorick's World presents a vision of science that includes human history and social life. It will interest professional philosophers and scientists, and at the same time its directness will make it readily accessible to nontechnical readers.   [brief]
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Title: Understanding relativity: a simplified approach to Einstein's theories
Author: Sartori, Leo
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Science | Physics | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Nonspecialists with no prior knowledge of physics and only reasonable proficiency with algebra can now understand Einstein's special theory of relativity. Effectively diagrammed and with an emphasis on logical structure, Leo Sartori's rigorous but simple presentation will guide interested readers through concepts of relative time and relative space.Sartori covers general relativity and cosmology, but focuses on Einstein's theory. He tracks its history and implications. He explores illuminating paradoxes, including the famous twin paradox, the "pole-in-the-barn" paradox, and the Loedel diagram, which is an accessible, graphic approach to relativity. Students of the history and philosophy of science will welcome this concise introduction to the central concept of modern physics.   [brief]
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Title: Race hygiene and national efficiency: the eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer 
Author: Weiss, Sheila Faith
Published: University of California Press,  1987
Subjects: Science | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
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Title: The Galileo affair: a documentary history
Author: Finocchiaro, Maurice A 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Science | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
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Title: The key to Newton's dynamics: the Kepler problem and the Principia: containing an English translation of sections 1, 2, and 3 of book one from the first (1687) edition of Newton's Mathematical principles of natural philosophy 
Author: Brackenridge, J. Bruce 1927-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Science | Physics | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: While much has been written on the ramifications of Newton's dynamics, until now the details of Newton's solution were available only to the physics expert. The Key to Newton's Dynamics clearly explains the surprisingly simple analytical structure that underlies the determination of the force necessary to maintain ideal planetary motion. J. Bruce Brackenridge sets the problem in historical and conceptual perspective, showing the physicist's debt to the works of both Descartes and Galileo. He tracks Newton's work on the Kepler problem from its early stages at Cambridge before 1669, through the revival of his interest ten years later, to its fruition in the first three sections of the first edition of the Principia .   [brief]
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Title: Adventures of a mathematician
Author: Ulam, Stanislaw M
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science | Mathematics | United States History
Publisher's Description: The autobiography of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, tells a story rich with amazingly prophetic speculations and peppered with lively anecdotes. As a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1944 on, Ulam helped to precipitate some of the most dramatic changes of the postwar world. He was among the first to use and advocate computers for scientific research, originated ideas for the nuclear propulsion of space vehicles, and made fundamental contributions to many of today's most challenging mathematical projects.With his wide-ranging interests, Ulam never emphasized the importance of his contributions to the research that resulted in the hydrogen bomb. Now Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews reveal the true story of Ulam's pivotal role in the making of the "Super," in their historical introduction to this behind-the-scenes look at the minds and ideas that ushered in the nuclear age. An epilogue by Françoise Ulam and Jan Mycielski sheds new light on Ulam's character and mathematical originality.   [brief]
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Title: A scientist's voice in American culture: Simon Newcomb and the rhetoric of scientific method
Author: Moyer, Albert E 1945-
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science | United States History
Publisher's Description: In late nineteenth-century America, Simon Newcomb was the nation's most celebrated scientist and - irascibly, doggedly, tirelessly - he made the most of it. Officially a mathematical astronomer heading a government agency, Newcomb spent as much of his life out of the observatory as in it, acting as a spokesman for the nascent but restive scientific community of his time.Newcomb saw the "scientific method" as a potential guide for all disciplines and a basis for all practical action, and argued passionately that it was of as much use in the halls of Congress as in the laboratory. In so doing, he not only sparked popular support for American science but also confronted a wide spectrum of social, cultural, and intellectual issues. This first full-length study of Newcomb traces the development of his faith in science and ranges over topics of great public debate in the Gilded Age, from the reform of economic theory to the recasting of the debate between science and religion. Moyer's portrait of a restless, eager mind also illuminates the bustle of late nineteenth-century America.   [brief]
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Title: The Quantifying spirit in the 18th century 
Author: Frängsmyr, Tore 1938-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Science | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science | Intellectual History
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Title: The temptations of evolutionary ethics 
Author: Farber, Paul Lawrence 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Philosophy | History | Ethics | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Evolutionary theory tells us about our biological past; can it also guide us to a moral future? Paul Farber's compelling book describes a century-old philosophical hope held by many biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and social thinkers: that universal ethical and social imperatives are built into human nature and can be discovered through knowledge of evolutionary theory.Farber describes three upsurges of enthusiasm for evolutionary ethics. The first came in the early years of mid-nineteenth century evolutionary theories; the second in the 1920s and '30s, in the years after the cultural catastrophe of World War I; and the third arrived with the recent grand claims of sociobiology to offer a sound biological basis for a theory of human culture.Unlike many who have written on evolutionary ethics, Farber considers the responses made by philosophers over the years. He maintains that their devastating criticisms have been forgotten - thus the history of evolutionary ethics is essentially one of oft-repeated philosophical mistakes.Historians, scientists, social scientists, and anyone concerned about the elusive basis of selflessness, altruism, and morality will welcome Farber's enlightening book.   [brief]
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Title: A science of impurity: water analysis in nineteenth century Britain 
Author: Hamlin, Christopher 1951-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | European History | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
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Title: Mental ills and bodily cures: psychiatric treatment in the first half of the twentieth century
Author: Braslow, Joel T 1959-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Science | Psychiatry | Medicine | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science | Psychology
Publisher's Description: Mental Ills and Bodily Cures depicts a time when psychiatric medicine went to lengths we now find extreme and perhaps even brutal ways to heal the mind by treating the body. From a treasure trove of California psychiatric hospital records, including many verbatim transcripts of patient interviews, Joel Braslow masterfully reconstructs the world of mental patients and their doctors in the first half of the twentieth century. Hydrotherapy, sterilization, electroshock, lobotomy, and clitoridectomy - these were among the drastic somatic treatments used in these hospitals.By allowing the would-be healers and those in psychological and physical distress to speak for themselves, Braslow captures the intense and emotional interplay surrounding these therapies. His investigation combines revealing clinical detail with the immediacy of "being there" in the institutional setting while decisions are made, procedures undertaken, and results observed by all those involved. We learn how well-intentioned physicians could rationalize and regard as therapeutic treatments that often had dreadful consequences, and how much the social and cultural world is inscribed within the practice of biological psychiatry. The book will interest historians of medicine, practicing psychiatrists, and everyone who knows or has seen what it's like to be in mental distress.   [brief]
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Title: From chemical philosophy to theoretical chemistry: dynamics of matter and dynamics of disciplines, 1800-1950
Author: Nye, Mary Jo
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Science | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science | Physical Sciences | Physics
Publisher's Description: How did chemistry and physics acquire their separate identities, and are they on their way to losing them again? Mary Jo Nye has written a graceful account of the historical demarcation of chemistry from physics and subsequent reconvergences of the two, from Lavoisier and Dalton in the late eighteenth century to Robinson, Ingold, and Pauling in the mid-twentieth century.Using the notion of a disciplinary "identity" analogous to ethnic or national identity, Nye develops a theory of the nature of disciplinary structure and change. She discusses the distinctive character of chemical language and theories and the role of national styles and traditions in building a scientific discipline. Anyone interested in the history of scientific thought will enjoy pondering with her the question of whether chemists of the mid-twentieth century suspected chemical explanation had been reduced to physical laws, just as Newtonian mechanical philosophers had envisioned in the eighteenth century.   [brief]
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Title: Essential subtleties on the silver sea: the Yin-hai jing-wei: a Chinese classic on ophthalmology
Author: Sun, Simiao 581-682
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Anthropology | Medical Anthropology | China | History  and  Philosophy  of  Science
Publisher's Description: Here is the first translation into English of the complete Yin-Hai Jing-Wei , a classic fifteenth-century text on Chinese ophthalmology. As one of the few original manuscripts on traditional Chinese medicine translated into a Western language, this work offers an unprecedented view of the practice of medicine, and specifically eye care, in premodern China. Superbly rendered from the classical Chinese and extensively annotated by Paul U. Unschuld and Jürgen Kovacs, the text provides detailed descriptions of the etiology, symptomatology, and therapy of every eye disease known to fifteenth-century Chinese practitioners. The translators' introduction also provides the first in-depth analysis of the development of this specialty within Chinese medicine. As a source for comparative studies of Chinese and Western medicine and numerous other issues in the history of medicine and Chinese thought, the Yin-Hai Jing-Wei has no equal in the Western world.   [brief]
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