Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as man and as scientist. Drawing upon much new material, supported by an unmatched acquaintance with both the intellectual setting and the voluminous sources, Janet Browne has at last been able to unravel the central enigma of Darwin's career: how did this amiable young gentleman, born into a prosperous provincial English family, grow into a thinker capable of challenging the most basic principles of religion and science? The dramatic story of Voyaging takes us from agonizing personal challenges to the exhilaration of discovery; we see a young, inquisitive Darwin gradually mature, shaping, refining, and finally setting forth the ideas that would at last fall upon the world like a thunderclap in The Origin of Species.

    Finished only weeks before his death in 1994, it is the self-portrait of one of this century's most original and influential intellectuals.Trained in physics and astronomy, Feyerabend was best known as a philosopher of science. But he emphatically was not a builder of theories or a writer of rules. Rather, his fame was in powerful, plain-spoken critiques of "big" science and "big" philosophy. Feyerabend gave voice to a radically democratic "epistemological anarchism:" he argued forcefully that there is not one way to knowledge, but many principled paths; not one truth or one rationality but different, competing pictures of the workings of the world. "Anything goes," he said about the ways of science in his most famous book, Against Method. And he meant it.Here, for the first time, Feyerabend traces the trajectory that led him from an isolated, lower-middle-class childhood in Vienna to the height of international academic success. He writes of his experience in the German army on the Russian front, where three bullets left him crippled, impotent, and in lifelong pain. He recalls his promising talent as an operatic tenor (a lifelong passion), his encounters with everyone from Martin Buber to Bertolt Brecht, innumerable love affairs, four marriages, and a career so rich he once held tenured positions at four universities at the same time.Although not written as an intellectual autobiography, Killing Time sketches the people, ideas, and conflicts of sixty years. Feyerabend writes frankly of complicated relationships with his mentor Karl Popper and his friend and frequent opponent Imre Lakatos, and his reactions to a growing reputation as the "worst enemy of science."

    He decried the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War Two, agitated against nuclear weapons, promoted vitamin C as a cure for the common cold and researched the idea of DNA.

    H. Huxley (1825–1895) was Darwin's bloody-fanged bulldog. His giant scything intellect shook a prim Victorian society; his “Devil's gospel” of evolution outraged. He put “agnostic” into the vocabulary and cave men into the public consciousness. Adrian Desmond's fiery biography with its panoramic view of Dickensian life explains how this agent provocateur rose to become the century's greatest prophet.Synoptic in its sweep and evocative in its details, Desmond's biography reveals the poverty and opium-hazed tragedies of young Tom Huxley's life as well as the accolades and triumphs of his later years. The drug-grinder's apprentice knew sots and scandals and breakdowns that signaled a genius close to madness. As surgeon's mate on the cockroach-infested frigate Rattlesnake, he descended into hell on the Barrier Reef, but was saved by a golden-haired girl in the penal colony.Huxley pulled himself up to fight Darwin's battles in the 1860s, but left Darwin behind on the most inflammatory issues. He devasted angst-ridden Victorian society with his talk of ape ancestors, and tantalized and tormented thousands-from laborers to ladies of society, cardinals to Karl Marx—with his scintillating lectures. Out of his provocations came our image of science warring with theology. And out of them, too, came the West's new faith-agnosticism (he coined the new word).Champion of modern education, creator of an intellectually dominant profession, and president of the Royal Society, in Desmond's hands Huxley epitomizes the rise of the middle classes as the clawed power from the Anglican elite. His modern godless universe, intriguing and terrifying, millions of years in the making, was explored in his laboratory at South Kensington; his last pupil, H. G. Wells, made it the foundation of twentieth-century science fiction.Touching the crowning achievements and the crushing depths of both the man and his times, this is the epic story of a courageous genius whose life summed up the social changes from the Victorian to the modern age. Written with enormous zest and passion, Huxley is about the making of our modern Darwinian world.

    A captivating journey through the modern astronomy of the Milky Way, Croswell shows us how a deeper understanding of the nature and working of the galaxy can offer larger clues into the origins of the universe itself.

    'Paul,' he said, 'you have such strange ideas. Why don't you write them down? I shall write a reply, we publish the whole thing and I promise you—we shall have a lot of fun.' " Although Lakatos died before he could write his reply, For and Against Method reconstructs his original counter-arguments from lectures and correspondence previously unpublished in English, allowing us to enjoy the "fun" two of this century's most eminent philosophers had, matching their wits and ideas on the subject of the scientific method.For and Against Method opens with an imaginary dialogue between Lakatos and Feyerabend, which Matteo Motterlini has constructed, based on their published works, to synthesize their positions and arguments. Part one presents the transcripts of the last lectures on method that Lakatos delivered. Part two, Feyerabend's response, consists of a previously published essay on anarchism, which began the attack on Lakatos's position that Feyerabend later continued in Against Method. The third and longest section consists of the correspondence Lakatos and Feyerabend exchanged on method and many other issues and ideas, as well as the events of their daily lives, between 1968 and Lakatos's death in 1974.The delight Lakatos and Feyerabend took in philosophical debate, and the relish with which they sparred, come to life again in For and Against Method, making it essential and lively reading for anyone interested in these two fascinating and controversial thinkers and their immense contributions to philosophy of science."The writings in this volume are of considerable intellectual importance, and will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the development of the philosophical views of Lakatos and Feyerabend, or indeed with the development of philosophy of science in general during this crucial period."—Donald Gillies, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (on the Italian edition)"A stimulating exchange of letters between two philosophical entertainers."—Tariq Ali, The IndependentImre Lakatos (1922-1974) was professor of logic at the London School of Economics. He was the author of Proofs and Refutations and the two-volume Philosophical Papers. Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was educated in Europe and held numerous teaching posts throughout his career. Among his books are Against Method; Science in a Free Society; Farewell to Reason; and Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, the last published by the University of Chicago Press.

    This book begins with the major recognition that each of these suffers from a certain residual Cartesianism that has been smuggled in unconsciously. It turns out that the moment one discards this hidden and problematic premise, quantum theory begins to make sense in a way that it never has before. As the author shows, it is now possible, for the first time, to integrate the findings of quantum physics into a world view that is neither forced nor ad hoc, but conforms to the permanent intuitions of mankind.Surprisingly, this treatise can be read not only by scientists, but also by readers unacquainted with the technical conceptions of physics or the quantum-reality literature.Wolfgang Smith graduated from Cornell University at age eighteen with majors in physics, philosophy, and mathematics. After taking an M.S. in physics at Purdue he pursued research in aerodynamics, where his papers on diffusion fields have provided the theoretical key to the solution of the re-entry problem for space flight. After receiving a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University, Dr. Smith held faculty positions at M.I.T, U.C.L.A., and Oregon State University, where he served as Professor of Mathematics until his retirement in 1992. In addition to numerous technical publications (relating to differential topology), Dr. Smith has published three previous books and many articles dealing with foundational and interdisciplinary problems. He has been especially concerned to unmask conceptions of a scientistic kind widely accepted today as scientific truths.Wolfgang Smith is as important a thinker as our times boast, and this is his most seminal book. - Huston SmithThe Quantum Enigma is of great importance not only for the philosophy of science, but also for the whole domain of human knowledge, and should be disseminated as widely as possible. - Seyyed Hossein NasrUnusually interesting . . . profoundly enlightening. - Henry Margenau

    The physicists knew the Reich had failed to develop an atomic bomb, and they soon learned, from a BBC radio report on August 6, that the Allies had succeeded in their own efforts to create such a weapon. But what they did not know was that many of their meetings and private conversations were being monitored and recorded by British agents. This book contains the complete collection of transcripts that were made from these secret recordings, providing an unprecedented view of how the German scientists, including two Nobel Laureates, thought and spoke about their roles during the war.

    Morell transports us into the world of these compelling personalities, demonstrating how a small clan of highly talented and fiercely competitive people came to dominate an entire field of science and to contribute immeasurably to our understanding of the origins of humanity.

    But how and when did such issues come to be established and accepted sources of knowledge about the body in medical culture? How are the specialized techniques and codes of these imaging techniques determined, and whose bodies are studied, diagnosed and treated with the help of optical recording devices? "Screening the Body" traces the unusual history of scientific film during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, presenting material that is at once disturbing and engrossing. Lisa Cartwright looks at films like "The Elephant Electrocution". She brings to light eccentric figures in the history of the science film such as William P. Spratling who used Biograph equipment and crews to film epileptic seizures, and Thomas Edison's lab assistants who performed x-ray experiments on their own bodies. Drawing on feminist film theory, cultural studies, the history of film, and the writings of Foucault, Lisa Cartwright illustrates how this scientific cinema was a part of a broader tendency in society toward the technological surveillance, management, and physical transformation of the individual body and the social body. She frequently points out the similarities of scientific film to works of avant-garde cinema, revealing historical ties among the science film, popular media culture and elite modernist art and film practices. Ultimately, Cartwright unveils an area of film culture that has rarely been discussed, but which will leave readers scouring video libraries in search of the films she describes.

    It covers many Jewish authors and their writings from the middle of the 16th until the late 18th centuries in Europe. The book's combined approach to the history of science and Jewish thought strongly emphasises analysis of the mentalities that informed some of the prominent figures of Jewish thought in this time period. Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe takes a comprehensive look at the processes taking place in the minds of European Jewish intellectuals in Italy, Amsterdam, Prague, and London. The main purpose of this book is the description of the modalities of reception of the new sciences, complicated by the traditional reticence toward "alien sciences" found in many medieval Jewish writers still influential in the early modern period.

    Philosophers widely discounted the possibility that psychology's claim to empirical truth had anything relevant to offer their field. And psychologists, such as the crazed and eccentric Otto Weinegger, often considered themselves philosophers. Freud, it is held, was deeply influenced by his wife, Martha's, uncle, who was also a philosopher. The tension between the fields persisted, until the two fields eventually matured and grew apart.<br> <br> Until the publication of Martin Kursch's masterly work <b></b><b><i>Psychologism</i></b>, few philosophers and psychologists have attended to their originally unhappy, turn-of-the-century engagement. Martin Kusch explores the origins of psychologism in Germany and <i>fin de siecle</i> Vienna by examining two major figures of twentieth century philosophy: Frege and Husserl. As one of the few serious works on Frege, Kusch trenchantly and clearly reconstructs the debate and the context in which it flourished. <b></b><b><i>Psychologism</i></b> will prove to be a key work of intellectual history on a subject which has largely been overlooked and, above all, understudied.</P>

    Though the dazzling displays in Renaissance art and literature of the exterior of the body have long been a subject of enquiry, Jonathan Sawday considers in detail the interior of the body, and what it meant to men and women in early modern culture. Sawday links the frequently illicit activities of the great anatomists of the period, to whose labors we are indebted for so much of our understanding of the structure and operation of the human body, to a wider cultural discourse which embraces not only the great moments of Renaissance art, but the very foundation of a modern idea of knowledge. Illustrated with thirty-two black and white prints, The Body Emblazoned re-assesses modern understanding not only of the literature and culture of the Renaissance, but of the modern organization of knowledge which is now so familiar that it is only rarely questioned.

    But while philosophers have sought to understand the ramifications of his theories, they have paid much less attention to how, exactly, he arrived at his ideas. What twists and turns of his intellect brought him to his epochal conclusions? How did his personal ambitions and the social conditions of his era shape his thought? These questions and more are masterfully answered in Stephen Gaukroger's Descartes, a fascinating look at this most influential of all Renaissance thinkers. In his quest to retrace Descartes's development as a scientist and philosopher, Gaukroger leaves no stone unturned. From the great man's first book on music theory (Compendium Musicae) to his masterworks Discours, Essais, Meditationes, and Principia, from his study of mathematics while attending a Jesuit college at age ten, through his dying days in the service of Christina, Queen of Sweden, Descartes brims with penetrating and often surprising insights into the philosopher's life and work. We discover, for example, that he wasn't as concerned with developing an all-encompassing theory of knowledge as he was with establishing a natural philosophy that supported the teachings of Copernicus, a man whose work he deeply admired. We also learn that Descartes was willing to alter his publicly stated views to accommodate church doctrine--especially after witnessing Galileo's condemnation in 1633. We observe how his personal triumphs and failures--from his rumored nervous breakdown in 1614, to his joy at the popular reception of Discours and Essais, to his protracted and very public dispute with the implacable professor Voetius--affected his intellectual development. Along the way, Gaukroger details how Descartes's theories of metaphysics, mechanics, cognition, and cosmology have been both championed and distorted by philosophers of all stripes for over three hundred years. Packed with helpful diagrams and in-depth interpretations of Descartes's most celebrated works, the book also includes a useful chronology that highlights his important accomplishments and personal milestones. Descartes is an exhaustively detailed, magisterial look at the dazzling intellectual achievements of the father of modern philosophy. Splendidly written by a renowned authority on the subject, it will serve as the definitive guide to Descartes's thoughts, works, and life for years to come.

    The argument rests on a close description of the practices of Greek mathematics, principally the use of lettered diagrams and the regulated, formulaic use of language.

    Throughout the book, the reader will meet the hedonists and swindlers, monks and heretics, and men and women laboring in garages and over kitchen sinks who expanded our understanding of the elements and discovered such new substances as plastic, rubber, and aspirin. Creations of Fire expands our vision of the meaning of chemistry and reveals the oddballs and academics who have helped shape our world.

    The interior of nature, once closed off to both sympathetic intuition and direct perception, was now accessible with the help of optical instruments. The microscope led to a conception of science as an objective, procedure-driven mode of inquiry and renewed interest in atomism and mechanism. Focusing on the earliest forays into microscopical research, from 1620 to 1720, this book provides us with both a compelling technological history and a lively assessment of the new knowledge that helped launch philosophy into the modern era.Wilson argues that the discovery of the microworld--and the apparent role of living animalcula in generation, contagion, and disease--presented metaphysicians with the task of reconciling the ubiquity of life with human-centered theological systems. It was also a source of problems for philosophers concerned with essences, qualities, and the limits of human knowledge, whose positions are echoed in current debates about realism and instrument-mediated knowledge. Covering the contributions of pioneering microscopists (Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Malpighi, Grew, and Hooke) and the work of philosophers interested in the microworld (Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley), she challenges historians who view the abstract sciences as the sole catalyst of the Scientific Revolution as she stresses the importance of observational and experimental science to the modern intellect.

    These efforts have often resulted in very beautiful documents. The Mapping of the Heavens reproduces over eighty such documents in full color to reveal some of the ways in which the underlying structure of the universe has been conceived and explained. With examples ranging from the Stone Age to the Space Age, it offers a challenging and entertaining exploration of the tension between the rigors of science and the continuing search for cause, certainty, and harmony in the universe.

    That effort continues in this provocative sequel that covers the crucial years of World War II and beyond. Rossiter begins by showing how the acute labor shortage brought on by the war seemed to hold out new hope for women professionals, especially in the sciences. But the public posture of welcoming women into the scientific professions masked a deep-seated opposition to change. Rossiter proves that despite frustrating obstacles created by the patriarchal structure and values of universities, government, and industry, women scientists made genuine contributions to their fields, grew in professional stature, and laid the foundation for the breakthroughs that followed 1972.