Beyond History of Science

Essays in Honor of Robert E. Schofield

Elizabeth Garber, ed.

Beyond History of Science is a series of papers in honor of Robert E. Schofield. The papers reflect the broad range of Schofield's scholarly interests that coincide with many historical and historiographical problems propelling research in the history of science, technology, art, and other subdisciplines of history. The papers are organized around thematic foci that both illustrate and probe these problems, and they are arranged in widening circles of social concern beginning with the individual (biography), then the intellectual (discipline), to the social and intellectual (interdisciplinary), and finally to the cultural and contextual.

In the series of papers focused on biography, essays discuss the enigma of Henry Cavendish through his behavior in the Royal Society, the influence of Josiah Willard Gibbs on Pierre Duhem, and the use of theories of psychology in trying to understand the complex character of James McKeen Cattell. This series also includes an essay on the sources available on the early members of the American scientific community.

From an interest in the individual the theme expands to examinations of scientific disciplines. This group includes a case study of the role of Samuel Morton on American geology, a look at the cultural commitments of the theorists and the limitations of empiricism in eighteenth-century natural history, an essay tracing the changes in the rhetoric and practice of chemists in the nineteenth century, and a study of the relationship between mathematics and physics in the work of Simeon-Denis Poisson.

Moving out from the discussion of disciplines, a series of papers looks into the interaction of science and technology, considering the difficult transformation of scientific theories into engineering practice. Also included are an examination of how W. J. M. Rankine established scientific engineering in Britain, an argument that only a common social context links science and technology, and a demonstration of scientists' active role in the early industrial development of Cleveland.

Researching beyond technology into the social and cultural context of both science and technology, the final group includes essays that chart the changes in the sense of the time across the United States from the Civil War to the First World War and examine the borrowings of scientists from their cultural context in the construction of their theories.

ISBN

0934223114 (AUP)

Price

$48.50

Year

1990

Lehigh University Press - Beyond History of Science

Recent Praise for LUP Books

Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision, Edited by Amy Branam Armiento and Travis Montgomery

Review in the Journal of Gender Studies

"This engaging collection redresses the balance of Poe studies to consider his work from the perspective of women, those in his works and those reading them. . . . [It] offers a welcome emphasis on the irrepressibility of women in his work who ‘die but do not stay dead’"

-- Sara Williams, University of Hull

Book cover, Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature

Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature, Edited by Jennifer Jahner and Ingrid Nelson

Review in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology:

Very much in the spirit of Robertson's many impacts on our field, this collection opens a range of fascinating apertures into the medieval literary world that promise to be useful, both to fellow scholars and in a variety of literature classrooms.

--Emily Houlik-Ritchey, Rice University

New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature, Edited by Amy N. Vines and Lee Templeton

New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature not only makes a fitting tribute to a beloved scholar and teacher; it constitutes a significant contribution to the field in its own right. The essays in this beautifully presented book will be essential reading for anyone interested in late-medieval vernacular theology and its reception, both in England and beyond.

--Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University

Placing Charlotte Smith, Edited by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Jacqueline M. Labbe

Dolan and Labbe’s wide-ranging yet cohesive collection of essays offers a comprehensive and convincing breadth that succeeds in its mission of placing Charlotte Smith. Beyond Smithian scholarship, the volume comes at a prescient time.

--Heather Heckman-McKenna University of Missouri-Columbia

Wife of Bath in Afterlife: Ballads to Blake, by Betsy Bowden

Bowden delves into each case study so expansively that at the end of reading the book, the reader has been immersed in many different eighteenth-century cultural worlds. This is an immensely learned and valuable book that dares to be different and, as a result, breaks new ground.

-- Marion Turner, Jesus College, University of Oxford

Our Osage Hills: Toward an Osage Ecology and Tribalography of the Early Twentieth Century, Edited by Michael Snyder

Our Osage Hills: Toward an Osage Ecology and Tribalography of the Early Twentieth Century is a significant work. Snyder uses Mathews’ columns as a window into Mathews’ understanding of the Osage, its geology, its flora and fauna, as well as its human inhabitants.

-- Ruby Hansen Murray, Osage News