The role of aerial photography in the evolution of the concept of social space”and its impact on French urban planning in the mid-twentieth century.In mid-twentieth century France, the term “social space” (l'espace social)—the idea that spatial form and social life are inextricably linked—emerged in a variety of social science disciplines. Taken up by the French New Left, it also came to inform the practice of urban planning. In The View from Above

Since the seventeenth century our ideas of scientific authorship have expanded and changed dramatically. In this ambitious volume of new work, Mario Biagioli and Peter Galison have brought together historians of science, literary historians, and historians of the book. Together they track the changing nature and identity of the author in science, both historically and conceptually, from the emergence of scientific academies in the age of Galileo to concerns with large-scale multiauthorship...

For much of the twentieth century scientists sought to explain objects and processes by reducing them to their components—nuclei into protons and neutrons, proteins into amino acids, and so on—but over the past forty years there has been a marked turn toward explaining phenomena by building them up rather than breaking them down. This collection reflects on the history and significance of this turn toward “growing explanations” from the bottom up. The essays show how this strategy—based on...

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images.From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest c...

"More than a history of science; it is a tour de force in the genre." —New York Times Book ReviewA dramatic new account of the parallel quests to harness time that culminated in the revolutionary science of relativity, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps is "part history, part science, part adventure, part biography, part meditation on the meaning of modernity....In Galison's telling of science, the meters and wires and epoxy and solder come alive ...

Modern science has changed every aspect of life in ways that cannot be compared to developments of previous eras. This four-volume set presents key developments within modern physical science and the effects of these discoveries on modern global life. The first two volumes explore the history of the concept of relativity, the cultural roots of science, the concept of time and gravity before, during, and after Einstein's theory, and the cultural reception of relativity. Volume 3 explores th...

A collection that confronts the reality of experimental gravity, which is different from the conventional—and overly simplistic—understanding.Investigating just over a century of experimental relativity, the individual essays in this volume place the process of experimental relativity within its historical contexts as an interdisciplinary endeavor. Testing Einstein embraces not only the individual tests of general relativity but also the fundamental nature...

We live an information-soaked existence - information pours into our lives through television, radio, books, and of course, the Internet. Some say we suffer from 'infoglut'. But what is information? The concept of 'information' is a profound one, rooted in mathematics, central to whole branches of science, yet with implications on every aspect of our everyday lives: DNA provides the information to create us; we learn through the information fed to us; we relate to each other through inform...

A philosopher of science examines the biggest ethical and moral issues in science today, and explains why they matter for all of us -- scientist and layman alikeScience has produced explanations for everything from the mechanisms of insect navigation to the formation of black holes and the workings of black markets. But how much can we trust science, and can we actually know the world through it? How does science work and how does it fail? And how can the work of s...

Recent years have seen the rise to prominence of ever more sophisticated philosophical and scientific critiques of the ideas marketed under the name of Darwinism. In Uncommon Dissent, mathematician and philosopher William A. Dembski brings together essays by leading intellectuals who find one or more aspects of Darwinism unpersuasive. As Dembski explains, Darwinism has gathered around itself an aura of invincibility that is inhospitable to rational discussion—to say the least: "Da...

A modern understanding of the world is unthinkable without science, but what exactly is it? What does it mean to say that something is 'scientific'? How are its results justified? From the genetic basis of life, to the structures of the universe and the atom, TEACH YOURSELF PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE explores how the key ideas that shape our world have been developed.- Investigate the history of science.- Examine scientific method.- Discover key philosophers and scientis...

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of the field. The one definitive text on the development of the periodic table by van Spronsen (1969), has been out of print for a considerable time. The present book provides a successor to van Spronsen, but goes further in giving an evaluation of the extent to which modern physics has, or has not, explained the periodic system. The book is written i...