MACMILLAN Nature Engaged: Science in Practice from the Renaissance to the Present (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

This volume gathers essays that focus on the worldliness of science, its inseparable engagement in the major institutional bases of social life: law, market, church, school, and nation. With a chronological span reaching from the Renaissance to Big Science, its topics range from sundials to genetic sequences, from calculating instruments to devices that simulate human behavior, from early cartography to techniques for tracing radioactive fallout on a global scale. The book aims to show readers, with episodes drawn from the span of their modern history, the sciences in action throughout human society. Review 'The nature/nurture dichotomy has lost its grip in biology. So too, in the new history of science on display in this volume, science and culture no longer struggle against one another. Mutually entangled, they are also mutually enriching and constantly throw up surprises, from the boiling point of water to the meaning of a sundial to the legal status of a gene.' - M. Norton Wise, University of California, Los Angeles, USA 'In this remarkable assembly of essays, the authors take some of the oldest topics in the history of science (priority, experiments, devices, international meetings, for example) and rewrite them in a strikingly new register. Thoroughly historical, engagingly written, these inquiries show us how patents rewrite the very idea of innovation, how mechanisms alter philosophy, how biblical chronology engages astronomy. In the range and depth of their vision of history of science in a world of war, industry, and the academy, the book is a fine tribute to John Heilbron's illustrious career in history of science; at the same time, Nature Engaged stands on its own as a delightful glimpse of some of the best work we have.' - Peter L. Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor and Director, Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Hardvard University, USA About the Author MARIO BIAGIOLO is Distinguished Professor of STS, Law, and History at the University of California at Davis, USA. JESSICA RISKIN is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, USA.