Originally published anonymously in 1844, Vestiges proved to be as controversial as its author expected. Integrating research in the burgeoning sciences of anthropology, geology, astronomy, biology, economics, and chemistry, it was the first attempt to connect the natural sciences to a history of creation. The author, whose identity was not revealed until 1884, was RobertChambers, a leading Scottish writer and publisher. Vestiges reached a huge popular audience and was widely read by the social and intellectual elite. It (...) sparked debate about natural law, setting the stage for the controversy over Darwin's Origin. In response to the surrounding debate and criticism, Chambers published Explanations: A Sequel, in which he offered a reasoned defense of his ideas about natural law, castigating what he saw as the narrowness of specialist science. With a new introduction by James Secord, a bibliography of reviews, and a new index, this volume adds to Vestiges and Explanations Chambers's earliest works on cosmology, an essay on Darwin, and an autobiographical essay, raising important issues about the changing meanings of popular science and religion and the rise of secular ideologies in Western culture. (shrink)
Thomas Henry Huxley recalled that after he had read Darwin’s Origin of Species, he had exclaimed to himself: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!” (Huxley,1900, 1: 183). It is a famous but puzzling remark. In his contribution to Francis Darwin’s Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Huxley rehearsed the history of his engagement with the idea of transmutation of species. He mentioned the views of Robert Grant, an advocate of Lamarck, and RobertChambers, who (...) anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), which advanced a crude idea of transmutation. He also recounted his rejection of Agassiz’s belief that species were progressively replaced by the divine hand. He neglected altogether his friend Herbert Spencer’s early Lamarckian ideas about species development, which were also part of the long history of his encounters with the theory of descent. None of these sources moved him to adopt any version of the transmutation hypothesis. (shrink)
Over the past decade, patient-centered care has become increasingly prominent in discussions of health-care practice, policy, and organization. Patient-centered care is a holistic concept whereby health professionals individualize their encounters with each patient (Stewart 2001). Decision-making strategies, recommendations, and plans of care are all devised and acted upon in relation to the particular patient. The patient is assumed to have a unique configuration of elements comprising her identity, illness experience, and physical, social, and environmental context. While partnership is understood as (...) essential for the therapeutic encounter in a patient-centered approach, the patient herself is seen as guiding .. (shrink)
This book demonstrates that the state-contingent approach provides the best way to think about all problems in the economics of uncertainty, including problems ...
In the fall of 1979, I was asked by Serge Thion, a libertarian socialist scholar with a record of opposition to all forms of totalitarianism, to sign a petition calling on authorities to insure Robert Faurisson's "safety and the free exercise of his legal rights." The petition said nothing about his "holocaust studies" (he denies the existence of gas chambers or of a systematic plan to massacre the Jews and questions the authenticity of the Anne Frank diary, (...) among other things), apart from noting that they were the cause of "efforts to deprive Professor Faurisson of his freedom of speech and expression." It did not specify the steps taken against him, which include suspension from his teaching position at the University of Lyons after the threat of violence, and a forthcoming court trial for falsification of history and damages to victims of Nazism. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction -- Setting the Scene -- Plato and Aristotle -- From the Roman Empire to the Empire of Islam -- The Western Middle Ages -- The Renaissance -- New Methods of Science -- Bringing Mathematics and Natural Philosophy Together -- Practice and Theory in Renaissance Medicine: William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood -- The Spirit of System: Rene; Descartes and the Mechanical Philosophy -- The Royal Society and Experimental Philosophy -- Experiment, Mathematics, and (...) Magic: Isaac Newton -- Newton's Legacy: Forces and Fluids (electricity and heat) -- The Chemical Revolution: From Newton to John Dalton, via Priestley and Lavoisier -- Natural Theology and Natural Order: Newtonian Optimism and the History of Science -- The Making of Geology: From James Hutton to Charles Lyell via Catastrophism -- The History of Plants and Animals: Successive Emergence or Evolution? -- Religion and Progress in Victorian Britain: RobertChambers versus Hugh Miller -- Bringing it All Together?: Charles Darwin's Evolution -- Darwinian Aftermaths: Religion; Social Science; Biology -- Beyond Newton: Energy and Thermodynamics -- Newton deposed: Einstein and Relativity Theory -- Mathematics instead of a World Picture: From Atomism to Quantum Theory -- Afterword. (shrink)
In 1897 physicists took the first e/m measurements at electrons, the consequence was a revival of the atomistic ideas in physics. The researches in geophysics also contributed to the construction of the modern physics. Four examples are dealt with this essay. 1) In 1899 J. J. Thomson was able to carry out the first direct determination of elementary electric charge with the help of the conformity with the natural laws at the formation of fog, found by C. T. R. Wilson. (...) 2) The cloud-chamber, called after C. T. R. Wilson, was the result of various constructions of for- or cloud-chambers, in it there were shown for the first time the tracks of α- and β-particles. 3) At the exploration of the photoelectric effect of the sunlight (especially of the ultraviolet share) Elster and Geitel made essential preliminary studies for the lightquanta-hypothesis of Einstein. 4) Elster and Geitel detected radioactive substances in the atmosphere and in the soil to be the main source of the atmospheric electricity. (shrink)
