Isis

ISSN: 0021-1753

41 found

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  1.  1
    : The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java.Luthfi Adam - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):190-191.
  2.  1
    : Health Colonialism: Urban Wastelands and Hospital Frontiers.Eram Alam - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):207-208.
  3. : Mathematics and Society: Numbers and Measures in Early Modern South India.Daud Ali - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):188-190.
  4.  2
    The Jesuit Culture of Correlation in Observatory Sciences.Aitor Anduaga - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):3-22.
    This essay aims to show the peculiar emergence of a culture of correlation in the field of observatory sciences that resulted from the experimental and philosophical currents of the Society of Jesus and Catholic culture in general. Building on the teaching of experimentalism and physico-chemical atomism at the Jesuit Collegio Romano (in a context of opposition to both the materialism and atheism of modern society and neo-Thomist currents within the Church), it examines the observational practice and the unitary conception of (...)
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  5.  2
    : The Multifarious Mr. Banks: From Botany Bay to Kew, The Natural Historian Who Shaped the World.Geoff Bil - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):187-188.
  6.  1
    Introduction.Andrea Bréard - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):123-125.
  7.  2
    The (Local) Rise and (Global) Fall of the “Coefficient of Racial Likeness”.Andrea Bréard - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):158-167.
    The “Coefficient of Racial Likeness” (CRL) ascribed to Karl Pearson (1857–1936) was born in the Biometric Laboratory in London. It was developed with the purpose to determine the distance between two samples of different origins. Widely used but also distrusted before being ultimately replaced by a true statistical measure of divergence, the Mahalanobis distance (D2), the global biography of the CRL reveals the social, scientific, and historical forces at play that determined the lifespan of the coefficient, its success and fall (...)
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  8. Thank You to Our Reviewers.Elise K. Burton & Projit Bihari Mukharji - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):1-2.
  9. : Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy.Sarah Carson - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):196-197.
  10. : Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City.Animesh Chatterjee - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):200-201.
  11. : Civic Medicine: Physician, Polity, and Pen in Early Modern Europe.Francesco Paolo de Ceglia - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):180-182.
  12.  4
    : Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America.Liana DeMarco - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):195-196.
  13.  1
    : Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide.Paige Donaghy - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):184-185.
  14. : Capturing Glaciers: A History of Repeat Photography and Global Warming.Katja Doose - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):197-198.
  15.  6
    : One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax.Paul N. Edwards - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):175-176.
  16.  2
    38°C: Fever, Thermometry, and the Coming into Being of a Global Norm, ca. 1868–1890.Stefanie Gänger - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):126-135.
  17.  3
    Work Points in the People’s Republic of China, 1950s to the 1980s.Arunabh Ghosh - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):146-157.
    Even though agriculture was not the central thrust of planning in Mao-era China (1949–1976), starting in the 1950s, the party-state progressively nationalized land, reorganized social relations in the countryside, and instituted a universal system of wages that fundamentally reshaped rural China. Quantifying and measuring agricultural labor, in particular, developed into an increasingly important task as the state became not just the sole purveyor but also the sole provider of people’s incomes. At the heart of this measurement was the system of (...)
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  18.  3
    Planetary Microbes: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, the Agency, and the Politics of Microbes, 1840s–1850s.Mathias Grote - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):82-103.
    Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795–1876) researched living and fossil microbes (infusoria) from air, sediment, or food samples. His discovery around 1840 that infusoria from the Berlin underground would damage buildings caused an early public microbe scare. In the context of the cholera epidemic of 1848, Ehrenberg devoted his attention to blood-red discoloration of food, which he identified as an innocuous red microbe. Both cases allow understanding the goal of this natural history of microbes: Following up on Alexander von Humboldt, he aimed (...)
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  19.  4
    George Biddell Airy and Information Management at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich: Library, Archive, and Uses of the Historical Past.Yuto Ishibashi - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):43-60.
    This article demonstrates that the organisation of the library and manuscript collections was crucial to George Biddell Airy’s reform of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, resulting in the creation of a vast archive that continues to this day. It analyses the official papers and reports Airy produced to identify the development of the library and the technique of document management. Airy understood that the systematic and orderly organisation of information, books, and papers was the foundation of scientific research and the running (...)
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  20.  2
    : The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe.Cynthia Klestinec - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):178-179.
  21.  1
    : Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700–1830.Jason Ludwig - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):185-187.
  22.  5
    The Boundaries of Knowledge: Books, Experts, and Readers in Early Modern Mines.Gabriele Marcon - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):61-81.
    This article explores a key question in the history of science: Could untrained officials learn and apply practical knowledge by reading how-to books and collaborating with expert practitioners? Notably, historians of science have studied workplaces such as the mines as arenas of knowledge exchange between workers, expert practitioners, and learned humanists. This article uses a labor history approach to explore what this exchange meant in practice. It analyzes the attempts of an untrained official in the mines of the Medici family (...)
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  23.  5
    : A World Without Hunger: Josué de Castro and the History of Geography.Ivan da Costa Marques - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):204-205.
  24.  2
    : Birth of the Geopolitical Age: Global Frontiers and the Making of Modern China.Sayantani Mukherjee - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):193-194.
  25.  1
    : Disability Dialogues: Advocacy, Science, and Prestige in Postwar Clinical Professions.Aparna Nair - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):203-204.
  26.  1
    : Inside the Star Factory: The Creation of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s Largest and Most Powerful Space Observatory.Tiffany Nichols - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):206-207.
  27. Becoming the 1%: The Attractiveness and Sociopolitical Implications of Autism Prevalence as 1% in Mainland China.Jacopo Nocchi - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):136-145.
    Numerous studies over the past two decades have indicated that autism prevalence in China is lower than international estimates, believed to be around 1%. However, various publications, especially newspaper articles and activist reports, have still characterized autism prevalence in the country as 1%. This paper examines the discrepancy between data by writing the biography of the 1% estimate, exploring its sociopolitical implications and cultural significance. It highlights the attractiveness and power of the 1% value in China, hinting at a possible (...)
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  28.  1
    : A Book of Waves.Christopher L. Pastore - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):208-210.
  29. Eloge: Jitendra Pal Singh (J. P. S.) Uberoi (1934–2024).Amit Prasad - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):168-171.
  30.  4
    : A Centaur in London: Reading and Observation in Early Modern Science.Alisha Rankin - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):182-183.
  31.  3
    : Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds.Anna Marie Roos - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):183-184.
  32. : Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean.Anna K. Sagal - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):176-178.
  33.  1
    : Making the Green Revolution: Agriculture and Conflict in Columbia.Madhumita Saha - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):202-203.
  34.  2
    : Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution.Rovel Sequeira - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):199-200.
  35.  3
    Eloge: Ronald L. Numbers (1942–2023).Michael H. Shank - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):172-174.
  36.  3
    Mechanisms of Experience: Cognitivism, Cybernetics, and the Postwar Science of Pain.Matthew Soleiman - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):23-42.
    In the early to mid-1960s, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed gate control theory, the most enduring theory of pain of the twentieth century. Challenging the notion of pain as a pure sensation of injury, Melzack and Wall refigured bodily experience as a dynamic state of the entire nervous system, including the higher levels of the brain. Within a decade, their neurophysiological model had become the conceptual foundation for the burgeoning and multidisciplinary field of (...)
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  37.  2
    : Identity in a Secular Age: Science, Religion, and Public Perceptions.James C. Ungureanu - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):191-193.
  38. Between Hearing and Touch: The Global Discovery of the Vibratory Sense through a “Deaf Ability”.Keisuke Yamada - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):104-122.
    In 1932, Japanese psychologist Takano Kiyoshi conducted experimental research on vibratory sensations using hundreds of deaf schoolchildren as research subjects. This article examines the little-studied relationship between the global spread of oralism and the local formulation of knowledge about the vibratory sense—or senkaku 顫覚—in Japanese psychoacoustics. In the 1920s, American missionaries and educators helped spread oralism in Japan, and the Japanese state implemented the Blind and Deaf-Mute Schools Ordinance. There was also a notable development of experimental psychology in the country. (...)
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  39.  2
    : The Medieval Hospital: Literary Culture and Community in England, 1350–1550.Tiffany A. Ziegler - 2025 - Isis 116 (1):179-180.
  40.  69
    Harbingers of Fate: Tīrka Šavār and the Dullahan in Persian and Irish Mythological Traditions.Asal Fallahnejad - 2025 - Isis 1:22. Translated by Asal Fallahneajd.
    This article offers a cross-cultural analysis of two enigmatic figures from Indo-European mythologies: Tīrka Šavār, a lesser-known Persian omen of death or misfortune, and the Dullahan, Ireland’s iconic headless horseman. Both entities serve as harbingers of fate, embodying their cultures’ anxieties about mortality, the unknown, and the thin veil between the human and supernatural realms. Through comparative methodology, this study explores how these myths reflect distinct cultural values—Persian narratives often intertwine destiny with moral and cosmic order (aša), while Irish lore (...)
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  41.  90
    The Quest for Immortality: Contrasting Perspectives in Gilgamesh and Vishnu.Asal Fallahnejad - 2025 - Isis 1:7.
    This study examines the pursuit of immortality through a comparative analysis of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and Hindu mythology centered on Vishnu, the preserver god. Employing a literary and philosophical approach, the paper contrasts Gilgamesh’s personal, mortal-driven quest with Vishnu’s cosmic, eternal existence. In Gilgamesh, the semi-divine king seeks eternal life after his companion Enkidu’s death, only to confront the inevitability of mortality, reflecting a Mesopotamian view of death as a divine boundary. Conversely, Vishnu embodies immortality as an intrinsic (...)
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