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Did industry and commerce affect the concepts, values and epistemic foundations of different sciences? If so, how and to what extent? This book suggests that the most significant influence of industry on science in the two case studies treated here had to do with the issue of realism. Using wave propagation as the common thread, this is the first book to simultaneously analyse the emergence of realist attitudes towards the entities of the ionosphere and of the earth's crust. However, what led physicists and engineers to adopt realist attitudes? This book suggests that a new kind of realism --a realism of social and cultural origins- is the answer: a preliminary, entity realism responding to specific commercial and engineering interests, and a realism that was neither strictly instrumental nor exclusively operational. The book has two parts: while Part I focuses on the study of the ionosphere and how the British radio industry affected ionospheric physics, Part II focuses on the study of the Earth's crust and how the American oil industry affected crustal seismology.
An examination of how technological failures defined nature and national identity in Cold War Canada. Throughout the modern period, nations defined themselves through the relationship between nature and machines. Many cast themselves as a triumph of technology over the forces of climate, geography, and environment. Some, however, crafted a powerful alternative identity: they defined themselves not through the triumph of machines over nature, but through technological failures and the distinctive natural orders that caused them. In The Unreliable Nation, Edward Jones-Imhotep examines one instance in this larger history: the Cold War–era project to extend reliable radio communications to the...
Did industry and commerce affect the concepts, values and epistemic foundations of different sciences? If so, how and to what extent? This book suggests that the most significant influence of industry on science in the two case studies treated here had to do with the issue of realism. Using wave propagation as the common thread, this is the first book to simultaneously analyse the emergence of realist attitudes towards the entities of the ionosphere and of the earth's crust. However, what led physicists and engineers to adopt realist attitudes? This book suggests that a new kind of realism —a realism of social and cultural origins- is the answer: a preliminary, entity realism responding to specific commercial and engineering interests, and a realism that was neither strictly instrumental nor exclusively operational. The book has two parts: while Part I focuses on the study of the ionosphere and how the British radio industry affected ionospheric physics, Part II focuses on the study of the Earth's crust and how the American oil industry affected crustal seismology.
Weather forecasting is the most visible branch of meteorology and has its modern roots in the nineteenth century when scientists redefined meteorology in the way weather forecasts were made, developing maps of isobars, or lines of equal atmospheric pressure, as the main forecasting tool. This book is the history of how weather forecasting was moulded and modelled by the processes of nation-state building and statistics in the Western world.
This book presents a comprehensive history of the many contributions the Jesuits made to science from their founding to the present. It also links the Jesuits dedication to science with their specific spirituality which tries to find God in all things. The book begins with Christopher Clavius, professor of mathematics in the Roman College between 1567 and 1595, the initiator of this tradition. It covers Jesuits scientific contributions in mathematics, astronomy, physics and cartography up until the suppression of the order by the Pope in 1773. Next, the book details the scientific work the Jesuits pursued after their restoration in 1814. It examines the establishment of a network of observat...
By the late nineteenth century, engineers and experimental scientists generally knew how radio waves behaved, and by 1901 scientists were able to manipulate them to transmit messages across long distances. What no one could understand, however, was why radio waves followed the curvature of the Earth. Theorists puzzled over this for nearly twenty years before physicists confirmed the zig-zag theory, a solution that led to the discovery of a layer in the Earth’s upper atmosphere that bounces radio waves earthward—the ionosphere. In Probing the Sky with Radio Waves, Chen-Pang Yeang documents this monumental discovery and the advances in radio ionospheric propagation research that occurred i...
This book is about the ways in which disaster-affected communities perform their misery to secure political gains. It argues that democratic politics can take root in contexts of widespread depravity and dispossession and is a testament to both the resilience and fragility of the democratic project when faced with existential threats.
The biggest challenges in public health today are often related to attitudes, diet and exercise. In many ways, this marks a return to the state of medicine in the eighteenth century, when ideals of healthy living were a much more central part of the European consciousness than they have become since the advent of modern clinical medicine. Enlightenment advice on healthy lifestyle was often still discussed in terms of the six non-naturals – airs and places, food and drink, exercise, excretion and retention, and sleep and emotions. This volume examines what it meant to live healthily in the Enlightenment in the context of those non-naturals, showing both the profound continuities from Antiquity and the impact of newer conceptions of the body. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429465642
During the 1920s and 1930s the new medium of radio broadcasting promised to transform society by fostering national unity and strengthening and popularising national cultures. However, many hoped that 'wireless' would also encourage international understanding and world peace. Intentionally or otherwise, wireless signals crossed borders, bringing talk, music, and news to enthusiastic 'distant listeners' in other countries. In Europe, radio was regulated through international consultation and cooperation, to restrict interference between stations, and to unleash the medium's full potential to carry programmes to global audiences. A distinctive form of 'wireless internationalism' emerged, refl...
How engineers and agricultural scientists became key actors inFranco's regime and Spain's forced modernization.