Shores Of Knowledge New World Discoveries And The Scientific Imagination

Author : Joyce Appleby
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393241521
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination written by Joyce Appleby and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Uncommonly good…makes a compelling case that…intellectual curiosity not only changed Europe, but launched modernity." —Cleveland Plain Dealer When Columbus first returned to Spain from the Caribbean, he dazzled King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with exotic parrots, tropical flowers, and bits of gold. Inspired by the promise of riches, countless seafarers poured out of the Iberian Peninsula and wider Europe in search of spices, treasure, and land. Many returned with strange tales of the New World. Curiosity began to percolate through Europe as the New World’s people, animals, and plants ruptured prior assumptions about the biblical description of creation. The Church, long fearful of challenges to its authority, could no longer suppress the mantra “Dare to know!” Noblemen began collecting cabinets of curiosities; soon others went from collecting to examining natural objects with fresh eyes. Observation led to experiments; competing conclusions triggered debates. The foundations for the natural sciences were laid as questions became more multifaceted and answers became more complex. Carl Linneaus developed a classification system and sent students around the globe looking for specimens. Museums, botanical gardens, and philosophical societies turned their attention to nature. National governments undertook explorations of the Pacific. Eminent historian Joyce Appleby vividly recounts the explorers’ triumphs and mishaps, including Magellan’s violent death in the Philippines; the miserable trek of the "new Argonauts" across the Andes on their mission to determine the true shape of the earth; and how two brilliant scientists, Alexander Humboldt and Charles Darwin, traveled to the Americas for evidence to confirm their hypotheses about the earth and its inhabitants. Drawing on detailed eyewitness accounts, Appleby also tells of the turmoil created in the all societies touched by the explorations. This sweeping, global story imbues the Age of Discovery with fresh meaning, elegantly charting its stimulation of the natural sciences, which ultimately propelled Western Europe toward modernity.

Author : Elizabeth Fenton
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479820482
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Old Canaan in a New World written by Elizabeth Fenton and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were indigenous Americans descendants of the lost tribes of Israel? From the moment Europeans realized Columbus had landed in a place unknown to them in 1492, they began speculating about how the Americas and their inhabitants fit into the Bible. For many, the most compelling explanation was the Hebraic Indian theory, which proposed that indigenous Americans were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. For its proponents, the theory neatly explained why this giant land and its inhabitants were not mentioned in the Biblical record. In Old Canaan in a New World, Elizabeth Fenton shows that though the Hebraic Indian theory may seem far-fetched today, it had a great deal of currency and significant influence over a very long period of American history. Indeed, at different times the idea that indigenous Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel was taken up to support political and religious positions on diverse issues including Christian millennialism, national expansion, trade policies, Jewish rights, sovereignty in the Americas, and scientific exploration. Through analysis of a wide collection of writings—from religious texts to novels—Fenton sheds light on a rarely explored but important part of religious discourse in early America. As the Hebraic Indian theory evolved over the course of two centuries, it revealed how religious belief and national interest intersected in early American history.

Author : Jürgen Renn
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 069117198X
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Evolution of Knowledge written by Jürgen Renn and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene--this new geological epoch shaped by humankind. Renn reframes the history of science and technology within a much broader history of knowledge, analyzing key episodes such as the evolution of writing, the emergence of science in the ancient world, the Scientific Revolution of early modernity, the globalization of knowledge, industrialization, and the profound transformations wrought by modern science. He investigates the evolution of knowledge using an array of disciplines and methods, from cognitive science and experimental psychology to earth science and evolutionary biology. The result is an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge--and a bold new approach to the history and philosophy of science.

Author : Deudney
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197679307
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Debating Worlds written by Deudney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the last decade of the twentieth century, the great questions of modernity seemed to be answered. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and global communism, the liberal democratic capitalist project seemed to be the only one left standing, and in the 1990s the "liberal ideal" spread worldwide. Today, of course, this universalistic narrative rings hollow. The global distribution of power has shifted and the preeminence of the West is receding as new directions for world order emerge. China is rapidly ascending as a peer competitor of the United States, bringing with it a powerful new global narrative of grievance and revision. Political Islam also burst onto the global scene as a multifaceted transnational movement reshaping regional political order and geopolitical alignments. With the rapid advance of climate change, there have arisen new narratives of global endangerment and dystopia. Far from converging, fragmentation and contestation increasingly dominate debates over world order. In Debating Worlds, Daniel Deudney, G. John Ikenberry, and Karoline Postel-Vinay have gathered a group of eminent scholars in the field to analyze the various ways in which the West's dominant narrative has waned and a new plurality of narratives has emerged. Each of these narratives combines stories of the past with understandings of the present and attractive visions of the future. Collectively, the contributors map out these narratives, focusing primarily on their key features, origins, and implications for world order. The narratives prominent on the world stage are a volatile mix of components, but they also differ in scope--some are regional and civilizational without global aspirations, while others cast themselves as globally expansive and universally ambitious. Covering the most influential narratives currently shaping world politics, Debating Worlds is an essential volume for all scholars of international relations.

Author : Nihad Farooq
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479839892
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Undisciplined written by Nihad Farooq and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-07-19 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 19th century, personhood was a term of regulation and discipline in which slaves, criminals, and others, could be “made and unmade." Yet it was precisely the fraught, uncontainable nature of personhood that necessitated its constant legislation, wherein its meaning could be both contested and controlled. Examining scientific and literary narratives, Nihad M. Farooq’s Undisciplined encourages an alternative consideration of personhood, one that emerges from evolutionary and ethnographic discourse. Moving chronologically from 1830 to 1940, Farooq explores the scientific and cultural entanglements of Atlantic travelers in and beyond the Darwin era, and invites us to attend more closely to the consequences of mobility and contact on disciplines and persons. Bringing together an innovative group of readings—from field journals, diaries, letters, and testimonies to novels, stage plays, and audio recordings—Farooq advocates for a reconsideration of science, personhood, and the priority of race for the field of American studies. Whether expressed as narratives of acculturation, or as acts of resistance against the camera, the pen, or the shackle, these stories of the studied subjects of the Atlantic world add a new chapter to debates about personhood and disciplinarity in this era that actively challenged legal, social, and scientific categorizations.

Author : Peter Dear
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351627740
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scientific Practices in European History, 1200-1800 written by Peter Dear and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific Practices in European History, 1200–1800 presents and situates a collection of extracts from both widely known texts by such figures as Copernicus, Newton, and Lavoisier, and lesser known but significant items, all chosen to provide a perspective on topics in social, cultural and intellectual history and to illuminate the concerns of the early modern period. The selection of extracts highlights the emerging technical preoccupations of this period, while the accompanying introductions and annotations make these occasionally complex works accessible to students and non-specialists. The book follows a largely chronological sequence and helps to locate scientific ideas and practices within broader European history. The primary source materials in this collection stand alone as texts in themselves, but in illustrating the scientific components of early modern societies they also make this book ideal for teachers and students of European history.

Author : Stewart Angas Weaver
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199946957
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Exploration written by Stewart Angas Weaver and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clear, succinct, and elegant contribution to the 'Very Short Introductions' series surveys the history of global exploration and assesses the motives, for good and ill, of those who undertook it. Stewart Weaver traces the history of exploration from the first explorers (including Polynesian and Micronesian peoples, the ancient Greeks, Marco Polo, and Ibn BattÐta), to the European discover of America, the Enlightenment and exploration (focusing on James Cook), and the race to the north and south poles

Author : Jeanette M. Fregulia
Publisher : Food and Foodways
ISBN 13 : 1682260879
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Rich and Tantalizing Brew written by Jeanette M. Fregulia and published by Food and Foodways. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of coffee is much more than the tale of one nonessential good--it is a lens through which to consider various strands of world history, from food and foodways to religion and economics and sociocultural history. A Rich and Tantalizing Brew traces the history of the coffee bean, beginning with its cultivation and brewing as a private pleasure in the highlands of Ethiopia and Yemen before its emergence as a common comfort, first in the Muslim world, then across the Mediterranean to Italy, other parts of Europe, and beyond to India and the Americas. At each of these stops the brew gathered ardent aficionados and vocal critics, all the while reshaping the social landscape. Taking its conversational tone from the chats often held over a steaming cup, A Rich and Tantalizing Brew offers a critical and entertaining look at how this bitter beverage, with a little help from the tastes that traveled with it--chocolate, tea, and sugar--has connected people to each other both within and outside of their typical circles, inspiring a new context for sharing news, conducting business affairs, and even plotting revolution.

Author : Andrew Wilson
Publisher : Crossway
ISBN 13 : 143358056X
Total Pages : 479 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Remaking the World written by Andrew Wilson and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2023-07-28 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How 7 Transformational Events in 1776 Paved the Way for Today's Post-Christian West With dizzying social transformations in everything from gender to social justice, it may seem like there's never been a more tumultuous period in history. But a single year in the late 18th century saw a number of influential transformations—or even revolutions—that changed the social trajectory of the Western world. By understanding how those events influenced today's cultural landscape, Christians can more effectively bear witness to God's truth in a post-Christian age. In Remaking the World, Andrew Wilson highlights 7 major developments from the year 1776—globalization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, the American Revolution, the rise of post-Christianity, and the dawn of Romanticism—and explains their relevance to social changes happening today. Carefully examining key documents and historical figures, Wilson demonstrates how a monumental number of political, philosophical, economical, and industrial changes in the year of America's founding shaped the modern West into a "WEIRDER" society: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic. This thoroughly researched yet accessible book offers a unique historical perspective on modern views of family, government, religion, and morality—giving Christians the historical lens they need to understand today's post-Christian trends and respond accordingly. Relevant Cultural and Historical Analysis: Skillfully connects key ideas and events from the past to the present Comprehensive: Examines important developments from 1776, including the American Revolution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; James Watt's steam engine; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; and Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Informative: Covers key historical figures, including John Adams, Edmund Burke, and David Hume Biblical: Equips and encourages readers to share the gospel in a post-Christian world A Great Resource for Pastors, Scholars, and Readers of Carl Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

Author : Marlene L. Eberhart
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000225062
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Embodiment, Expertise, and Ethics in Early Modern Europe written by Marlene L. Eberhart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodiment, Expertise, and Ethics in Early Modern Europe highlights the agency and intentionality of individuals and groups in the making of sensory knowledge from approximately 1500 to 1700. Focused case studies show how artisans, poets, writers, and theologians responded creatively to their environments, filtering the cultural resources at their disposal through the lenses of their own more immediate experiences and concerns. The result was not a single, unified sensory culture, but rather an entangling of micro-cultural dynamics playing out across an archipelago of contexts that dotted the early modern European world—one that saw profound transitions in ways people used sensory knowledge to claim ethical, intellectual, and practical authority.