A Hideous Monster of the Mind reveals that ideas on race crossed racial boundaries in a process that produced not only well-known theories of biological racism ...

The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It is universally recognized as the standard English version of Aristotle. This revised edition contains the substance of the original Translation, slightly emended in light of recent scholarship three of the original versions have been replaced by new translations and a new and enlarged selection of Fragments has been added. The aim of the translation remains the same: to make the surviving works of Aristotle readily (...) accessible to English speaking readers. (shrink)

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people who (...) held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. (shrink)

The American scientist Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935) stood at the forefront of the debate over the evolution of man. Study of his theories, however, has been overshadowed by the perception that racism influenced his ideas. Henry Fairfield Osborn argues that his views were motivated by his science, itself grounded in religious doctrine. Osborn rejected ideas of primate ancestry and constructed his own non-Darwinian theory that human evolution was the long adventurous story of individuals and groups exerting personal will-power and inborn (...) characteristics to achieve both biological success and spiritual salvation. This biography charts Osborn's intellectual development, from a Christian childhood, through the influences of Arnold Guyot, James McCosh and T.H. Huxley, to his career at the American Museum of Natural History. (shrink)

This collection of his later essays discusses the role played by ideological factors in determining the direction, if not the results, of scientific work.

In The Logic of Life François Jacob looks at the way our understanding of biology has changed since the sixteenth century. He describes four fundamental turning points in the perception of the structure of living things: the discoveries of the functions of organs, cells, chromosomes and genes, and DNA.

Examines the history and inherent flaws of the tests science has used to measure intelligence.