Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions---these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and explain (...) how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature’s best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds. Frontmatter Preface, page 9 Introduction: At the Limit, page 13 I THE TOPOGRAPHY OF WONDER, page 21 II THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS, page 67 III WONDER AMONG THE PHILOSOPHERS, page 109 IV MARVELOUS PARTICULARS, page 135 V MONSTERS: A CASE STUDY, page 173 VI STRANGE FACTS, page 215 VII WONDERS OF ART, WONDERS OF NATURE, page 255 VIII THE PASSIONS OF INQUIRY, page 303 IX THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ANTI-MARVELOUS, page 329 Epilogue, page 365 Photo Credits, page 369 Notes, page 373 Bibliography, page 451 Index, page 499. (shrink)

Forty-two essays by authors from five continents and many disciplines provide a synthetic account of the history of the social sciences-including behavioral and economic sciences since the late eighteenth century. The authors emphasize the cultural and intellectual preconditions of social science, and its contested but important role in the history of the modern world. While there are many historical books on particular disciplines, there are very few about the social sciences generally, and none that deal with so much of the (...) world over so long a timespan. (shrink)

This was the first cross-over book into the history of science written by an historian of economics. It shows how 'history of technology' can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. The analysis combines Cold War history with the history of postwar economics in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. It links the literature on 'cyborg' to economics, an element missing (...) in literature to date. The treatment further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents, arguing that neoclassical economics has participated in the deconstruction of the integral 'self'. Finally, it argues for an alliance of computational and institutional themes, and challenges the widespread impression that there is nothing else besides American neoclassical economic theory left standing after the demise of Marxism. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical ...

This is the engaging story of a moment of transformation in the human sciences, a detailed account of a remarkable group of people who met regularly to explore the possibility of using scientific ideas that had emerged in the war years as a basis for interdisciplinary alliances.

This book explores the notion of endangerment which stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. It looks at some of the fundamental ways in which this process involves science, but also more than science: not only data and knowledge and institutions, but also affects and values. With a focus on endangerment sensibility, it encapsulates tensions between the normative and the utilitarian, (...) the natural and the cultural. (shrink)