Cultural astronomy, first called archaeoastronomy, has evolved at ferocious speed since its genesis in the 1960s, with seminal essays and powerful rebuttals published in far-flung, specialized journals. Until now, only the most closely involved scholars could follow the intellectual fireworks. In Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy, Anthony Aveni, one of cultural astronomy's founders and top scholars, offers a selection of the essays that built the field, from foundational works to contemporary scholarship.
Including four decades of research throughout the Americas by linguists, archaeologists, historians, ethnologists, astronomers, and engineers, this reader highlights the evolution of the field through thematic organization and point-counterpoint articles. Aveni - an award-winning author and former National Professor of the Year - serves up incisive commentary, background for the uninitiated, and suggested reading, questions, and essay topics. Students, readers, and scholars will relish this collection and its tour of a new field in which discoveries about ancient ways of looking at the skies cast light on our contemporary views.
The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis was first published in 1956. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
This first volume of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science presents some of the relatively more consolidated research of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. The work of the Center, which was established in 1953 through a grant from the Louis W. and Maud Hill Family Foundation, has so far been devoted largely to the philosophical, logical, and methodological problems of psychology. Some of the twelve papers in this volume are concerned with broad philosophical foundations; others consider specific problems of method or interpretation. The contributors, some of whom are represented in the authorship of more than one paper, are Herbert Feigl, director of the Center; Rudolf Carnap; B.F. Skinner; Michael Scriven; Albert Ellis; Antony Flew; L. J. Cronbach; Paul E. Meehl; R. C. Buck; and Wilfrid Sellars.
After its publication in 1967, The Foundations of Scientific Inference taught a generation of students and researchers about the problem of induction, the interpretation of probability, and confirmation theory. Fifty years later, Wesley C. Salmon’s book remains one of the clearest introductions to these fundamental problems in the philosophy of science. With The Foundations of Scientific Inference, Salmon presented a coherent vision of the nature of scientific reasoning, explored the philosophical underpinnings of scientific investigation, and introduced readers to key movements in epistemology and to leading philosophers of the twentieth century—such as Karl Popper, Rudolf Carnap, and Hans Reichenbach—offering a critical assessment and developing his own distinctive views on topics that are still of central importance today.
This anniversary edition of Salmon’s foundational work in the philosophy of science features a detailed introduction by Christopher Hitchcock, which examines the book’s origins, influences, and major themes, its impact and enduring effects, the disputes it raised, and its place in current studies, revisiting Salmon’s ideas for a new audience of philosophers, historians, scientists, and students.
Foundations of Space-Time Theories was first published in 1977. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The essays in this volume are based on the papers given at a conference on the philosophical aspects of the space-time theory held under the auspices of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.
As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument--yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years.
Building on the historic 1948 essay by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” which introduced the deductive-nomological (D-N) model on which most work on scientific explanation was based for the following four decades, Salmon goes beyond this model's inherent basis of describing empirical knowledge to tells us “not only what, but also why.” Salmon examines the predominant models in chronological order and describes their development, refinement, and criticism or rejection.
Four Decades of Scientific Explanation underscores the need for a consensus of approach and ongoing evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing a better understanding of natural phenomena.
Biodiversity is as close as your breakfast table. Your cereal and coffee are the products of at least a dozen species of plants and animals. And believe it or not, you are related to your morning meal—all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor, giving new meaning to the old saying “You are what you eat.”
Making clear why the future of biodiversity matters, Fragile Web—which takes its name from the delicate mechanism that holds all life together—unites a team of international experts to explore the wonder of the natural world. Drawing on the very latest research, the book explains what biodiversity is and explores its evolution, from 3.5 billion years ago to the present day. It discusses the importance of the world’s ecosystems and how directly or indirectly humans are responsible for the fate of nature. Crucially, it also examines what can be done to protect the natural world and why it matters. Although we cannot undo all that we have done, ignoring the current crisis facing biodiversity could fundamentally change the lives of future generations.
Fully illustrated with color photographs, diagrams, and maps, and edited by celebrated ecologist Jonathan Silvertown, this book is a timely snapshot of the state of life on Earth. From the plant and animal products that make up our breakfast to the ecosystems that help to produce clean water, our very survival depends upon the variety of plant and animal life on our planet. The year 2010 has been declared by the United Nations the International Year of Biodiversity, and The Fragile Web will be an essential guidebook for our time.
So many women who do everything right to stay healthy still wind up with breast cancer, heart disease, or osteoporosis. In The Fragile Wisdom, Grazyna Jasienska provides an evolutionary perspective on the puzzle of why disease prevention among women is so frustratingly difficult. Modern women, she shows, are the unlucky victims of their own bodies’ conflict of interest between reproductive fitness and life-long health.
The crux of the problem is that women’s physiology has evolved to facilitate reproduction, not to reduce disease risk. Any trait—no matter how detrimental to health in the post-reproductive period—is more likely to be preserved in the next generation if it increases the chance of giving birth to offspring who will themselves survive to reproductive age. To take just one example, genes that produce high levels of estrogen are a boon to fertility, even as they raise the risk of breast cancer in mothers and their daughters.
Jasienska argues that a mismatch between modern lifestyles and the Stone Age physiology that evolution has bequeathed to every woman exacerbates health problems. She looks at women’s mechanisms for coping with genetic inheritance and at the impact of environment on health. Warning against the false hope gene therapy inspires, Jasienska makes a compelling case that our only avenue to a healthy life is prevention programs informed by evolutionary understanding and custom-fitted to each woman’s developmental and reproductive history.
"In some ways disease does not exist until we have agreed that it does, by perceiving, naming, and responding to it, " writes Charles E. Rosenberg in his introduction to this stimulating set of essays. Disease is both a biological event and a social phenomenon. Patient, doctor, family, and social institutions—including employers, government, and insurance companies—all find ways to frame the biological event in terms that make sense to them and serve their own ends.
Many diseases discussed here—endstage renal disease, rheumatic fever, parasitic infectious diseases, coronary thrombosis—came to be defined, redefined, and renamed over the course of several centuries. As these essays show, the concept of disease has also been used to frame culturally resonant behaviors: suicide, homosexuality, anorexia nervosa, chronic fatigue syndrome. Disease is also framed by public policy, as the cases of industrial disability and of forensic psychiatry demonstrate. Medical institutions, as managers of people with disease, come to have vested interests in diagnoses, as the histories of facilities to treat tuberculosis or epilepsy reveal. Ultimately, the existence and conquest of disease serves to frame a society's sense of its own "healthiness" and to give direction to social reforms.
The contributors include Steven J. Peitzman, Peter C. English, John Farley, Christopher Lawrence, Michael MacDonald, Bert Hansen, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Robert A. Aronowitz, Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner, Janet A. Tighe, Barbara Bates, Ellen Dwyer, John M. Eyler, and Elizabeth Fee. For any student of disease and society, this book is essential, compelling reading.
Charles E. Robinson, Professor Emeritus of English at The University of Delaware, definitively transformed study of the novel Frankenstein with his foundational volume The Frankenstein Notebooks and, in nineteenth century studies more broadly, brought heightened attention to the nuances of writing and editing. Frankenstein and STEAM consolidates the generative legacy of his later work on the novel's broad relation to topics in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). Seven chapters written by leading and emerging scholars pay homage to Robinson's later perspectives of the novel and a concluding postscript contains remembrances by his colleagues and students. This volume not only makes explicit the question of what it means to be human, a question Robinson invited students and colleagues to examine throughout his career, but it also illustrates the depth of the field and diversity of those who have been inspired by Robinson's work. Frankenstein and STEAM offers direction for continuing scholarship on the intersections of literature, science, and technology.
Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
From a journalist and former lab researcher, a penetrating investigation of the explosion in cases of scientific fraud and the factors behind it.
In the 1970s, a scientific scandal about painted mice hit the headlines. A cancer researcher was found to have deliberately falsified his experiments by coloring transplanted mouse skin with ink. This widely publicized case of scientific misconduct marked the beginning of an epidemic of fraud that plagues the scientific community today.
From manipulated results and made-up data to retouched illustrations and plagiarism, cases of scientific fraud have skyrocketed in the past two decades, especially in the biomedical sciences. Fraud in the Lab examines cases of scientific misconduct around the world and asks why this behavior is so pervasive. Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis points to large-scale trends that have led to an environment of heightened competition, extreme self-interest, and emphasis on short-term payoffs. Because of the move toward highly specialized research, fewer experts are qualified to verify experimental findings. And the pace of journal publishing has exacerbated the scientific rewards system—publish or perish holds sway more than ever. Even when instances of misconduct are discovered, researchers often face few consequences, and falsified data may continue to circulate after an article has been retracted.
Sharp and damning, this exposé details the circumstances that have allowed scientific standards to decline. Fraud in the Lab reveals the intense social pressures that lead to fraud, documents the lasting impact it has had on the scientific community, and highlights recent initiatives and proposals to reduce the extent of misconduct in the future.
That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Opening the door of an ordinary refrigerator, it tells the curious story of the quality stored inside: freshness.
We want fresh foods to keep us healthy, and to connect us to nature and community. We also want them convenient, pretty, and cheap. Fresh traces our paradoxical hunger to its roots in the rise of mass consumption, when freshness seemed both proof of and an antidote to progress. Susanne Freidberg begins with refrigeration, a trend as controversial at the turn of the twentieth century as genetically modified crops are today. Consumers blamed cold storage for high prices and rotten eggs but, ultimately, aggressive marketing, advances in technology, and new ideas about health and hygiene overcame this distrust.
Freidberg then takes six common foods from the refrigerator to discover what each has to say about our notions of freshness. Fruit, for instance, shows why beauty trumped taste at a surprisingly early date. In the case of fish, we see how the value of a living, quivering catch has ironically hastened the death of species. And of all supermarket staples, why has milk remained the most stubbornly local? Local livelihoods; global trade; the politics of taste, community, and environmental change: all enter into this lively, surprising, yet sobering tale about the nature and cost of our hunger for freshness.
As part of a global effort to identify those areas where conservation measures are needed most urgently, World Wildlife Fund has assembled teams of scientists to conduct ecological assessments of all seven continents. Freshwater Ecoregions of Africa and Madagascar is the latest contribution, presenting in a single volume the first in-depth analysis of the state of freshwater biodiversity across Africa, Madagascar, and the islands of the region. Looking at biodiversity and threats in terms of biological units rather than political units, the book offers a comprehensive examination of the entire range of aquatic systems.
In addition to its six main chapters, the book includes nineteen essays by regional experts that provide more depth on key issues, as well as six detailed appendixes that present summary data used in the analyses, specific analytical methodologies, and a thorough text description for each of Africa's ninety-three freshwater ecoregions.
Freshwater Ecoregions of Africa and Madagascar provides a blueprint for conservation action and represents an unparalleled guide for investments and activities of conservation agencies and donor organizations.
How analyzing scientific practices can alter debates on the relationship between science and reality
Numerous scholarly works focus solely on scientific metaphysics or biological practice, but few attempt to bridge the two subjects. This volume, the latest in the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, explores what a scientific metaphysics grounded in biological practices could look like and how it might impact the way we investigate the world around us.
From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics examines how to reconcile the methods of biological practice with the methods of metaphysical cosmology, notably regarding the origins of life. The contributors take up a wide range of traditional metaphysics and philosophy of science topics, including natural kinds, medicine, ecology, genetics, scientific pluralism, reductionism, operationalism, mechanisms, the nature of information, and more. Many of the chapters represent the first philosophical treatments of significant biological practices.
From causality and complexity to niche constructions and inference, the contributors review and discuss long-held objections to metaphysics by natural scientists. They illuminate how, in order to learn about the world as it truly is, we must look not only at what scientists say but also what they do: for ontology cannot be read directly from scientific claims.
Contributors: Richard Creath, Arizona State U; Marc Ereshefsky, U of Calgary; Marie I. Kaiser, Bielefeld U; Thomas A. C. Reydon, Leibniz U Hannover and Michigan State U; Lauren N. Ross, U of California, Irvine; Rose Trappes, U of Exeter; Marcel Weber, U of Geneva; William C. Wimsatt, U of Chicago.
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Science is about 6000 years old while physics emerged as a distinct branch some 2500 years ago. As scientists discovered virtually countless facts about the world during this great span of time, the manner in which they explained the underlying structure of that world underwent a philosophical evolution. From Clockwork to Crapshoot provides the perspective needed to understand contemporary developments in physics in relation to philosophical traditions as far back as ancient Greece.
Roger Newton, whose previous works have been widely praised for erudition and accessibility, presents a history of physics from the early beginning to our day--with the associated mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry. Along the way, he gives brief explanations of the scientific concepts at issue, biographical thumbnail sketches of the protagonists, and descriptions of the changing instruments that enabled scientists to make their discoveries. He traces a profound change from a deterministic explanation of the world--accepted at least since the time of the ancient Greek and Taoist Chinese civilizations--to the notion of probability, enshrined as the very basis of science with the quantum revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century. With this change, Newton finds another fundamental shift in the focus of physicists--from the cause of dynamics or motion to the basic structure of the world. His work identifies what may well be the defining characteristic of physics in the twenty-first century.
The commodification of science—often identified with commercialization, or the selling of expertise and research results and the “capitalization of knowledge” in academia and beyond—has been investigated as a threat to the autonomy of science and academic culture and criticized for undermining the social responsibility of modern science. In From Commodification to the Common Good, Hans Radder revisits the commodification of the sciences from a philosophical perspective to focus instead on a potential alternative, the notion of public-interest science. Scientific knowledge, he argues, constitutes a common good only if it serves those affected by the issues at stake, irrespective of commercial gain. Scrutinizing the theory and practices of scientific and technological patenting, Radder challenges the legitimacy of commercial monopolies and the private appropriation and exploitation of research results. His book invites us to reevaluate established laws and to question doctrines and practices that may impede or even prohibit scientific research and social progress so that we might achieve real and significant transformations in service of the common good.
In this learned romp of science writing, Cambridge professor Simon Conway Morris cheerfully challenges six assumptions—what he calls ‘myths’—that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox.
His convivial tour begins with the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.”
If that is so, then what about mass extinctions? Don’t they steer the development of life in radically new directions? Rather the reverse, claims Conway Morris. Such cataclysms accelerate evolutionary developments that were going to happen anyway. And what about that other evolutionary canard: the “missing link”? There is plenty to choose from in the fossil record, but persistently overlooked is that in any group, there is not one but a phalanx of “missing links.” Once again, we under-score the near-inevitability of evolutionary outcomes.
Turning from fossils to minds, Conway Morris critically examines the popular tenet that the intelligence of humans and animals are the same thing, a difference of degree, not kind. A closer scrutiny of our minds shows that, in reality, an unbridgeable gulf separates us from even the chimpanzees, so begging questions of consciousness and Mind.
Finally, Conway Morris tackles the question of extraterrestrials. Undoubtedly, the size and scale of the universe suggest that alien life must exist somewhere beyond Earth and our tiny siloed solar system? After all, evolutionary convergence more than hints that human-like forms are universal. But Dr. Conway Morris has serious doubts. The famous Fermi Paradox (“Where are they?”) appears to hold: Alone in the cosmos—and unique, but not quite in the way one might expect.
"Sue Hubbell's From Here to There and Back Again is stylish and thought-provoking. As her brother I have long admired her mince pies and her ability to knit her own thermal underwear."
---Bil Gilbert
"The real masterwork that Sue Hubbell has created is her life."
---New York Times Book Review
"A latter-day Henry Thoreau with a sense of the absurd."
---Chicago Sun-Times
"Sue Hubbell writes splendidly."
---William Least Heat-Moon
"Prose as clear, languorous and beautiful as honey poured from a jar."
---People
From Here to There and Back Again is the much-anticipated collection of essays on an array of offbeat and engrossing subjects by magazine essayist and nature writer Sue Hubbell, author of A Country Year, Shrinking the Cat, and Waiting for Aphrodite.
Reading Sue Hubbell is like embarking on a journey of discovery with a close friend. Her writing is witty, learned yet unassuming, intensely personal, and pointedly honest as she ranges far and wide on such topics as after-hours truck stops, the country's best pie restaurants, bowling shoes, Costa Rica's blue morpho butterfly, earthquakes, and the honey trade. Several of her pieces take place in Michigan locales as well, including Elvis sightings in Vicksburg and the magicians' convention in Colon. In the end you'll return from these travels refreshed, enlightened-and wiser.
A Wired Most Fascinating Book of the Year
“An important book that reminds us that navigation remains one of our most underappreciated arts.”
—Tristan Gooley, author of The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs
“If you want to understand what rats can teach us about better-planned cities, why walking into a different room can help you find your car keys, or how your brain’s grid, border, and speed cells combine to give us a sense of direction, this book has all the answers.”
—The Scotsman
How is it that some of us can walk unfamiliar streets without losing our way, while the rest of us struggle even with a GPS? Navigating in uncharted territory is a remarkable feat if you stop to think about it. In this beguiling mix of science and storytelling, Michael Bond explores how we do it: how our brains make the “cognitive maps” that keep us orientated and how that anchors our sense of wellbeing. Children are instinctive explorers, developing a spatial understanding as they roam. And yet today few of us make use of the wayfinding skills that we inherited from our nomadic ancestors.
Bond tells stories of the lost and found—sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators—and explores why being lost can be such a devastating experience. He considers how our understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and helps us see how our reliance on technology may be changing who we are.
“Bond concludes that, by setting aside our GPS devices, by redesigning parts of our cities and play areas, and sometimes just by letting ourselves get lost, we can indeed revivify our ability to find our way, to the benefit of our inner world no less than the outer one.”
—Science
“A thoughtful argument about how our ability to find our way is integral to our nature.”
—Sunday Times
Upon its publication, The Origin of Species was critically embraced in Europe and North America. But how did Darwin’s theories fare in other regions of the world? Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine offer here a history and interpretation of the reception of Darwinism in Argentina, illuminating the ways culture shapes scientific enterprise.
In order to explore how Argentina’s particular interests, ambitions, political anxieties, and prejudices shaped scientific research, From Man to Ape focuses on Darwin’s use of analogies. Both analogy and metaphor are culturally situated, and by studying scientific activity at Europe’s geographical and cultural periphery, Novoa and Levine show that familiar analogies assume unfamiliar and sometimes startling guises in Argentina. The transformation of these analogies in the Argentine context led science—as well as the interaction between science, popular culture, and public policy—in surprising directions. In diverging from European models, Argentine Darwinism reveals a great deal about both Darwinism and science in general.
Novel in its approach and its subject, From Man to Ape reveals a new way of understanding Latin American science and its impact on the scientific communities of Europe and North America.
From Mastery to Mystery is an original and provocative contribution to the burgeoningfield of ecophenomenology. Informed by current debates in environmental philosophy, Bannon critiques the conception of nature as u200a“substance” that he finds tacitly assumed by the major environmental theorists. Instead, this book reconsiders the basic goals of an environmental ethic by questioning the most basic presupposition that most environmentalists accept: that nature is in need of preservation.
Beginning with Bruno Latour’s idea that continuing to speak of nature in the way we popularly conceive of it is ethically and politically disastrous, this book describes a way in which the concept of nature can retain its importance in our discussion of the contemporary state of the environment. Based upon insights from the phenomenological tradition, specifically the work of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the concept of nature developed in the book preserves the best antihumanistic intuitions of environmentalists without relying on either a reductionistic understanding of nature and the sciences or dualistic metaphysical constructions.
W. V. Quine is one of the most eminent philosophers alive today. Now in his mid-eighties he has produced a sharp, sprightly book that encapsulates the whole of his philosophical enterprise, including his thinking on all the key components of his epistemological stance--especially the value of logic and mathematics. New readers of Quine may have to go slowly, fathoming for themselves the richness that past readers already know lies between these elegant lines. For the faithful there is much to ponder.
In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically. He provides a lightning tour of the history of philosophy (particularly the history of epistemology), beginning with Plato and culminating in an appreciative sketch of Carnap's philosophical ambitions and achievements. This leads, in the second chapter, to an introduction to Quine's attempt to naturalize epistemology, which emphasizes his continuities with Carnap rather than the differences between them. The next chapters develop the naturalistic story of the development of science to take account of how our conceptual apparatus is enhanced so that we can view the world as containing re-identifiable objects. Having explained the role of observation sentences in providing a checkpoint for assessing scientific theories, and having despaired of constructing an empirical criterion to determine which sentences are meaningful, Quine in the remaining chapters takes up a variety of important issues about knowledge. He concludes with an extended treatment of his views about reference and meaning and his attitudes toward psychological and modal notions.
The presentation is distinctive, and the many small refinements of detail and formulation will fascinate all who know Quine's philosophy.
From Stone to Star chronicles one of the great scientific adventures of our time. Written by the eminent geochemist Claude Allègre, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the sophisticated isotopic detective work that has established a geologic chronology of the earth and transformed our understanding of its genesis and history. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe geologists exploring the earth's surface collected fossils and hotly debated the origin of the layered and folded rocks in which they were embedded.
The development of seismology, the study of earthquakes, in this century shifted the focus from the terrestrial crust to the earth's deep interior. But our knowledge of the chemistry of the earth and of the solar system has been revolutionized by advances in modern laboratory technology and analysis of meteorites and lunar rocks. High resolution mass spectrometry has allowed scientists to explore the very hearts of atoms. The Apollo mission brought back our first samples of the lunar surface, and unmanned space probes have gathered detailed photographs of distant planets.
From Stone to Star provides an engaging account of this exciting new chapter in scientific discovery. Scientists can now measure the isotopic composition of atoms with extreme precision. As miraculous as it may seem, a minute quantity of meteorite yields more information about the structure of the earth and the primitive history of the solar system than years of fieldwork on the earth's surface. Allègre, who was a project scientist during the interplanetary space missions, scrupulously avoids technical jargon. His lucid prose and abiding passion for his subject succeed in creating a superbly readable introduction to the history, methods, and theories of modern geology.
Mining had an enormous role, only partly measurable, in the history of Utah. Its multidimensional impact continues today. Economically, it made a major long-term contribution to the wealth, employment, and tax base of the state and stimulated a seemingly endless range of secondary businesses and enterprises. It helped shape the state's social history, determining the location, distribution, and composition of many communities and bringing transportation systems and a wide variety of institutions to them. It developed cultural diversity by drawing to Utah miners and families from otherwise underrepresented ethnic and national backgrounds. It ignited strife, particularly between labor and management, but those issues often spread into or connected with other conflicts in and between communities, classes, and factions. It influenced political platforms, generated candidates, and helped decide elections. Throughout the state, mining dramatically transformed the landscape, most obviously at what has been called the world's largest open-pit mine, which removed much of a mountain on the west side of Salt Lake Valley, but at innumerable other places too.
Despite all mining has done and meant, there has not been, until now, a book that surveyed its history in Utah. From the Ground Up fills that gap in a collection of essays by leading experts, among them historians Thomas G. Alexander, Martha Sonntag Bradley-Evans, James E. Fell Jr., Laurence P. James, Brigham D. Madsen, Philip F. Notarianni, Allen Kent Powell, W. Paul Reeve, Raye C. Ringholz, and Janet Burton Seegmiller and geologists J. Wallace Gwynn and William T. Parry. The book is divided into three comprehensive parts. The first looks at "The Ground of Utah Mining": the geology that has produced extractable minerals, the economic history of the industry, "father of Utah mining" Patrick E. Connor, and the lore of mines and miners. Part II reviews the history of a handful of particularly significant mineral industries: salines, coal, uranium, and beryllium. The last part takes a region-by-region approach to survey the important, primarily for hard-rock mining, areas of the state, including places from Silver Reef to Alta, the East Tintic Range to the Uinta Basin, and Park City to Frisco.
One of the most vigorous sciences of our time, astrophysics constantly changes under the impact of new discoveries about everything from our own sun to the most distant and exotic of extragalactic phenomena. In chapters written especially for this volume, twelve distinguished scientists actively pursuing astrophysical research offer up-to-date reviews and commentary on new developments in their fields. With a little grounding in astronomy or physics, the reader will find this book an invaluable source of basic information on the most recent work in this field.
Frontiers of Astrophysics can be used as classroom reading, either as a main text or as supplementary reading in astronomy or physics courses, and it can be read with profit by anyone who wants current knowledge presented without complex mathematical arguments. Published within months after the contributions were written, this book is the most convenient and contemporary source on these topics: formation of the solar system (W.R. Ward); new developments in solar research (R. W. Noyes); early phases of stellar evolution (S.E. Storm); endpoints of stellar evolution (A.G.W. Cameron); neutron stars, black holes and supernocvae (H. Gursky); infrared astronomy (G.G. Fazio); gaseous nebulae and their interstellar environment (E.K. Chaisson); chemistry of the interstellar medium (A. Dalgarno); radio observations of galactic masers (J.M. Moran): active galaxies (K. Brecher); galaxies and cosmology (M. Davis); the mass of the universe and intergalactic matter (G.B. Field).
For the past fifty years, science and technology—supported with billions of dollars from the U.S. government—have advanced at a rate that would once have seemed miraculous, while society's problems have grown more intractable, complex, and diverse. Yet scientists and politicians alike continue to prescribe more science and more technology to cure such afflictions as global climate change, natural resource depletion, overpopulation, inadequate health care, weapons proliferation, and economic inequality.
Daniel Sarewitz scrutinizes the fundamental myths that have guided the formulation of science policy for half a century—myths that serve the professional and political interests of the scientific community, but often fail to advance the interests of society as a whole. His analysis ultimately demonstrates that stronger linkages between progress in science and progress in society will require research agendas that emerge not from the intellectual momentum of science, but from the needs and goals of society.
From the temptation of Eve to the venomous murder of the mighty Thor, the serpent appears throughout time and cultures as a figure of mischief and misery. The worldwide prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to the serpent—but why, when so few of us have firsthand experience? The surprising answer, this book suggests, lies in the singular impact of snakes on primate evolution. Predation pressure from snakes, Lynne Isbell tells us, is ultimately responsible for the superior vision and large brains of primates—and for a critical aspect of human evolution.
Drawing on extensive research, Isbell further speculates how snakes could have influenced the development of a distinctively human behavior: our ability to point for the purpose of directing attention. A social activity (no one points when alone) dependent on fast and accurate localization, pointing would have reduced deadly snake bites among our hominin ancestors. It might have also figured in later human behavior: snakes, this book eloquently argues, may well have given bipedal hominins, already equipped with a non-human primate communication system, the evolutionary nudge to point to communicate for social good, a critical step toward the evolution of language, and all that followed.
The engineering of plants has a long history on this continent. Fields, forests, orchards, and prairies are the result of repeated campaigns by amateurs, tradesmen, and scientists to introduce desirable plants, both American and foreign, while preventing growth of alien riff-raff. These horticulturists coaxed plants along in new environments and, through grafting and hybridizing, created new varieties. Over the last 250 years, their activities transformed the American landscape.
"Horticulture" may bring to mind white-glove garden clubs and genteel lectures about growing better roses. But Philip J. Pauly wants us to think of horticulturalists as pioneer "biotechnologists," hacking their plants to create a landscape that reflects their ambitions and ideals. Those standards have shaped the look of suburban neighborhoods, city parks, and the "native" produce available in our supermarkets.
In telling the histories of Concord grapes and Japanese cherry trees, the problem of the prairie and the war on the Medfly, Pauly hopes to provide a new understanding of not only how horticulture shaped the vegetation around us, but how it influenced our experiences of the native, the naturalized, and the alien--and how better to manage the landscapes around us.
Blending ethnography with a fascinating personal story, A Future for Amazonia is an account of a political movement that arose in the early 1990s in response to decades of attacks on the lands and peoples of eastern Ecuador, one of the world’s most culturally and biologically diverse places. After generations of ruin at the hands of colonizing farmers, transnational oil companies, and Colombian armed factions, the indigenous Cofán people and their rain forest territory faced imminent jeopardy. In a surprising turn of events, the Cofán chose Randy Borman, a man of Euro-American descent, to lead their efforts to overcome the crisis that confronted them.
Drawing on three years of ethnographic research, A Future for Amazonia begins by tracing the contours of Cofán society and Borman’s place within it. Borman, a blue-eyed, white-skinned child of North American missionary-linguists, was raised in a Cofán community and gradually came to share the identity of his adoptive nation. He became a global media phenomenon and forged creative partnerships between Cofán communities, conservationist organizations, Western scientists, and the Ecuadorian state. The result was a collective mobilization that transformed the Cofán nation in unprecedented ways, providing them with political power, scientific expertise, and a new role as ambitious caretakers of more than one million acres of forest. Challenging simplistic notions of identity, indigeneity, and inevitable ecological destruction, A Future for Amazonia charts an inspiring course for environmental politics in the twenty-first century.
The United States is about to embark on the most thorough reconsideration of its ocean policy in more than three decades. With 1998 designated as the International Year of the Ocean by the United Nations, and with both the executive branch and the Congress currently working toward developing new approaches to formulating and implementing ocean policy, a comprehensive overview of key issues and concerns is essential.
The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy provides such an overview, with an in-depth analysis of the evolution of U.S. ocean policy and a timely discussion of the most important ocean and coastal issues facing the nation. The book assesses the current status of ocean policy, examines national and international trends, and considers choices for policymakers in the 21st century. Following an introductory chapter that reviews national ocean policy and the process by which it is made, the authors:
The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy is the only recent book that focuses on national ocean policy in its entirety, and will play an important role in upcoming debates concerning the future direction of policy initiatives. Agency personnel, members and staff of nongovernmental organizations, industry groups, Congressional staffers, state and local government officials, academics, and concerned citizens will find the book an invaluable guide, as will students and faculty in courses in marine and coastal management and in environmental management.
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