history of science
George Sarton, A History of Science, 2 vol. (1952–59, reissued 1993), and Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vol. in 5 (1927–48, reprinted 1975), embody the legacy of this founder of the discipline of the history of science. Though more philosophical in tone, the immensely influential work by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (1996), is essential reading for the student of the history of science. Of several surveys of the entire field, J.D. Bernal, Science in History, new ed., 4 vol. (1969, reissued 1979), although Marxist-inflected, is the most easily accessible and useful—vol. 1 and 2 are the strongest. David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (1992), is the best recent overview of Western science to 1400, with a thorough bibliography. Joseph Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China (1954– ), is the indispensable history of Chinese science and technology; Colin Ronan, The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China (1980– ), is an abridgment.
General studies of specific fields include Dirk J. Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics, 4th rev. ed. (1987); Dirk J. Struik (ed.), A Source Book in Mathematics, 1200–1800 (1969, reprinted 1986); on astronomy, Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way (1988); and John North, The Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology (also published as The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, 1994); Peter J. Bowler, The Fontana History of the Environmental Sciences (1992; also published as The Norton History of the Environmental Sciences, 1993), a history of biological and ecological thought; and William H. Brock, The Fontana History of Chemistry (1992; also published as The Norton History of Chemistry, 1993). The relationship between science and religion is surveyed in John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991); and David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (eds.), God and Nature (1986), a valuable collection of historical essays.
Charles Coulton Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vol. (1970–80), is the definitive biographical reference source for the field. Roy Porter (ed.), The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, 2nd ed. (1994), offers briefer biographies. A series of annotated bibliographies of literature on the history of science and technology includes, for example, Gavin Bridson, The History of Natural History (1994); Bernard S. Finn, The History of Electrical Technology (1991); and David F. Channell, The History of Engineering Science (1989). Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (annual) surveys the most recent literature.
Ongoing research is reported in a number of journals. Isis (quarterly) is the leading U.S. journal; and Osiris (annual) is also published in the United States; while History of Science (quarterly) and The British Journal for the History of Science (quarterly) are good British journals with wide coverage, bibliographies, and essay reviews. More specialized journals include Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (semiannual); Journal of the History of Biology (3/yr.); Journal for the History of Astronomy (quarterly); Ambix (3/yr.), on the history of chemistry and alchemy; Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (quarterly); and Social Studies of Science (quarterly).
Ancient and medieval science
Mott T. Greene, Natural Knowledge in Preclassical Antiquity (1992), is a general survey of preclassical sciences; while O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd ed. (1957, reissued 1993), focuses on ancient mathematics and astronomy. The best general history of Greek science is G.E.R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (1970), and Greek Science After Aristotle (1973); Marshall Clagett, Greek Science in Antiquity (1955, reissued 1994), is also of value. G.E.R. Lloyd, Adversaries and Authorities (1996), is a comparative study of Greek and Chinese science. Roman science is treated in William H. Stahl, Roman Science: Origins, Development, and Influence to the Later Middle Ages (1962, reprinted 1978); and Roger French and Frank Greenaway (eds.), Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, His Sources and Influences (1986).
There is no book-length survey of Islāmic science, but A.I. Sabra, “Science, Islamic,” in Joseph R. Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages (1988), vol. 11, pp. 81–89, is a good short overview. Astronomy and physics are discussed in A.I. Sabra, Optics, Astronomy, and Logic: Studies in Arabic Science and Philosophy (1994); David A. King, Astronomy in the Service of Islam (1993); and Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (1994). Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science (1993), compares science in the medieval Islāmic world, China, and the West. A.C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vol. (1959, reissued as The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo, 2 vol. in 1, 1995), is still a useful introduction to medieval science. Edward Grant, Physical Science in the Middle Ages (1971); and Marshall Clagett, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (1959, reissued 1979), discuss medieval physics. Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science, 155:1203–07 (March 10, 1967), presents an influential argument about medieval attitudes toward nature. Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within (1994), discusses medieval attitudes toward animals.
The scientific revolution
The vast literature on the scientific revolution is surveyed in H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (1994). Allen G. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance (1978); and Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (1996), are the best short overviews. Additional surveys include Margaret C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (1988, reissued 1993), strong on comparative and social issues; David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (1990), a cross section of current scholarship; and A. Rupert Hall, The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude, 2nd ed. (1962, reissued 1972), a classic intellectual history. The relationship between science, politics, and society in early modern England has been the subject of numerous important studies, including Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology & Society in Seventeenth Century England (1938, reissued 1993), which argues for a “Puritan spur to science”; while Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660 (1975), presents a case for more radical interest in science in England. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985); and Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (1994), trace the development of the experimental method. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry (1991), explores the relationship between art and science in the Renaissance. Physical science and astronomy are discussed in Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957, reissued 1994); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (1957, reissued 1985); and Richard S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics (1971). Natural history and biology are treated in Martin J.S. Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology, 2nd rev. ed. (1976, reprinted 1985). The links between Hermeticism, magic, and science are explored in Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964, reissued 1991); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971); and Brian Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (1984). Alchemy is examined in Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (1991); William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution (1994); and Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (1994). Studies of gender and Renaissance science include Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (1985, reissued 1995), an essential starting point; Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (1980, reissued 1990); and the controversial work by David F. Noble, A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science (1992).
Thomas L. Hankins, Science and the Enlightenment (1985), is an excellent survey of 18th-century science. Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society (1971, reprinted with a new introduction, 1984), surveys the development of scientific institutions and communities in Europe and America. Margaret C. Jacob (ed.), The Politics of Western Science, 1640–1990 (1994); and Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (eds.), Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (1992), are useful introductions to the politics of science. Works on gender and science include Margaret Alic, Hypatia’s Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century (1986), which is strongest on the modern period; Londa L. Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (1993); Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine Between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1989, reissued 1993); and Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (1982), and Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972 (1995). Surveys of science in the national and imperial context include Nancy Stepan, Beginnings of Brazilian Science (1976, reissued 1981); Lewis Pyenson, Cultural Imperialism and the Exact Sciences: German Expansion Overseas, 1900–1930 (1985); Daniel R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 (1988); James R. Bartholomew, The Formation of Science in Japan (1989); and Loren R. Graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union (1993).
The literature on specific sciences since the 18th century is voluminous. The physical sciences are discussed in J.L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries (1979); Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, 2 vol. (1986), strong on the late 19th century; Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists (1978, reprinted 1995), a history of American physics; P.M. Harman, Energy, Force, and Matter (1982), on 19th-century developments; and three important collections of essays: Peter Galison, How Experiments End (1987), on high-energy physics; David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer (eds.), The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences (1989); and Jed Z. Buchwald (ed.), Scientific Practice: Theories and Stories of Doing Physics (1995). Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope (1955, reprinted 1979), is still useful as a history of astronomy; while Owen Gingerich (ed.), Astrophysics and Twentieth-Century Astronomy to 1950, vol. 1 (1984), is a more recent survey. Karl Hufbauer, Exploring the Sun: Solar Science Since Galileo (1991), focusses on solar physics. David H. DeVorkin, The History of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (1982), is an annotated bibliographic guide. Quantification and mathematics are discussed in Tore Frängsmyr, J.L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the 18th Century (1990); Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (1988); Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (1986), and Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (1995); and Joan L. Richards, Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England (1988). Voyages of discovery are studied in Harry Woolf, The Transits of Venus: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Science (1959); Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd ed. (1985), and Imagining the Pacific (1992); and William H. Goetzmann, New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery (1986, reissued 1995). Life sciences are discussed in David Elliston Allen, The Naturalist in Britain (1976, reissued 1994), a social history of natural history and collecting; W.F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (1994); Garland E. Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (1975), a general survey; and Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson, and Jane Maienschein (eds.), The American Development of Biology (1988, reissued 1991). Evolution is the subject of Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, rev. ed. (1989); and Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London (1989, reissued 1992). Genetics and molecular biology are discussed in Horace Freeland Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology (1979); James D. Watson, The Double Helix (1968), available also in a critical edition ed. by Gunther S. Stent (1980), an interesting and controversial autobiographical account of the discovery of DNA structure; Adele E. Clarke and Joan H. Fujimura (eds.), The Right Tools for the Job (1992), on instruments and animals in 20th-century biology; and Robert E. Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry (1982), and Lords of the Fly (1994), on Drosophila melanogaster and genetics research. The social sciences are discussed in Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (eds.), Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains (1995); Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (1991); Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (1985, reissued 1995); George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (1987); and Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989), a history of primatology.