Biology in the Nineteenth Century PDF Download

Author: William Coleman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521292931
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Essential themes in the development of the life sciences during the nineteenth century.

Author: T. Lenoir
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027713636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Teleological thinking has been steadfastly resisted by modern biology. And yet, in nearly every area of research biologists are hard pressed to find language that does not impute purposiveness to living forms. The life of the individual organism, if not life itself, seems to make use of a variety of strate gems in achieving its purposes. But in an age when physical models dominate our imagination and when physics itself has become accustomed to uncertainty relations and complementarity, biologists have learned to live with a kind of schizophrenic language, employing terms like 'selfish genes' and 'survival machines' to describe the behavior of organisms as if they were somehow purposive yet all the while intending that they are highly complicated mechanisms. The present study treats a period in the history of the life sciences when the imputation of purposiveness to biological organization was not regarded an embarrassment but rather an accepted fact, and when the principal goal was to reap the benefits of mechanistic explanations by finding a. means of in corporating them within the guidelines of a teleological fmmework. Whereas the history of German biology in the early nineteenth century is usually dismissed as an unfortunate era dominated by arid speculation, the present study aims to reverse that judgment by showing that a consistent, workable program of research was elaborated by a well-connected group of German biologists and that it was based squarely on the unification of teleological and mechanistic models of explanation.

Author: David Cahan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226089270
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
During the 19th century, much of the modern scientific enterprise took shape: scientific disciplines were formed, institutions and communities were founded and unprecedented applications to and interactions with other aspects of society and culture occurred. taught us about this exciting time and identify issues that remain unexamined or require reconsideration. They treat scientific disciplines - biology, physics, chemistry, the earth sciences, mathematics and the social sciences - in their specific intellectual and sociocultural contexts as well as the broader topics of science and medicine; science and religion; scientific institutions and communities; and science, technology and industry. From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences should be valuable for historians of science, but also of great interest to scholars of all aspects of 19th-century life and culture.

Author: A.S. Weber
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 9781551111650
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Nineteenth-Century Science is a science anthology which provides over 30 selections from original 19th-century scientific monographs, textbooks and articles written by such authors as Charles Darwin, Mary Somerville, J.W. Goethe, John Dalton, Charles Lyell and Hermann von Helmholtz. The volume surveys scientific discovery and thought from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory of evolution of 1809 to the isolation of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. Each selection opens with a biographical introduction, situating each scientist and discovery within the context of history and culture of the period. Each entry is also followed by a list of further suggested reading on the topic. A broad range of technical and popular material has been included, from Mendeleev’s detailed description of the periodic table to Faraday’s highly accessible lecture for young people on the chemistry of a burning candle. The anthology will be of interest to the general reader who would like to explore in detail the scientific, cultural, and intellectual development of the nineteenth-century, as well as to students and teachers who specialize in the science, literature, history, or sociology of the period. The book provides examples from all the disciplines of western science-chemistry, physics, medicine, astronomy, biology, evolutionary theory, etc. The majority of the entries consist of complete, unabridged journal articles or book chapters from original 19th-century scientific texts.

Author: Robert Maxwell Young
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195063899
Category : Adaptability (Psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The author examines ideas of the nature and localization of the functions of the brain in the light of the philosophical constraints at work in the sciences of mind and brain in the 19th century. Particular attention is paid to phrenology, sensory-motor physiology and associationist psychology.

Author: Lynn K. Nyhart
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226610863
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations1: Situating MorphologyPt. 1: Morphology and Physiology2: The Study of Form before 18503: Rearranging the Sciences of Animal Life, 1845-1870Pt. 2: Evolutionary Morphology, 1860-18804: Descent and the Laws of Development5: Evolutionary Morphology at Jena6: Evolution and Morphology among the Zoologists, 1860-18807: Evolutionary Morphology in Anatomy: Carl Gegenbaur and His SchoolPt. 3: Morphology and Biology, 1880-19008: The Kompetenzkonflikt within the Evolutionary Morphological Program9: New Approaches to Form, 1880-1900: Rhetoric, Research, and Rewards10: Morphology, Biology, and the Zoological Professoriate11: Morphology and Disciplinary Development: Observations and ReflectionsApp. 1. Anatomy and Zoology Professors, 1810-1918, by BirthdateApp. 2. Professorships in Zoology, 1810-1918App. 3. Professorships in Anatomy, 1810-1918Archival SourcesBibliographyIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Author: Michael Friedman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262062542
Category : Philosophy and science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Historians of philosophy, science, and mathematics explore the influence of Kant's philosophy on the evolution of modern scientific thought.

Author: Oscar Hertwig
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biology
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description

Author: Lynn K. Nyhart
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226610926
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
In Modern Nature,Lynn K. Nyhart traces the emergence of a “biological perspective” in late nineteenth-century Germany that emphasized the dynamic relationships among organisms, and between organisms and their environment. Examining this approach to nature in light of Germany’s fraught urbanization and industrialization, as well the opportunities presented by new and reforming institutions, she argues that rapid social change drew attention to the role of social relationships and physical environments in rendering a society—and nature—whole, functional, and healthy. This quintessentially modern view of nature, Nyhart shows, stood in stark contrast to the standard naturalist’s orientation toward classification. While this new biological perspective would eventually grow into the academic discipline of ecology, Modern Nature locates its roots outside the universities, in a vibrant realm of populist natural history inhabited by taxidermists and zookeepers, schoolteachers and museum reformers, amateur enthusiasts and nature protectionists. Probing the populist beginnings of animal ecology in Germany, Nyhart unites the history of popular natural history with that of elite science in a new way. In doing so, she brings to light a major orientation in late nineteenth-century biology that has long been eclipsed by Darwinism.

Author: Erik Peterson
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298198X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
As scientists debated the nature of life in the nineteenth century, two theories predominated: vitalism, which suggested that living things contained a "vital spark," and mechanism, the idea that animals and humans differed from nonliving things only in their degree of complexity. Erik Peterson tells the forgotten story of the pursuit of a Third Way in biology, known by many names, including "the organic philosophy," which gave rise to C. H. Waddington's work in the subfield of epigenetics: an alternative to standard genetics and evolutionary biology that captured the attention of notable scientists from Francis Crick to Stephen Jay Gould. The Life Organic chronicles the influential biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, and biochemists from both sides of the Atlantic who formed Joseph Needham's Theoretical Biology Club, defined and refined Third-Way thinking through the 1930s, and laid the groundwork for some of the most cutting-edge achievements in biology today. By tracing the persistence of organicism into the twenty-first century, this book also raises significant questions about how we should model the development of the discipline of biology going forward.