The Cambridge Companion to John Herschel


Book Description

It has been said that being scientific in Victorian England meant to be as much like John Herschel as possible. This volume shows readers what it meant to be John Herschel (1792-1871), one of England's most prominent polymaths. Drawing on his published oeuvre and recent scholarship, as well as an immense amount of surviving archival material and correspondence, these essays present the first ever comprehensive account of Herschel's life, work, and legacy. From mathematics and astronomy, to philosophy and politics, the volume sheds new light on his crucial role in the history of Victorian science and explores a wide array of issues in the history of nineteenth-century culture, philosophy, mathematics, and beyond.




Because Without Cause


Book Description

Not all scientific explanations work by describing causal connections between events or the world's overall causal structure. In addition, mathematicians regard some proofs as explaining why the theorems being proved do in fact hold. This book proposes new philosophical accounts of many kinds of non-causal explanations in science and mathematics.




The American Cyclopaedia


Book Description










The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light


Book Description

"No one interested in the history of optics, the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century physics, or the general phenomenon of theory change in science can afford to ignore Jed Buchwald's well-structured, highly detailed, and scrupulously researched book. . . . Buchwald's analysis will surely constitute the essential starting point for further work on this important and hitherto relatively neglected episode of theory change."—John Worrall, Isis










The Language of Physics


Book Description

This work is the first explicit examination of the key role that mathematics has played in the development of theoretical physics and will undoubtedly challenge the more conventional accounts of its historical development. Although mathematics has long been regarded as the "language" of physics, the connections between these independent disciplines have been far more complex and intimate than previous narratives have shown. The author convincingly demonstrates that practices, methods, and language shaped the development of the field, and are a key to understanding the mergence of the modern academic discipline. Mathematicians and physicists, as well as historians of both disciplines, will find this provocative work of great interest.