"A highly readable historical survey of the major developments in scientific thought and the impact of science on Western culture, this book takes the reader from ancient times through to the twentieth century. Organized chronologically, the book explores the history of studies of the natural world, and man's role within that world, in a single volume"--Provided by publisher.

A series of meditative or considered essays, examining nodal points in the long history of science from the first emergence of experts writing on clay in Babylonia.

The highly acclaimed first edition of this major work convincingly established Gerald Holton’s analysis of the ways scientific ideas evolve. His concept of “themata,” induced from case studies with special attention to the work of Einstein, has become one of the chief tools for understanding scientific progress. It is now one of the main approaches in the study of the initiation and acceptance of individual scientific insights. Three principal consequences of this perspective extend beyond the study of the history of science itself. It provides philosophers of science with the kind of raw material on which some of the best work in their field is based. It helps intellectual historians to redefine the place of modern science in contemporary culture by identifying influences on the scientific imagination. And it prompts educators to reexamine the conventional concepts of education in science. In this new edition, Holton has masterfully reshaped the contents and widened the coverage. Significant new material has been added, including a penetrating account of the advent of quantum physics in the United States, and a broad consideration of the integrity of science, as exemplified in the work of Niels Bohr. In addition, a revised introduction and a new postscript provide an updated perspective on the role of themata. The result of this thoroughgoing revision is an indispensable volume for scholars and students of scientific thought and intellectual history.

In this detailed historical and sociological study of the development of scientific ideas, Jonathan Harwood argues that there is no such thing as a unitary scientific method driven by an internal logic. Rather, there are national styles of science that are defined by different values, norms, assumptions, research traditions, and funding patterns. The first book-length treatment of genetics in Germany, Styles of Scientific Thought demonstrates the influence of culture on science by comparing the American with the German scientific traditions. Harwood examines the structure of academic and research institutions, the educational backgrounds of geneticists, and cultural traditions, among many factors, to explain why the American approach was much more narrowly focussed than the German. This tremendously rich book fills a gap between histories of the physical sciences in the Weimar Republic and other works on the humanities and the arts during the intellectually innovative 1920s, and it will interest European historians, as well as sociologists and philosophers of science.