For decades, the creationist movement was primarily fixed in the United States. Then, in the 1970s, American creationists found their ideas welcomed abroad, first in Australia and New Zealand, then in Korea, India, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhereincluding Europe, where creationism plays an expanding role in public debates about science policy ......
Our Ancient Quest for Knowledge and the Measure of Modern Physics
The birth of science in ancient Greece had a historical impact that is still being felt today. Physicist Demetris Nicolaides examines the epochal shift in thinking that led pre-Socratic philosophers of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to abandon the prevailing mythologies of the age and, for the first time, to analyze the natural world in terms ......
Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution
Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the ......
Naval, aeronautic, and mechanical engineers played a powerful part in the military buildup of Japan in the early and mid-twentieth century. They belonged to a militaristic regime and embraced the importance of their role in it. Takashi Nishiyama examines the impact of war and peace on technological transformation during the twentieth century. He ......
Technology and Society from the Model T to the Gran Torino
As early as 1910 Americans recognized that cars were easy to steal and, once stolen, hard to find, especially since cars looked much alike. Model styles and colors eventually changed, but so did the means of making a stolen car disappear. Though changing license plates and serial numbers remain basic procedure, thieves have created highly ......
The story of two brilliant nineteenth-century scientists who discovered the electromagnetic field, laying the groundwork for the amazing technological and theoretical breakthroughs of the twentieth century Two of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). This is the ......
Shipboard Command and Control in the U.S. Navy, from Mobile Bay to Okinawa
The brain of a modern warship is its combat information center (CIC). Information about friendly and enemy forces pours into this nerve center, informing command decisions about firing, maneuvering, and coordinating. Timothy S. Wolters has written the first book to investigate the history of the CIC and the many other command and control systems ......
Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion
Is relativity Jewish? The Nazis denigrated Albert Einstein's revolutionary theory by calling it 'Jewish science,' a charge typical of the ideological excesses of Hitler and his followers. Philosopher of science Steven Gimbel explores the many meanings of this provocative phrase and considers whether there is any sense in which Einstein's theory of ......
