Is it time to forget science? Reflections on singular science and its history

The name history of science refl ects a set of assumptions about what science is. Among them is the claim that science is a singular thing, a potentially unifi ed group of disciplines that share a common identity. Long promoted by scientists and philosophers on the basis of a supposedly universal scientifi c method, this claim now looks very embattled. I trace its development from the early nineteenth century and the growth of the positivist movement to its various manifestations in the twentieth century. Recently, some historians have called for the term science to be relinquished, and for adoption of a more relaxed pluralism. Yet the complex legacy of the notion of singular science cannot be so easily abandoned

Review of: Robert Mitchell, Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature

Review by Jan Golinski (University of New Hampshire) of Robert Mitchell, Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Pp. 309. ISBN 9781421410883

Debating the Atmospheric Constitution: Yellow Fever and the American Climate

A series of deadly epidemics of yellow fever ravaged Philadelphia and other eastern seaboard cities of the United States in the 1790s. Although medical opinion failed to reach consensus on the causes of the outbreaks, the events substantially influenced American thinking about the benevolence and improvability of the national climate. The belief that climate was being civilized by extending cultivation across the continent gave way to a concern with improving the quality of air in specific urban locations. Measures to enhance urban sanitation arose from the debate over the American “atmospheric constitution” that was stimulated by the yellow fever epidemics