Volume 1 of this critical edition includes a note on the text from the Humboldt in English team, an introduction by editors Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette, a preface to the first edition by Alexander von Humboldt, and the translation of Volumes 1...

Volume 2 of this critical edition includes the translation of Volumes 3 and 4 of the second, revised French edition of Alexander von Humboldt's "Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne" from 1825 to 1827 as well as notes, supplements, i...

Many of us view the world of science as a firm bastion of knowledge, with each new discovery and further illumination adding to an unshakable foundation of natural truths. "Weak Knowledge" aims to rattle our faith, not in core certainties of scientif...

In a world increasingly shut in by the iron-clad determinism of Victorian physics, the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882, ­ tasked itself with finding scientific evidence for phenomena science had all but denied. The point was not to re...

The role of fiction in both understanding and interpreting the world has recently become an increasingly important topic for many of the human sciences. This volume of "Osiris" focuses on the relationship between a particular genre of storytelling –...

The debate over scientists' social responsibility is a topic of great controversy today. Peter J. Kuznick here traces the origin of that debate to the 1930s and places it in a context that forces a reevaluation of the relationship between science and...

Today's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" in our brain cells' membranes open and close; when we run, tiny "motors" in our muscle c...

Databases have revolutionized nearly every aspect of our lives. Information of all sorts is being collected on a massive scale, from Google to Facebook and well beyond, to produce new knowledge. But as the amount of information in databases explodes,...

Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe".Materials of the Mind" tells the story of how phrenology changed the wo...

In the years after the Revolutionary War, the fledgling republic of America was viewed by many Europeans as a degenerate backwater, populated by subspecies weak and feeble. Chief among these naysayers was the French Count and world-renowned naturalis...