Bøger af Ronald Numbers

With a few notable exceptions, historians have tended to ignore the role that science and medicine played in the antebellum American South. The fourteen essays in Science and Medicine in the Old South help to redress that neglect by considering scientific and medical developments in the early nineteenth-century South.

William Miller based his prediction of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world "about the year 1843" on a Biblical prophecy in the book of Daniel. Miller's proclamation fostered several new religious movements, including Seventh-day Adventists. The millennial myth in Amercan life, as manifested in Millerism, has proven so resilient that some scholars have come to consider it central to the nation's self-understanding. The 1984 conference on "Millerism and the Millenarian Mind in 19th Century America," from which this volume resulted, marked a new direction in Millerite studies, bringing together for the first time both Adventist and non-Adventist scholars interested in critically evaluating the Millerite experience and its place in American history.

When and where did science begin? Historians have offered different answers to these questions, some pointing to Babylonian observational astronomy. This title examines how students of nature themselves, in various cultures and periods of history, have understood and represented their work.