A Companion to the History of Science, 1st Edition

“Bernard Lightman has assembled a superb roster of many of the leading figures in their respective specialisms. [The] Companion is organized around analytical catagories…[which] enables [it] to address current issues such as identity, practice, the movement of knowledge, and material culture from a number of different perspectives that, helpfully, are often mutually illuminating. Although the individual chapters…are uniformly excellent, the Companion to the History of Science, when read as a whole or even section by section, really is more than the sum of its parts.” - British Journal for the History of Science.

“Assembling a one-volume companion to the history of science across ages, scientific disciplines and global space is a particularly daunting task. The editor has approached this challenge in a somewhat unconventional way…. This thematic approach is a successful and innovative way of providing an overview of the key literature and current debates in the history of science. …stimulating and informative…individual contributions are well suited for inclusion in undergraduate courses. The volume is very ambitious in terms of geographical scope…[which] sets [it] apart from other available introductions to the history of science. Admirably, it includes science and ways of studying nature in many different parts of the world through history. As a whole, the companion presents a highly commendable state-of-the-art view on the history of science. [Presenting] the richness of a thriving academic field…as an introduction to the history of science informed by cultural history and cultural theory, a better introduction is difficult to come by.” - Notes and Records of the Royal Society“The book will serve well in an introductory graduate seminar and as a starting point for undergraduate research. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals.” - Choice

“A valiant effort to condense in a single (large) book such an extremely diverse subject as the history of science.” - The Sun News Miami

“In time this book will become a snapshot of early twenty-first-century historiography of science. It is all the more useful because of its clearly articulated approach. These essays will remain a valuable resource for many years to come.” - Annals of Science“All in all, this is a magnificent collection of essays that would be extremely useful and informative to those science educators who have no formal training in history of science, but who nevertheless use, or want to use, history of science in their work.” - Science and Education

Bernard Lightman is Professor of Humanities at York University, Toronto, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former Editor of the journal Isis, and Vice-Presdent and President Elect of the History of Science Society. Professor Lightman has published over 50 articles and is the author of The Origins of Agnosticism (1987) and Victorian Popularizers of Science (2007). He is also editor or co-editor of several collections: Victorian Science in Context (1997), Science in the Marketplace (2007), and Victorian Scientific Naturalism (2014). In addition, he is the series editor of Science and Culture in the Nineteeth Century.