Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's calculation that the earth was flattened at the poles. He also made significant, and often intentionally controversial, contributions to physics, life science, navigation, astronomy, and metaphysics. Called to Berlin by Frederick the Great, Maupertuis moved to Prussia to preside over the Academy of Sciences there. Equally at home in salons, cafés, scientific academies, and royal courts, Maupertuis used his social connections and his printed works to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as both a man of letters and a man of science. His social and institutional affiliations, in turn, affected how Maupertuis formulated his ideas, how he presented them to his contemporaries, and the reactions they provoked. Terrall not only illuminates the life and work of a colorful and important Enlightenment figure, but also uses his story to delve into many wider issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government. Smart and highly readable, Maupertuis will appeal to anyone interested in eighteenth-century science and culture. "Terrall's work is scholarship in the best sense. Her explanations of arcane 18th-century French physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are among the most lucid available in any language."-Virginia Dawson, American Historical Review Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society

Scientists --- Maupertuis, --- maupertuis, science, enlightenment, self fashioning, expedition, exploration, lapland, newton, poles, metaphysics, astronomy, navigation, physics, academy of sciences, prussia, frederick the great, berlin, print culture, government, scientific institutions, mathematics, biology, paris, least action, teleology, cosmology, materialism, heredity, nonfiction.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The contrast between the temperate and the tropical is one of the most enduring themes in the history of the Western geographical imagination. Caught between the demands of experience and representation, documentation and fantasy, travelers in the tropics have often treated tropical nature as a foil to the temperate, to all that is civilized, modest, and enlightened. Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire explores images of the tropical world-maps, paintings, botanical drawings, photographs, diagrams, and texts-produced by European and American travelers over the past three centuries. Bringing together a group of distinguished contributors from disciplines across the arts and humanities, this volume contains eleven beautifully illustrated essays-arranged in three sections devoted to voyages, mappings, and sites-that consider the ways that tropical places were encountered, experienced, and represented in visual form. Covering a wide range of tropical sites in the Pacific, South Asia, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, the book will appeal to a broad readership: scholars of postcolonial studies, art history, literature, imperial history, history of science, geography, and anthropology.

Europeans --- Travelers' writings, European. --- Scientific expeditions --- Expeditions, Scientific --- Scientific voyages --- Travels --- Voyages, Scientific --- Voyages and travels --- European travelers' writings --- European literature --- Ethnology --- Travel --- Tropics --- Equatorial regions --- Equatorial zones --- Subtropical regions --- Subtropics --- Tropical regions --- Tropical zones --- Zones, Equatorial --- Zones, Tropical --- Earth (Planet) --- Description and travel. --- Travelers' writings, European --- In art. --- World history --- History of civilization --- tropical, geography, imperialism, colonialism, exoticism, experience, representation, fantasy, travel, civilization, excess, noble savage, visual culture, latin america, caribbean, west africa, south asia, pacific, expedition, exploration, discovery, anthropology, science, history, literature, art, postcolonialism, tropics, europe, identity, samoa, photography, himalayas, india, joseph hooker, tahiti, dominica, colony, william burchell, biogeography, hydrography, sea of fire, matthew fontaine maury, nonfiction.