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Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 Revised Edition
Contributor(s): Daston, Lorraine (Author), Park, Katharine (Author)
ISBN: 0942299914     ISBN-13: 9780942299915
Publisher: Zone Books
OUR PRICE:   $32.30  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: October 2001
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Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Annotation: "Wonders and the Order of Nature" is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions--these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and explain how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature's best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Science | History
Dewey: 306.42
Series: Zone Books
Physical Information: 1.7" H x 7.3" W x 11" (2.80 lbs) 512 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions -- these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout.

Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and explain how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature's best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds.


Contributor Bio(s): Park, Katharine: - Katharine Park's book "Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750" (Zone Books, 1998), coauthored with Lorraine Daston, won the Pfizer Prize for the best book in the history of science. She is Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.Daston, Lorraine: - Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She is the coauthor (with Katharine Park) of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and (with Peter Galison) Objectivity and the editor of Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, all three published by Zone Books.Park, Katharine: - Katharine Park's book Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books, 1998), coauthored with Lorraine Daston, won the Pfizer Prize for the best book in the history of science. She is Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.