On the Frontier of Science
On the Frontier of Science

Author: Leah Ceccarelli

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 087013034X

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“The frontier of science” is a metaphor that has become ubiquitous in American rhetoric, from its first appearance in the public address of early twentieth-century American intellectuals and politicians who aligned a mythic national identity with scientific research, to its more recent use in scientists’ arguments in favor of increased research funding. Here, Leah Ceccarelli explores what is selected and what is deflected when this metaphor is deployed, its effects on those who use it, and what rhetorical moves are made by those who try to counter its appeal. In her research, Ceccarelli discovers that “the frontier of science” evokes a scientist who is typically male, a risk taker, an adventurous loner—someone separated from a public that both envies and distrusts him, with a manifest destiny to penetrate the unknown. It conjures a competitive desire to claim the riches of a new territory before others can do the same. Closely reading the public address of scientists and politicians and the reception of their audiences, this book shows how the frontier of science metaphor constrains American speakers, helping to guide the ends of scientific research in particular ways and sometimes blocking scientists from attaining the very goals they set out to achieve.

The American Frontier
The American Frontier

Author: Kenneth E. Lewis

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2014-05-19

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1483297128

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The American Frontier: An Archaeological Study of Settlement Pattern and Process focuses on general rules or laws for the evolution of all agrarian frontiers, emphasizing those that are expanding. A variety of frontiers is also discussed in addition to the agrarian type to pinpoint similarities and differences. Organized into 11 chapters, this book first elucidates the processes of frontier colonization, and then describes the frontier model employed for the interpretation of documentary and material evidence for the examination of the development of South Carolina frontier. Some chapters then focus on the examination of South Carolina's colonial past in terms of the model to determine its degree of conformity with the latter and to set the stage for the archaeological study; the development of archaeological hypotheses; and a consideration of the material record. Other types of frontiers are characterized by separate developmental processes, and several of these are discussed in Chapter 10 as avenues for further research. This book will be valuable to scholars in several fields, including history, geography, and anthropology. Historical archaeologists will find it especially useful in designing research in former colonial areas and in modeling additional kinds of frontier change.

The Changing Frontier
The Changing Frontier

Author: Adam B. Jaffe

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-08-14

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 022628672X

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In 1945, Vannevar Bush, founder of Raytheon and one-time engineering dean at MIT, delivered a report to the president of the United States that argued for the importance of public support for science, and the importance of science for the future of the nation. The report, Science: The Endless Frontier, set America on a path toward strong and well-funded institutions of science, creating an intellectual architecture that still defines scientific endeavor today. In The Changing Frontier, Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin Jones bring together a group of prominent scholars to consider the changes in science and innovation in the ensuing decades. The contributors take on such topics as changes in the organization of scientific research, the geography of innovation, modes of entrepreneurship, and the structure of research institutions and linkages between science and innovation. An important analysis of where science stands today, The Changing Frontier will be invaluable to practitioners and policy makers alike.

Science, the Endless Frontier
Science, the Endless Frontier

Author: Vannevar Bush

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 069120165X

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The classic case for why government must support science—with a new essay by physicist and former congressman Rush Holt on what democracy needs from science today Science, the Endless Frontier is recognized as the landmark argument for the essential role of science in society and government’s responsibility to support scientific endeavors. First issued when Vannevar Bush was the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War, this classic remains vital in making the case that scientific progress is necessary to a nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Bush’s vision set the course for US science policy for more than half a century, building the world’s most productive scientific enterprise. Today, amid a changing funding landscape and challenges to science’s very credibility, Science, the Endless Frontier resonates as a powerful reminder that scientific progress and public well-being alike depend on the successful symbiosis between science and government. This timely new edition presents this iconic text alongside a new companion essay from scientist and former congressman Rush Holt, who offers a brief introduction and consideration of what society needs most from science now. Reflecting on the report’s legacy and relevance along with its limitations, Holt contends that the public’s ability to cope with today’s issues—such as public health, the changing climate and environment, and challenging technologies in modern society—requires a more capacious understanding of what science can contribute. Holt considers how scientists should think of their obligation to society and what the public should demand from science, and he calls for a renewed understanding of science’s value for democracy and society at large. A touchstone for concerned citizens, scientists, and policymakers, Science, the Endless Frontier endures as a passionate articulation of the power and potential of science.

Subject Matter
Subject Matter

Author: Joyce E. Chaplin

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0674029437

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With this sweeping reinterpretation of early cultural encounters between the English and American natives, Joyce E. Chaplin thoroughly alters our historical view of the origins of English presumptions of racial superiority, and of the role science and technology played in shaping these notions. By placing the history of science and medicine at the very center of the story of early English colonization, Chaplin shows how contemporary European theories of nature and science dramatically influenced relations between the English and Indians within the formation of the British Empire. In Chaplin's account of the earliest contacts, we find the English--impressed by the Indians' way with food, tools, and iron--inclined to consider Indians as partners in the conquest and control of nature. Only when it came to the Indians' bodies, so susceptible to disease, were the English confident in their superiority. Chaplin traces the way in which this tentative notion of racial inferiority hardened and expanded to include the Indians' once admirable mental and technical capacities. Here we see how the English, beginning from a sense of bodily superiority, moved little by little toward the idea of their mastery over nature, America, and the Indians--and how this progression is inextricably linked to the impetus and rationale for empire.

The Significance of the Frontier in American History
The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Author: Frederick Jackson Turner

Publisher:

Published: 2014-02-13

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9781614275725

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2014 Reprint of 1894 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. The "Frontier Thesis" or "Turner Thesis," is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1894 that American democracy was formed by the American Frontier. He stressed the process-the moving frontier line-and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed consequences of a ostensibly limitless frontier and that American democracy and egalitarianism were the principle results. In Turner's thesis the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won very wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.

Our Scientific Frontier
Our Scientific Frontier

Author: Sir William Patrick Andrew

Publisher:

Published: 1880

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13:

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The "scientific frontier" is a term used by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) of Great Britain in 1878 to denote a border between British India (in present-day Pakistan) and Afghanistan, which could be occupied and defended according to the requirements of the science of military strategy, as opposed to the existing frontier, which had been formed by a haphazard pattern of British expansion through agreements and annexations. The term subsequently figured prominently in British discussions about the defense of British India from a possible Russian invasion through Afghanistan. Our Scientific Frontier, published toward the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80), is an analysis of this subject, written to influence the British debate on the terms of peace. The author, William Patrick Andrew, was chairman of the Scinde, Punjab, and Delhi Railway Company, and thus an expert on logistics and transport in India and along its frontiers. The book contains chapters on the Northwest Frontier, the history, geography, and economy of Afghanistan, the independent border tribes, mountain passes, probable routes of invasion from Afghanistan into India, and the "Powindahs, or Soldier-Merchants of Afghanistan." Three appendices cover the Sherpur entrenchments that were part of the defense of Kabul, the Bolan and Khyber railways (neither of which was constructed until after the period discussed), and transport by rail of troops, horses, guns, and war matériel in India.

Science on the Texas Frontier
Science on the Texas Frontier

Author: Gideon Lincecum

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780890967904

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Contains selections from the letters and scientific writings of Dr. Gideon Lincecum about the things he observed while he was studying nature in Texas.

Freethought on the American Frontier
Freethought on the American Frontier

Author: Fred Whitehead

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13:

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A stirring anthology that documents, in poetry, song, stories, memoirs, and essays, the breadth and scope of secularism from the early 19th century to the present. Included are pieces by the notables--Twain, Dreiser, Lindsay, Service, Sandburg, Hughes, Masters, et al.--as well as grassroots contributions. Also included are photographs of authors, historical sites, and The Truth seeker cartoons of Watson Hedges. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past
Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past

Author: Peter Boag

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0520949951

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Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing—for both men and women—was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased? Citing a cultural moment at the turn of the twentieth century—when the frontier ended, the United States entered the modern era, and homosexuality was created as a category—Boag shows how the American people, and thus the American nation, were bequeathed an unambiguous heterosexual identity.