Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays
Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0820326364

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This volume of seven essays and a late lecture by Henry David Thoreau makes available important material written both before and after Walden. First appearing in the 1840s through the 1860s, the essays were written during a time of great change in Thoreau's environs, as the Massachusetts of his childhood became increasingly urbanized and industrialized. William Rossi's introduction puts the essays in the context of Thoreau's other major works, both chronologically and intellectually. Rossi also shows how these writings relate to Thoreau's life and career as both writer and naturalist: his readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin; his failed bid for commercial acceptance of his work; and his pivotal encounter with the utter wildness of the Maine woods. In the essays themselves, readers will see how Thoreau melded conventions of natural history writing with elements of two popular literary forms--travel writing and landscape writing--to explore concerns ranging from America's westward expansion to the figural dimensions of scientific facts and phenomena. Thoreau the thinker, observer, wanderer, and inquiring naturalist--all emerge in this distinctive composite picture of the economic, natural, and spiritual communities that left their marks on one of our most important early environmentalists.

Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

Author: Stephen Jay Gould

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1992-07-17

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0393340414

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More than any other modern scientists, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science. Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights.

Essays in the History of Ideas
Essays in the History of Ideas

Author: Arthur O. Lovejoy

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2019-12-01

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1421432382

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Originally published in 1948. In the first essay of this collection, Lovejoy reflects on the nature, methods, and difficulties of the historiography of ideas. He maps out recurring phenomena in the history of ideas, which the essays illustrate. One phenomenon is the presence and influence of the same presuppositions or other operative "ideas" in very diverse provinces of thought and in different periods. Another is the role of semantic transitions and confusions, of shifts and of ambiguities in the meanings of terms, in the history of thought and taste. A third phenomenon is the internal tensions or waverings in the mind of almost every individual writer—sometimes discernible even in a single writing or on a single page—arising from conflicting ideas or incongruous propensities of feeling or taste to which the writer is susceptible. These essays do not contribute to metaphysical and epistemological questions; they are primarily historical.

Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Author: Stephen Jay Gould

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-10

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0674061632

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With his customary brilliance, Gould examines the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that build nature’s and humanity’s diversity and order.

Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

Author: Stephen Jay Gould

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2010-11-29

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 0393340821

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"Provocative and delightfully discursive essays on natural history. . . . Gould is the Stan Musial of essay writing. He can work himself into a corkscrew of ideas and improbable allusions paragraph after paragraph and then, uncoiling, hit it with such power that his fans know they are experiencing the game of essay writing at its best."--John Noble Wilford, New York Times Book Review

Cultural Visions: Essays in the History of Culture
Cultural Visions: Essays in the History of Culture

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-03-07

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9401200424

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This collection opens with an inquiry into the assumptions and methods of the historical study of culture, comparing the new cultural history with the old. Thirteen essays follow, each defining a problem within a particular culture. In the first section, Biography and Autobiography, three scholars explore historically changing types of self-conception, each reflecting larger cultural meanings; essays included examine Italian Renaissance biographers and the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Mohandas Gandhi. A second group of contributors explore problems raised by the writing of history itself, especially as it relates to a notion of culture. Here examples are drawn from the writings of Thucydides, Jacob Burckhardt, and the art historians Alois Riegl and Josef Strzygowski. In the third section, Politics, Nationalism, and Culture, the essays explore relationships between cultural creativity and national identity, with case studies focusing on the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, the place of Castile within the national history of Spain, and the impact of World War I on work of Thomas Mann. The final section, Cultural Translation, raises the complex questions of cultural influence and the transmission of traditions over time through studies of Philo of Alexandria's interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, Erasmus' use of Socrates, Jean Bodin's conception of Roman law, and adaptations of the Hebrew Bible for American children.