This book is a study of the scientific revolution as a movement of amateur science. It describes the ideology of the amateur scientific societies as the philosophy of the Enlightenment Movement and their social structure and the way they made modern science such a magnificent institution. It also shows what was missing in the scientific organization of science and why it gave way to professional science in stages. In particular the book studies the contributions of Sir Francis Bacon and of the Hon. Robert Boyle to the rise of modern science. The philosophy of induction is notoriously problematic, yet its great asset is that it expressed the view of the Enlightenment Movement about science. This explains the ambivalence that we still exhibit towards Sir Francis Bacon whose radicalism and vision of pure and applied science still a major aspect of the fabric of society. Finally, the book discusses Boyle’s philosophy, his agreement with and dissent from Bacon and the way he single-handedly trained a crowd of poorly educated English aristocrats and rendered them into an army of able amateur researchers.

List of members in v. 1.

The Flowering of a Tradition, which describes the development of technical, or practical, writing in England during the seventeenth century, from 1641 to 1700, follows Emergence of a Tradition, which tracks the emergence of English technical writing from 1475 to 1640, during the English Renaissance. Together, the books present the emergence and development of technical writing in England from 1475 to 1700 by describing and exemplifying the main characteristics and genres of technical writing as they appeared and flowered. Topics include format and page design; recognition of readers' needs in content and presentation; plain style; technical description; technical writing's contribution to the development of the paragraph; text and the use of technology in technical writing; the history of instructions; and the emergence and development of proposals and reports. The two books cover the major topics that continue to form the foundation of the teaching and practice of technical writing and help define the history of practical discourse during approximately 300 years of English history. The history of technical, or practical, writing has not yet been written, and these two books fill a major deficiency in the history of English technical writing. Chapters on the history of the proposal and the history of reports deal with topics never before researched. The chapter on the history of the paragraph shows that paragraphs existed 300 years before composition historians have stated, because technical writing has not been included in studies of the history of English discourse. Even though the majority of English writing is practical writing in any era, it continues to be ignored by social and literary historians. Only book-length studies of the type published here will fill this void. Technical writing will not become a discipline unless we have a series of books providing a clear foundation that unearths its existence and shows its contribution to all of our writing today, in the workplace and other nonacademic settings.

This volume explores the intersection between Translation Studies and History and Philosophy of Science to shed light on the workings of scientific communities, the dissemination of knowledge across languages and cultures, and the transformation in the process of that knowledge and of the scientific communities involved, among other issues. Through a diachronic approach, from some chapters focussing on early modernity to others that explore the final decades of the twentieth century, and by considering myriad languages, from Latin to Hindi, the twelve chapters of this volume reflect specifically on: (A) processes of the construction and dissemination of knowledge through the work of specific agents (whether individuals or collectives); (B) the implementation of particular linguistic strategies and visual tools in the translation of knowledge and in the diffusion of translated knowledge; and (C) the role of institutions and governments in the devising and implementation of translation policies, as well as the impact of these.

The book contains perceptions of nature and ecology in writings by English women authors from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Includes discussion of works by the writers: Mary Wroth (ca. 1586-ca. 1640), Margaret Cavendish (1624?-1674), Mary Rich Warwick (1625-1678), Catherine Talbot (1721-1770), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797).