Lorraine Daston

The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences is revealed through images in scientific atlases—a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices. Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences and show how the concept differs from its alternatives:...

A panoramic history of rules in the Western world. Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organise the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have,...

A panoramic history of rules in the Western world. Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organise the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have,...

Why is the scientific community so unified? In the last 350-odd years, the international 'scientific community' has come to be the bastion of consensus and concerted action, especially in the face of two global crises: disastrous climate change, and a deadly pandemic. How did 'the scientific community' come into existence, and why does it work? Rivals is an attempt to...

This text explores ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through to 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, and celestial apparitions adorned romances and puzzled philosophers. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, this book...