THE RISE AND FALL OF WITCHCRAFT SCIENCE

Tony McAleavey, The Last Witch Craze: John Aubrey, the Royal Society and the Witches, Amberley Publishing, 2022.

Navigating the foreign country that is the past can be tricky. The way our forebears thought is part-familiar, part-strange, and so often appears contradictory. In The Last Witch Craze, Tony McAleavey explores one such apparent anomaly: some of Britain’s most respected pioneering scientists, who were involved in the founding years of the Royal Society, were also ardent believers in the reality of witchcraft. 

🔽

THEM DRY BONES

Adrienne Mayor. The First Fossil Hunters; Dinosaurs Mammoths and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press. 2022. 

You can see the Monster of Troy in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is on a vase made in Corinth in the sixth century BC. It shows Heracles killing a monster to which the King of Troy's daughter Hesione had been offered as a sacrifice. The vase painting shows Heracles firing arrows at the beast, and Hesione hurling stones at it. 

🔽

A BOOK OF TWO HALVES

Amanda J. Thomas. The Nonconformist Revolution: Religious Dissent, Innovation and Rebellion. Pen and Sword, 2020.

The intentions of the author of this book are, I presume, to set out the linkages between religious dissent in England and the progress of trade through innovation and progressive political ideas. This thematic is however not at all clearly set out in her Introduction that runs to a mere two pages. Similarly her conclusion fails to comprehensively round up her work with any real thematic summation. 

🔻

DEBATABLE DEATH

Sharon Rushton. The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein. Bodleian Library Publishing, 2021.

There have been any number of books, some reviewed in Magonia, which have examined the story of Frankenstein’s ‘creature’ from various perspectives: as an aspect of folklore and popular belief, as a literary theme, as a popular cultural icon. This book looks at Mary Shelley’s masterpiece as a presentation of the medical and scientific controversies of the era in which it was written.

🔻

WRAPPING IT ALL UP

Nasser Zakariya, A Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings, The University of Chicago Press, 2017

A Final Story is a study of those sweeping scientific epics, presented in books such as Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes or television extravaganzas like Carl Sagan’s classic Cosmos, which confidently set out the entire story of the universe from Big-Bang beginning to middle (our time) and on to its possible ends, pulling all the great discoveries of science into a single narrative to give the big – the biggest – picture, and putting humanity in its place (in all senses). 

🔽

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF LIFE

Richard Panek. The Trouble With Gravity. Mariner Books 2020.

The book begins by exploring ancient history regarding gravity, and the author discusses how religious views and belief in gods were shaped by the existence of gravity and its prevalence on all living beings and all matter, and old beliefs and to what lies 'above'.

🔽

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Peter Wothers. Antimony, Gold and Jupiter's Wolf. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Peter Wothers investigates the spellbinding and extraordinary tales behind how the elements acquired their names, and delves into the often controversial circumstances surrounding the naming and origins of what could be called the fabric of our world. The naming process of new elements is no trivial matter as it can take many years to complete; he tells us of the history of this process.
🔽

A BUMP ON THE HEAD

James Poskett, Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920, The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

In Materials of the Mind James Poskett, assistant professor of the history of science and technology at Warwick University, uses phrenology as a case study in the writing of ‘global history’ in order to make a wider point that’s aimed squarely at his profession.

🔻

FULL STEAM SIDEWAYS!

Simon Webb. The Real World of Victorian Steampunk. Pen and Sword Books, 2019.

When I first opened this book and read the list of illustrations I was fascinated by the titles, including an 1829 drawing of a proposed Vacuum Powered transport system between Britain and India! I was hooked. Steampunk is a genre of science fiction that has a historical setting and typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.

🔻

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGED

Susannah Gibson, The Spirit of Inquiry: How One Extraordinary Society Shaped Modern Science. Oxford University Press, 2019.

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and to mark it Susannah Gibson, of Cambridge University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science, has produced this lively account (oddly, published by Oxford) of its place in the story of British science.

🔻

WALLACE COLLECTING

Patrick Armstrong. Critical Lives: Alfred Russel Wallace. Reaktion Books, 2019.

Although Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin discovered the principle of evolution through natural selection, the life of Alfred Russel Wallace can be seen “as a story of an individuals triumph over tragedy and hardship”.

🔻

RAPT IN PAPER

John Gaudet, The Pharaoh’s Treasure: The Origin of Paper and the Rise of Western Civilization. Amberley, 2019.

John Gaudet loves paper. I mean really loves paper. Especially papyrus. And rid yourself of the idea that papyrus isn’t proper paper: he seems to take it as a personal affront when it’s treated as something different to the wood- and rag-pulp stuff we use today.

🔽

THE WORM IN THE APPLE

Nick Kollerstrom. The Dark Side of Isaac Newton - Science's Greatest Fraud? Pen and Sword Books, 2018.

The question mark added to this book's subtitle gives an indication of the approach taken by its author, Nick Kollerstrom, in what amounts to a thorough deconstruction of the reputation of one of Britain's greatest icons. In any public poll of the 'greatest Britons who have ever lived' you will invariably find Sir Isaac Newton in the top ten, along with the other usual candidates, such as Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare and Charles Darwin. 

🔻

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE SCIENCE

Florian Freistetter.  Isaac Newton: The Asshole Who Reinvented the Universe, Prometheus Books, 2018.

Well, the title certainly grabs the attention, which is half the battle in getting the prospective reader to pick the book up (or, these days, click on the link). It also signals that we’re in for a quirkier take on the life of the genius who almost single-handedly started science as we know it. A dry, academic tome on the history of science this isn’t.

🔽

MAD ABOUT MONSTERS

Boria Sax. Dinomania: Why We Love Fear and Are Utterly Enchanted by Dinosaurs. Reaktion Books, 2018.

Anyone buying this lavishly and beautifully illustrated book will know from its title not to expect a history of dinosaurs. This book instead, which appears to be born of the author's own genuine fascination with the creatures, traces how society has treated the discovery of the dinosaur from the earliest of times.

🔽

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE

Peter Shaver. The Rise of Science: From Prehistory to the Far Future. Springer International. 2018.

This book delivers a magnificent, outstanding and informative understanding of the evolution of science. The author shares his lifetime in science explaining the history of scientific discoveries from the earliest civilisations to the prospects for the far future, in a concise and comprehensible manner.

🔻

WACKY AND WONDERFUL

Geoffrey Kirby. Wacky And Wonderful Misconceptions About Our Universe. Springer, 2018

“Wacky: Funny or amusing in a slightly odd or peculiar way” yes, this is a light-hearted book, full of outlandish statements made by eccentric people, some of whom might surprise you. It must be said these mathematicians and explorers of the universe had little or no data to establish their findings/theories; also, religious evaluation of these theories could be perilous to the architect of these ideologies. 

🔽

THE MAN WHO INVENTED SCIENCE

John Henry. Knowledge is Power: How Magic, the Government and an Apocalyptic Vision Helped Francis Bacon to Create Modern Science, Icon Books, 2017.

Knowledge is Power – reissued from 2002 as part of Icon Science’s 25th anniversary series on ‘groundbreaking moments in science history’ – is the perfect introduction to the life, work and legacy of Sir Francis Bacon, written by the ideal person for the job, John Henry being Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Edinburgh University. 

🔽

ENCHANTING MYTHS

Jason A. Josephson-Storm. The Myth of Disenchantment - Magic, Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences. The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

The key thought behind this scholarly work is the meaning and significance of 'disenchantment' (German: Entzauberung) in social science and Western intellectual culture. Max Weber (1864 - 1920), an influential German philosopher and one of the founders of 'sociology' as a new academic discipline

🔽

ROLL UP FOR THE MAGICAL MEDICAL SHOW

Wendy Moore. The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017.

Today I think that most of us would think that science and surgery, spirituality and showbiz are clearly separate things but less than 200 years ago, in the late Georgian and early Victorian England things were much more mixed, up as these books show. We should be reminded of this by the use of the word 'theatre' to describe an operating room.
🔽