Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities

By Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson

A work that explores the interaction between the practice of science and public life.

In this penetrating work, Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson identify that major advances in science stem from changes in three distinct areas of society: the social institutions that promote science, the sensibilities of scientists themselves and the goal of the scientific enterprise.

Servants and Interpreters of Nature begins by examining the institutions that have shaped science: the academies of Ancient Greece, universities, the growth of museums of science, technology and natural history, botanical and zoological gardens, and the advent of modern specialized research laboratories.

It is equally comprehensive when it analyses changing scientific sensibilities – for example, the relationship between religion and science, or the interplay between the growth of democracy and the growth of scientific knowledge.

The final section of this book is on the changing nature of the scientific enterprise and considers how the goals of science have evolved.

It is an indispensable account of how science, perhaps above all other human endeavours, has shaped, and been shaped by, the world we inhabit today.

Format: Hardback
Release Date: 04 May 1999
Pages: 700
ISBN: 978-0-00-223842-7
A husband-and-wife team from Louisiana.Susan Sheets-Pyenson was, until her death in 1998, Associate Professor of History at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal.Lewis Pyenson is Professor of History and Mathematics, and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.