Download or read book Measuring the New World written by Neil Safier and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to 1735, South America was terra incognita to many Europeans. But that year, the Paris Academy of Sciences sent a mission to the Spanish American province of Quito (in present-day Ecuador) to study the curvature of the earth at the Equator. Equipped with quadrants and telescopes, the mission’s participants referred to the transfer of scientific knowledge from Europe to the Andes as a “sacred fire” passing mysteriously through European astronomical instruments to observers in South America.By taking an innovative interdisciplinary look at the traces of this expedition, Measuring the New World examines the transatlantic flow of knowledge from West to East. Through ephemeral monuments and geographical maps, this book explores how the social and cultural worlds of South America contributed to the production of European scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment. Neil Safier uses the notebooks of traveling philosophers, as well as specimens from the expedition, to place this particular scientific endeavor in the larger context of early modern print culture and the emerging intellectual category of scientist as author.

Download or read book Mapping Nature across the Americas written by Kathleen A. Brosnan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maps are inherently unnatural. Projecting three-dimensional realities onto two-dimensional surfaces, they are abstractions that capture someone’s idea of what matters within a particular place; they require selections and omissions. These very characteristics, however, give maps their importance for understanding how humans have interacted with the natural world, and give historical maps, especially, the power to provide rich insights into the relationship between humans and nature over time. That is just what is achieved in Mapping Nature across the Americas. Illustrated throughout, the essays in this book argue for greater analysis of historical maps in the field of environmental history, and for greater attention within the field of the history of cartography to the cultural constructions of nature contained within maps. This volume thus provides the first in-depth and interdisciplinary investigation of the relationship between maps and environmental knowledge in the Americas—including, for example, stories of indigenous cartography in Mexico, the allegorical presence of palm trees in maps of Argentina, the systemic mapping of US forests, and the scientific platting of Canada’s remote lands.

Download or read book Measure of the Earth written by Larrie D. Ferreiro and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the early 18th-century expedition of scientists sent by France and Spain to colonial Peru to measure the degree of equatorial latitude, which could resolve the debate between whether the earth was spherical or flattened at the poles.

Download or read book The Mountain written by Bernard Debarbieux and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Mountain, geographers Bernard Debarbieux and Gilles Rudaz trace the origins of the very concept of a mountain, showing how it is not a mere geographic feature but ultimately an idea, one that has evolved over time, influenced by changes in political climates and cultural attitudes. To truly understand mountains, they argue, we must view them not only as material realities but as social constructs, ones that can mean radically different things to different people in different settings. From the Enlightenment to the present day, and using a variety of case studies from all the continents, the authors show us how our ideas of and about mountains have changed with the times and how a wide range of policies, from border delineation to forestry as well as nature protection and social programs, have been shaped according to them. A rich hybrid analysis of geography, history, culture, and politics, the book promises to forever change the way we look at mountains.

Download or read book Vision Race and Modernity written by Deborah Poole and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-12 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the book specifically documents the depictions of Andean peoples, Poole's findings apply to the entire colonized world of the nineteenth century."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book A Voyage to South America written by Antonio de Ulloa and published by . This book was released on 1806 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Fever Trail written by Mark Honigsbaum and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literally Italian for "bad air," malaria once plagued Rome, tropical trade routes and colonial ventures into India and South America and the disease has no known antidote aside from the therapeutic effects of the "miraculous" quinine. This first book from journalist Honigsbaum is a rousing history of the search for febrifuge or, more specifically, the rare red cinchona tree, the bark from which quinine is derived.

Download or read book Shores of Knowledge New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination written by Joyce Appleby and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the triumphs and mishaps of Columbus and other explorers, following the naturalists--both famous and obscure--whose investigations of the world's fauna and flora fueled the rise of science and technology that propelled Western Europe towards modernity.

Download or read book Voltaire in Exile written by Ian Davidson and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Voltaire in Exile, Ian Davidson has re-created this period in the life of one of the giant figures of the Enlightenment. By painstakingly translating the rich correspondence between Voltaire and his family, members of the Court at Versailles, and the French intellectual elite, Davidson allows us to discover Voltaire the artist, the campaigner, the aesthete, the lover, the humorist. The result is a portrait of this funny, iconoclastic, complex, and ferociously intelligent individual - the man Diderot described as "the unique man of the century.""--Jacket.

Download or read book Baboon Metaphysics written by Dorothy L. Cheney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals.

Download or read book An account by C M de la Condamine of a savage girl M A Memmie le Blanc caught wild in the woods of Champagne tr from the Fr of madam H t written by Charles Marie de La Condamine and published by . This book was released on 1768 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Explorers of the Amazon written by Anthony Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riotously colorful history of adventures, chronicling more than 400 years in the exploration of the world's most formidable and enigmatic river system. Photographs and maps.

Download or read book Essay on the Geography of Plants written by Alexander von Humboldt and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legacy of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) looms large over the natural sciences. His 1799–1804 research expedition to Central and South America with botanist Aimé Bonpland set the course for the great scientific surveys of the nineteenth century, and inspired such essayists and artists as Emerson, Goethe, Thoreau, Poe, and Church. The chronicles of the expedition were published in Paris after Humboldt’s return, and first among them was the 1807 “Essay on the Geography of Plants.” Among the most cited writings in natural history, after the works of Darwin and Wallace, this work appears here for the first time in a complete English-language translation. Covering far more than its title implies, it represents the first articulation of an integrative “science of the earth, ” encompassing most of today’s environmental sciences. Ecologist Stephen T. Jackson introduces the treatise and explains its enduring significance two centuries after its publication.

Download or read book Mapping Latin America written by Jordana Dym and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many, a map is nothing more than a tool used to determine the location or distribution of something—a country, a city, or a natural resource. But maps reveal much more: to really read a map means to examine what it shows and what it doesn’t, and to ask who made it, why, and for whom. The contributors to this new volume ask these sorts of questions about maps of Latin America, and in doing so illuminate the ways cartography has helped to shape this region from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. In Mapping Latin America,Jordana Dym and Karl Offen bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine and interpret more than five centuries of Latin American maps.Individual chapters take on maps of every size and scale and from a wide variety of mapmakers—from the hand-drawn maps of Native Americans, to those by famed explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, to those produced in today’s newspapers and magazines for the general public. The maps collected here, and the interpretations that accompany them, provide an excellent source to help readers better understand how Latin American countries, regions, provinces, and municipalities came to be defined, measured, organized, occupied, settled, disputed, and understood—that is, how they came to have specific meanings to specific people at specific moments in time. The first book to deal with the broad sweep of mapping activities across Latin America, this lavishly illustrated volume will be required reading for students and scholars of geography and Latin American history, and anyone interested in understanding the significance of maps in human cultures and societies.

Download or read book Native Tongues written by Sean P. Harvey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the morally entangled territory of language and race in 18th- and 19th-century America, Sean Harvey shows that whites’ theories of an “Indian mind” inexorably shaped by Indian languages played a crucial role in the subjugation of Native peoples and informed the U.S. government’s efforts to extinguish Native languages for years to come.

Download or read book L Am rique M ridionale The Map That Shaped Brazil in the 18th Century written by Junia Ferreira Furtado and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-09-23 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the origins of Brazil’s modern borders can be traced to the cartography of the Americas produced by the eighteenth-century French cartographer J.B.B. d’Anville. It argues that this map reflects the geopolitical policies of the Portuguese diplomat D. Luis da Cunha, who was involved in Portugal’s negotiations with the Spanish to formally establish Brazil’s frontiers, and highlights how and why these policies were adopted in the Treaty of Madrid in 1750.

Download or read book Transnational Italian Studies written by Charles Burdett and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transnational Italian Studies is specifically targeted at a student audience and is designed to be used as a key text when approaching the disciplinary field of Italian studies. It allows the study of Italian culture to be construed and practised not simply as the inquiry into a national tradition but as the study of the interaction of cultural practices both within Italy itself and in those parts of the world that have witnessed the extent of Italian mobility. The text argues that Italian culture needs to be considered in a transnational/transcultural perspective and that an understanding of linguistic and cultural translation underlies all approaches to the study of Italian culture in a global context. Contributions deploy a range of methodological approaches to understand and illustrate how language operates, how culture inhabits and constitutes public and private space, how notions of time operate within people’s lives, and the multiple ways in which people experience a sense of personhood. Chapters stretch from the medieval period to the present and demonstrate how transnational Italian culture can be critically addressed through the examination of carefully chosen examples. Contributors: Alessandra Diazzi, Andrea Rizzi, Barbara Spadaro, Charles Burdett, Clorinda Donato, David Bowe, Derek Duncan, Donna Gabaccia, Eugenia Paulicelli, Fabio Camilletti, Giuliana Muscio, Jennifer Burns, Loredana Polezzi, Marco Santello, Monica Jansen, Naomi Wells, Nathalie Hester, Serena Bassi, Stefania Tufi, Teresa Fiore and Tristan Kay.