Studies in Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

This work is a powerful demonstration of how historical analysis can be brought to bear on the study of strategic issues, and, conversely, how strategic thinking can help drive historical research. Based largely on newly released American archives, History and Strategy focuses on the twenty years following World War II. By bridging the sizable gap between the intellectual world of historians and that of strategists and political scientists, the essays here present a fresh and unified view of how to explore international politics in the nuclear era. The book begins with an overview of strategic thought in America from 1952 through 1966 and ends with a discussion of "making sense" of the nuclear age. Trachtenberg reevaluates the immediate causes of World War I, studies the impact of the shifting nuclear balance on American strategy in the early 1950s, examines the relationship between the nuclearization of NATO and U.S.-West European relations, and looks at the Berlin and the Cuban crises. He shows throughout that there are startling discoveries to be made about events that seem to have been thoroughly investigated.

"Winner of the 1996 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Biological Science, Association of American Publishers" Catherine Wilson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta, and the author of Leibniz's Metaphysics (Princeton). In the seventeenth century the microscope opened up a new world of observation, and, according to Catherine Wilson, profoundly revised the thinking of scientists and philosophers alike. The interior of nature, once closed off to both sympathetic intuition and direct perception, was now accessible with the help of optical instruments. The microscope led to a conception of science as an objective, procedure-driven mode of inquiry and renewed interest in atomism and mechanism. Focusing on the earliest forays into microscopical research, from 1620 to 1720, this book provides us with both a compelling technological history and a lively assessment of the new knowledge that helped launch philosophy into the modern era. Wilson argues that the discovery of the microworld--and the apparent role of living animalcula in generation, contagion, and disease--presented metaphysicians with the task of reconciling the ubiquity of life with human-centered theological systems. It was also a source of problems for philosophers concerned with essences, qualities, and the limits of human knowledge, whose positions are echoed in current debates about realism and instrument-mediated knowledge. Covering the contributions of pioneering microscopists (Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Malpighi, Grew, and Hooke) and the work of philosophers interested in the microworld (Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley), she challenges historians who view the abstract sciences as the sole catalyst of the Scientific Revolution as she stresses the importance of observational and experimental science to the modern intellect. "A very stimulating discussion of the interplay between scientific theory and scientific instrumentation, in the context of an instrument with which most feel familiar. . . . Fully documented and intensively argued."---Brian Bracegirdle, New Scientist "Wilson shows that microscopic observations reinforced the contemporary idea of the `living machine'--that is, a reductionist view of nature. And therein lies the ultimate paradox of our machine-driven science: the essence of our natural world remains hidden despite our increasingly sophisticated scientific technology."---Willem Hackmann, Nature "The Invisible World is a welcome step toward a renewed appreciation of classical light microscopy."---Nicolas Rasmussen, Contemporary Sociology "This is an important work. It breaks new ground, and it forces us to reassess some of our most cherished assumptions about the scientific revolution."---Joseph C. Pitt, Journal of the History of Biology "Wilson's book is a delightful work of immense scholarship."---Steven Shapin, American Historical Review