This volume, honoring the renowned historian of science, Allen G Debus, explores ideas of science - `experiences of nature' - from within a historiographical tradition that Debus has done much to define. As his work shows, the sciences do not develop exclusively as a result of a progressive and inexorable logic of discovery. A wide variety of extra-scientific factors, deriving from changing intellectual contexts and differing social millieus, play crucial roles in the overall development of scientific thought. These essays represent case studies in a broad range of scientific settings - from sixteenth-century astronomy and medicine, through nineteenth-century biology and mathematics, to the social sciences in the twentieth-century - that show the impact of both social settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas on the formation of science. Aimed at a general audience interested in the history of science, this book closes with Debus's personal perspective on the development of the field. Audience: This book will appeal especially to historians of science, of chemistry, and of medicine.

As Spain colonized the Americas during the sixteenth century, Spanish soldiers, bureaucrats, merchants, adventurers, physicians, ship pilots, and friars explored the natural world, gathered data, drew maps, and sent home specimens of America's vast resources of animals, plants, and minerals. This amassing of empirical knowledge about Spain's American possessions had two far-reaching effects. It overturned the medieval understanding of nature derived from Classical texts and helped initiate the modern scientific revolution. And it allowed Spain to commodify and control the natural resources upon which it built its American empire. In this book, Antonio Barrera-Osorio investigates how Spain's need for accurate information about its American colonies gave rise to empirical scientific practices and their institutionalization, which, he asserts, was Spain's chief contribution to the early scientific revolution. He also conclusively links empiricism to empire-building as he focuses on five areas of Spanish activity in America: the search for commodities in, and the ecological transformation of, the New World; the institutionalization of navigational and information-gathering practices at the Spanish Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade); the development of instruments and technologies for exploiting the natural resources of the Americas; the use of reports and questionnaires for gathering information; and the writing of natural histories about the Americas.

This book focuses on the experiences of tourists visiting nature-based destinations, exploring current knowledge and providing insights into conceptual issues through the use of empirical evidence from five continents. Presented as three topics, the contents discuss tourism and naturebased experiences by looking at the role and relevance of nature and the uniqueness of such experiences. The book identifies visitor management challenges and provides explanations for the solutions reached. The final section takes a more overarching destination management perspective that transcends the tourism product or business level and focuses on destination and generic issues like indicators or marketing implications. The book also includes research-based case studies which contribute to an overall understanding of the core issues involved in managing visitor experiences in nature-based tourism.

While the historical development of symbolic power has benefitted humanity enormously, there is an insidious and seldom recognised price that goes beyond environmental degradation and cultural disintegration. With insights from both social and natural sciences, this book explores the changing character of subjectivity in contemporary life.

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that everything you eatwhether it comes from a grocery store, a local fast-food outlet, your back yard, a snack machine, or your friends kitchen tableultimately comes from some element of nature? This book is designed to help you make the connection between nature and your food. Along the way, you may learn something new about yourself, your relationship to food, and how you connect with nature.

The reception of Michel Foucault's work in the social sciences and humanities has been phenomenal. Foucault's concepts and methodology have encouraged new approaches to old problems and opened up new lines of enquiry. This book assesses the contribution of Foucault's work to research and thinking in the area of health and medicine, and shows how key researchers in the sociology of health and illness are currently engaging with his ideas. Foucault, Health and Medicine explores such important issues as: Foucault's concept of 'discourse', the critique of the 'medicalization' thesis, the analysis of the body and the self, Foucault's concept of 'bio-power' in the analysis of health education, the implications of Foucault's ideas for feminist research on embodiment and gendered subjectivities, the application of Foucault's notion of governmentality to the analysis of health policy, health promotion, and the consumption of health. Foucault, Health and Medicine offers a `state of the art' overview of Foucaldian scholarship in the area of health and medicine. It will provide a key reference for both students and researchers working in the areas of medical sociology, health policy, health promotion and feminist studies.

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