Even in the first half of the 20th century, astronomers had to be content with the uniformity of nature argument confirmed by spectroscopy. In an article in Science in 1920, the American astronomer W. W. Campbell (a great opponent of Lowell…7. On Lowell as Spencerian, and as influenced by Spencer’s American disciple John Fiske, see David Strauss, Percival Lowell: The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 97–165.
8. W. W. …11. L. J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment (New York: MacMillan Company, 1913), reprinted with an Introduction by Harvard biologist George Wald (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1970), p. 312. The complexity of Henderson’s ideas on the…
Helge Kragh
historian · 3 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Helge Kragh is a historian of science whose work on cosmology and astronomy provides historical context for debates about the uniformity of nature and the epistemological foundations of planetary observation. In these readings, Kragh appears primarily through citation apparatus and scholarly apparatus examining early 20th-century astronomy, particularly the contested interpretations of planetary observation and the Spencerian influences shaping astronomical thought. His contributions enable scholars to ground their arguments about science, culture, and institutional authority in rigorous historical analysis rather than presentist assumptions about scientific knowledge.
Mentioned in 1 reading
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.
Percival Lowell 2Steven J. Dick 2William Wallace Campbell 2Alfred Russel Wallace 1Charles Darwin 1Charles H. Smith 1David DeVorkin 1David Strauss 1George Beccaloni 1George Ellery Hale 1Herbert Spencer 1John Fiske 1June Goodfield 1Michael Shermer 1Stephen Toulmin 1Isaac Newton 1Alexander Ivanovich Oparin 1Carl Sagan 1G. M. Tovmasyan 1George Wald 1Harold Spencer Jones 1Iris Fry 1Joseph Shklovsky 1Lawrence Joseph Henderson 1Vasily Grigorievich Fesenkov 1Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis 1