This book hopes to spark a discussion of ontology among historians of science. Daston wants to change the unquestioned neo-Kantian conviction that 'scientific objects' have a timeless 'reality.'

Daston has collected 11 essays on temporary 'scientific' objects. Daston contributes an introduction and shortened version of her earlier paper on 'preternatural' science. The rest are new.

Daston is convinced that scientific objects are created by inquiring minds rather than 'discovered' in the environment. Many would disagree, but I think the arguments are of great interest. For example, 'ether' was an object of 'scientific research' for much of the 18th and early 19th century. 'Ether' was as real as water molecules are today. 'Ether' has now slipped out of the scientific conversation.

Was 'ether' ever a 'scientific object'? Was it ever real? If it was never 'real', could the 'object' contribute to something we now think is 'real,' something like the 'quantum' particle. One of the essays goes into great detail on this and the simple neo-Kantian answer suffers from the examination.

The following is a list of the essay titles:
'Preternatural Philosophy': The scientific study of singularly rare objects such as comets, two-headed babies, and sea-monstersl
'Mathematical Entities in Scientific Discourse': the birth and development of 'symbolic objects' such as the earth's center of gravity.
'Dreams and Self-consciousness': scientific study of 'dreams.' Something that was an object of science in the 18th century and 20th centuries, but ignored in the 19th.
'Mutations of the Self in Old Regime and Postrevolutionary France': How the term 'ame' became the scientific object 'le moi.'
'The coming into Being and Passing Away of Value Theories in Economics (1776-1976): 'Value' as scientific object.
'...Society as a Scientific Object.'
'..Why Culture is not a Disappearing 'Object.' '
'How the Ether Spawned the Microworld': A failed scientific object, ether, provides the theoretical foundations for contemporary quantum 'objects.'
'Life Insurance, Medical Testing and the Management of Mortality': Non-scientists of the insurance business create the object 'high blood pressure' and medical science catches on later.
'On the Partial Existence of Existing and Nonexisting Objects': Are diseases 'scientific objects' or only a collections of symptoms?
'Cytoplasmic Particles': The mutation of 'mitocondria' objects into DNA objects.

As Daston points out, the essays hold no single philosophical perspective. As such, the book does a good job of covering a variety of views and hopefully contributing to discussion.

For me, it is a real treasure.

An Excellent resource for getting around San Francisco, CA, USA ... it's a tough city to drive in, and you always need a good map or reference around to get where you are going. Tells you where all the hot spots are - a must by for those that live in San Fran as well as tourists!

I have been reading this book for school. This book might be for you if: you are very interested in Latin philosophers. you have background in Medieval and Rennisance history. You are well read and have a large vocabulary. you are interested in "wonder".
I've found that this a very boring and difficult book to read because I don't have enough background and I know next to nothing about ancient philosophers. This book is post-college or college level for someone specialyzing in Medieval and Renn history.

The authors of this study do a magnificent job of looking at a cross-section of the history of Wonder itself, sort of "in the large," as well as the history of wondrous objects, from the slice of time upon which they focus. This book was twenty years in the making, off and on, and it really shows. Every point they make clearly has been carefully weighed, backed up, and illustrated, as often as not, with beautiful selections from poetry, etc. The authors state in the preface that they began with the study of monsters, which in the final, published version of their book is relegated to chapter five. Know, O Reader, that the material in that chapter constituted the starting impetus for this whole study, and you will have a better understanding of various structural oddities in the book.

One of the main themes the authors deal with is not exactly an historical overview of science, but more along the lines of social and cultural history. They write about the relationship of elites, be they religious, social, or academic, to various kinds of wonder. Do the elites embrace wonder? Do they despise it? And what about lone philosophers? Where do they fit in? The answers vary greatly, according to multitudinous factors. For me, one theme to bear in mind while reading this book was my own experience of wonder, or curiosity, and the clashing of that feeling with "The Game" in school... Anyone reading this book will, obviously, have an extremely active, inquisitive mind, to say the least. Think back (or think forward, as the case may be,) to your time in school. Did you tend to keep the topics that provoked genuine wonder in you private? Did you generally avoid mentioning them, lest they should happen to become candidates for impacting "The Game," over which the more sociable people in any classroom preside? These are two very different states of mind, and their interplay can be quite fearfully tumultuous. If you know what I'm talking about, then you already have a feel for the kind of issues that the authors of this book delve into, and deal with on an incredibly grand scale.

By the way, I'd like to recommend a couple of other titles for people looking at this book. For some reason, neither of these are in this book's bibliography. I'm not sure why not -- probably because they are so basic that the authors may have felt that anyone reading their book would already know about them. For people who might NOT know about them, I'd like to recommend "The Great Chain of Being," by Arthur O. Lovejoy, and Rudolph Pfeiffer's two volume study of "The History of Classical Scholarship." These volumes will add whole dimensions to your understanding of the matters that Daston and Park discuss, if anybody out there is interested.

This book is a prodigious feat. Worth scoping out.