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Book reviews for "Gillispie,_Charles_Coulston" sorted by average review score:

Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry
Published in Hardcover by Dover Pubns (1959)
Authors: Denis Diderot and Charles Coulston Gillispie
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The High Tech Guide to 17th Century Europe and America.
This book presents in fantastic plates an insite into the technology available to 17th Century France. This is also the technology enjoyed by the early settlers of North America and Australia.

The art work in the book in gripping. I first saw this book in a library and rushed to buy it. Aside from its beauty, the book is very practical. I know that with a copy of this book, some clay, lumber and a timber saw, I will soon be casting bells and cannons, making my own blast furnace and maybe even a bronze statue.

This book helps you realise just how much effort was involved in producing many of the every day things we enjoy.

I gave a copy of this book to my dad who loves it.

A must have for when the "Big One" drops.


Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 (Harvard Historical Studies, V. 58.)
Published in Paperback by Harvard Univ Pr (1996)
Authors: Charles Coulston Gillispie and Nicholaas Rupke
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Searching for God in the details.
The subtitle on the cover of my 1959, Harper & Row paperback edition of reads, "The Impact of Scientific Discoveries Upon Religious Beliefs in the Decades Before Darwin." Since the title page bears an altogether different subtitle--the one printed above in the Amazon catalogue--it seems probable that this alternate description was the choice of the publisher, and did not reflect the intentions of the author. Bringing a work of scholarship to a mass-market audience always involves some kind of compromise, so the change no doubt is understandable. After all, the vague suggestion of scandal in "The Impact of Scientific Discoveries Upon Religious Beliefs" promises to attract more readers than Gillispie's stodgy and academic-sounding "A Study in the Relations of . . . etc." The problem, of course, is that the "sexier" (for 1959!) subtitle is wildly inaccurate. Harper & Row's editors got it precisely backwards: Gillispie's book is about the impact of religious beliefs on science, and not the other way round. Unfortunately, in reinstating the book's original subtitle, Harvard University Press promotes truth in advertising in more ways than one, for indeed is a dry, scholarly and at times tedious work. And that ultimately is the greatest misfortune of all, since the academic deadwood obscures an important and highly instructive thesis. One of the prevailing myths of modern Christian fundamentalism is that of the "atheist scientist" presumptuously attacking the revealed truths of the Biblical world view and thereby undermining the foundations of faith and morality. While this myth occasionally leads to an outright rejection of science (a la "flat-earthers"), it more frequently results in the strained distortions of Christian pseudoscience ("scientific" creationism, "mind-of-God" cosmologies, prayer-as-medicine, etc.), a more sophisticated response whereby science is coopted to the service of religion and the "glorification of God." The teleological argument leads naturally to an interest in the universe, and science provides a rich store of data to reflect upon in this connection. To appreciate the Watchmaker fully, we must first study the Watch. That this reconciliation of scientific discovery with religious "revelation" frequently requires the distortion and suppression of the empirical evidence at hand ultimately is a small point, easily finessed away in the footnotes. Science, we are told, has proven the existence of God. The great value of Gillispie's study lies in the historical light it throws on this age-old yet perennially "new" problem. What Gillispie shows in page after carefully documented page of excerpts from contemporary scientific journals is that, far from a presumption of atheism, the geologists and paleontologists of the early nineteenth century predicated their studies on a very traditional religious faith and a keen desire to use science to verify and justify the Mosaic account of creation. The irony, of course, is that the more these scientists discovered, the harder it became for them to reconcile their newfound knowledge with the revealed traditions of Scripture. At no point, however, was this recognition a welcome or foreseen conclusion. The geologists took to their work with gusto, confident that exploring the history of the physical world around them could only tend to the greater glory of God by revealing the workings of His particular Providence. As it gradually dawned on them that their studies pointed to quite contrary conclusions, they reacted not with atheistic glee but with dismay and sometimes denial. Such observations are not original to Gillispie, nor is the pattern of pious scientists finding their faith shaken by the very facts they had worked to reveal unique to nineteenth-century geologists. In its detailed focus on the development of one branch of science in the period of its first flowering, however, nonetheless makes for a convincing, thought-provoking study of the uneasy relationship between science and religion. Although Gillispie avoids drawing any theological conclusions, it is not difficult to see the significance of the nineteenth-century experience in geology for the future of the teleological argument and "providential empiricism." As long as religion continues to turn to science for support, it will go on receiving problematic answers. Fundamentalist Christians would do well to consider that the science they so deplore was developed, to a great extent, by researchers whose motivation involved a very pious and orthodox desire to glorify the works of God. Atheists and other skeptics, on the other hand, no doubt can benefit from considering the reverse of the coin--the way in which the religious hypothesis, however limiting at times, has served as a genuine source of inspiration to seekers of the truth. The teleological argument, through science, proves to be self-refuting; but we need not let that blind us to the very human struggle which that process historically has involved. Gillispie offers valuable insights for each perspective. As noted at the beginning of this review, is a slow-going read. In his natural, historian's desire to be thorough, Gillispie often seems to lose the forest for the trees, tiring the reader with seemingly interminable details about publication dates, scientific allegiances and academic eccentricities. As the popular saying has it, however, God is in the details. The reader willing to slog through the great mass of quotation and documentation in will be rewarded with a broad yet vivid picture of the science-religion debate of an earlier era, and with much to ponder regarding the ongoing debate in our own.


Dictionary of Scientific Biography : Volume 15 & Volume 16
Published in Hardcover by Charles Scribners Sons/Reference (1981)
Authors: Charles Coulston Gillispie, Acls, and Charles C. Gillispie
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Edge of Objectivity
Published in Paperback by Princeton Univ Pr (01 November, 1966)
Author: Charles Coulston Gillispie
Amazon base price: $40.00
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Genesis and Geology a Study in the Relations of Science
Published in Hardcover by Harvard Univ Pr (1951)
Authors: Gillispie Cc and Charles Coulston Gillispie
Amazon base price: $25.00
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Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist
Published in Paperback by University of Pennsylvania Press (1998)
Authors: Jean-Pierre Poirier, Rebecca Balinski, and Charles Coulston Gillispie
Amazon base price: $19.95
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Lazare Carnot, Savant
Published in Hardcover by Princeton Univ Pr (1999)
Author: Charles Coulston Gillispie
Amazon base price: $65.00
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The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783-1784: With a Word on the Importance of Ballooning for the Science of Heat and the Art of
Published in Hardcover by Princeton Univ Pr (1983)
Author: Charles Coulston Gillispie
Amazon base price: $45.00
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Monuments de l'Egypte, l'édition impériale de 1809 (2 volumes)
Published in Hardcover by Hazan (31 July, 1988)
Authors: Charles Coulston Gillispie and Michel Dewachter
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Monuments of Egypt
Published in Paperback by Princeton Architectural Press (1996)
Authors: Charles Coulston Gillispie and Michel Dewachter
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