Thomas Harriot: Science and Discovery in the English Renaissance
About this ebook
Harriot’s sixteenth-century world was one of unprecedented expansion in both scientific understanding and the discovery of new lands and peoples. The essays gathered here bring out forcefully the effect of this expanding vision, encapsulated in Harriot’s Briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588), the first detailed description of America to be published in the English language. In addition to an essay by a recent biographer of Harriot, the volume contains reworked versions of seven Thomas Harriot Lectures, an annual lecture series inaugurated in 1990 in Oriel College, Oxford. It follows two earlier volumes of Harriot Lectures, also edited by Robert Fox, that appeared in 2000 and 2012.
About the author
Robert Fox is Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford and an honorary fellow of Oriel College. His main research interests are in European science, technology, and medicine since the eighteenth century. His recent books include The Savant and the State. Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (2012) and Science without Frontiers. Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870-1940 (2016).
