Overview

This comprehensive volume explores the intricate, mutually dependent relationship between science and exploration—how each has repeatedly built on the discoveries of the other and, in the process, opened new frontiers. A simple question: Which came first, advances in navigation or successful voyages of discovery? A complicated answer: Both and neither. For more than four centuries, scientists and explorers have worked together—sometimes intentionally and sometimes not—in an ongoing, symbiotic partnership. When early explorers brought back exotic flora and fauna from newly discovered lands, scientists were able to challenge ancient authorities for the first time. As a result, scientists not only invented new navigational tools to encourage exploration, but also created a new approach to studying nature, in which observations were more important than reason and authority. The story of the relationship between science and exploration, analyzed here for the first time, is nothing less than the history of modern science and the expanding human universe.

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9781576079850

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Recommended. General readers; lower- and upper-division undergraduates. - Choice

Author Information

Michael S. Reidy, PhD, is assistant professor of history in the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, specializing in the history of geophysical sciences in the 19th century. Gary Kroll, PhD, is assistant professor of history at State University of New York–Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, where he teaches courses on environmental history and the history of science. Erik Conway, PhD, is a visiting historian at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. He received his degree from the University of Minnesota.

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