This volume gathers essays that focus on the worldliness of science, its
inseparable engagement in the major institutional bases of social life:
law, market, church, school, and nation. With a chronological span
reaching from the Renaissance to Big Science, its topics range from
sundials to genetic sequences, from calculating instruments to devices
that simulate human behavior, from early cartography to techniques for
tracing radioactive fallout on a global scale. The book aims to show
readers, with episodes drawn from the span of their modern history, the
sciences in action throughout human society.