The Fontana History of Chemistry. William Brock J.

       PREFACE TO THE FONTANA HISTORY OF SCIENCE

      Academic study of the history of science has advanced dramatically, in depth and sophistication, during the last generation. More people than ever are taking courses in the history of science at all levels, from the specialized degree to the introductory survey; and, with science playing an ever more crucial part in our lives, its history commands an influential place in the media and in the public eye.

      Over the past two decades particularly, scholars have developed major new interpretations of science’s history. The great bulk of such work, however, has been published in detailed research monographs and learned periodicals, and has remained hard of access, hard to interpret. Pressures of specialization have meant that few survey works have been written that have synthesized detailed research and brought out wider significance.

      It is to rectify this situation that the Fontana History of Science has been set up. Each of these wide-ranging volumes examines the history, from its roots to the present, of a particular field of science. Targeted at students and the general educated reader, their aim is to communicate, in simple and direct language intelligible to non-specialists, well-digested and vivid accounts of scientific theory and practice as viewed by the best modern scholarship. The most eminent scholars in the discipline, academics well-known for their skills as communicators, have been commissioned.

      The volumes in this series survey the field and offer powerful overviews. They are intended to be interpretative, though not primarily polemical. They do not pretend to a timeless, definitive quality or suppress differences of viewpoint, but are meant to be books of and for their time; their authors offer their own interpretations of contested issues as part of a wider, unified story and a coherent outlook.

      Carefully avoiding a dreary recitation of facts, each volume develops a sufficient framework of basic information to ensure that the beginner finds his or her feet and to enable student readers to use such books as their prime course-book. They rely upon chronology as an organizing framework, while stressing the importance of themes, and avoiding the narrowness of anachronistic ‘tunnel history’. They incorporate the best up-to-the-minute research, but within a larger framework of analysis and without the need for a clutter of footnotes – though an attractive feature of the volumes is their substantial bibliographical essays. Authors have been given space to amplify their arguments and to make the personalities and problems come alive. Each volume is self-contained, though authors have collaborated with each other and a certain degree of cross-referencing is indicated. Each volume covers the whole chronological span of the science in question. The prime focus is upon Western science, but other scientific traditions are discussed where relevant.

      This series, it is hoped, will become the key synthesis of the history of science for the next generation, interpreting the history of science for scientists, historians and the general public living in a uniquely science-oriented epoch.

      ROY PORTER

      Series Editor