UNH Speakers Bureau

British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Book Title)

 

Program Description:

Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the eighteenth century from the systematic recording of the weather, and how it was deployed in discussions of the health and welfare of the population. Enlightened intellectuals hailed climate's role in the development of civilization but acknowledged that human existence depended on natural forces that would never submit to rational control. Reading the Enlightenment through the ideas, beliefs, and practices concerning the weather, Jan Golinski aims to reshape our understanding of the movement and its legacy for modern environmental thinking. (University of Chicago Press, 2007)


Speaker:

Jan Golinski

Jan Golinski has a B.A. and M.A. in natural sciences from Christ's College, Cambridge University. His Ph.D. is in history and philosophy of science, from the University of Leeds, U.K. He is a professor in both history and humanities and is chair of the history department at the University of New Hampshire. His research interests include the history of science, intellectual history, and historiography.

Other topics offered by Jan Golinski