New Books in the History of Science

In the early nineteenth century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first evolutionary theory of life and, with it, a new science: biology. Yet for centuries, evolutionary theorists have endeavored to discredit Lamarck and his theory of self-transforming organisms, rejecting the idea that animals play an active role in shaping their own evolution. In his lifetime, he was mocked by his adversaries and personally insulted by Napoleon. In this virtuosic melding of biography, history, politics, and science, Jessica Riskin sets out to correct the record. Riskin tells the story of Lamarck’s life and work as an intense struggle between rival forces to answer questions that remain foundational to our modern worldview: What is a living being, and what is science?

New findings suggest Lamarck’s basic claim was, in many ways, right, and a reconsideration of his life and work is long overdue. Denying the agency of living beings has informed two centuries of eugenic policies and environmental destruction, allowing people to regard the living world as so much raw material to shape and exploit for economic, industrial, and imperial gain.

Deeply researched, strikingly original, and beautifully written, ⁠The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck⁠ (Penguin, 2026) shines a much-needed light on an underappreciated biologist whose radical ideas offered a more inclusive, collaborative, and enlightened approach to science.

⁠Jessica Riskin⁠ is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University, where she teaches modern European history and the history of science. She is the author of The Restless Clock and Science in the Age of Sensibility and is a regular contributor to a number of publications, including Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books. She lives in Berkeley, California.

⁠Anna Olteanu⁠ is a senior in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University, where she focuses on intellectual history. Her interests include
political ecology, the history of economic thought, and literary criticism.
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In the early nineteenth century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first evolutionary theory of life and, with it, a new science: biology. Yet for centuries, evolutionary theorists have endeavored to discredit Lamarck and his theory of self-transforming organisms, rejecting the idea that animals play an active role in shaping their own evolution. In his lifetime, he was mocked by his adversaries and personally insulted by Napoleon. In this virtuosic melding of biography, history, politics, and science, Jessica Riskin sets out to correct the record. Riskin tells the story of Lamarck’s life and work as an intense struggle between rival forces to answer questions that remain foundational to our modern worldview: What is a living being, and what is science?

New findings suggest Lamarck’s basic claim was, in many ways, right, and a reconsideration of his life and work is long overdue. Denying the agency of living beings has informed two centuries of eugenic policies and environmental destruction, allowing people to regard the living world as so much raw material to shape and exploit for economic, industrial, and imperial gain.Deeply researched, strikingly original, and beautifully written, The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Penguin, 2026) shines a much-needed light on an underappreciated biologist whose radical ideas offered a more inclusive, collaborative, and enlightened approach to science.
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Jonathan Fuller’s The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author’s training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine’ that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access.

This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities.
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Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of progress or an antimodernist nostalgia. A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026) centers a different kind of response to the period’s newly intensified awareness of temporality and history: an obsession with preserving perfection. Engaging a diverse set of case studies, Dr. Ellery E. Foutch explores the era’s desire to forestall the march of time and immortalize the fleeting moment through art and technology.

Beginning with an investigation of artist and naturalist Titian Peale’s butterfly illustrations and specimen boxes, Dr. Foutch assesses the implications of attempts to fix animal life in the “perfect state.” She then turns to Harvard’s Ware Collection of Glass Flowers, botanical models meticulously crafted to serve as instructional tools but most famous internationally as a spectacle for tourists. Finally, she scrutinizes the period’s preoccupation with the fragility of the human body, examining artistic representations of the legendary bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, widely known during his time as the “Perfect Man.” Highlighting the paradoxical way in which these attempts at preservation ultimately sap the vitality from the organic processes they seek to arrest, Dr. Foutch uses these curious objects to unpack a deep set of cultural anxieties around decay and death.

By analyzing objects of mass culture and natural history using methods typically reserved for works of art, A Perfectionist Impulse provides a unique window into how nineteenth-century scientists, technologists, artists, and entertainers rendered a common desire for perfection and immortality. Itself a wondrous collection of attempts to capture the idealized moment, this extensively illustrated book serves as a shining example of our enduring fascination with the ephemeral.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Long before Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, computer technology shaped how people worked, how markets operated,
and how businesses became big. After World War II, military officials
and their partners in industry looked to the newly invented electronic
computer as they sought to cut costs, speed up labor,
manage supply chains, and—they hoped—bring stability to the postwar
economy. Their efforts would shape early computer science and the first
applications of computer technology in manufacturing and business, with
profound consequences for workers and managers alike. By the 1960s,
practices originally developed to improve industrial efficiency were
being used by Wall Street, influencing how markets worked and even how
traders thought. Digital technology became central to finance, tying
together far-flung trading floors and automating decision making—with
alarming consequences, including the 1987 Black Monday crash.

In Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy
(Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Devin Kennedy offers a new
history of the digital economy, showing how the computer emerged
from—and transformed—capitalism in the United States. He traces how
computer science and technology were made by industry, which molded
computation to manage factories, financial markets, and entire firms.
Drawing on the archives of businesses, computer researchers, regulators,
and financial institutions, Coding Capitalism retells the story of the postwar economy and the computer, revealing how mid-century
business laid the foundations of the digital world. Bridging business
and economic history with the history of science and technology, this
book uncovers the prehistory of big tech and demonstrates how capitalism has shaped computing since its invention.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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