In the Anthropocene our actions are coming home to roost. Global warming, species extinctions, and environmental disasters are the dark side of our mastery of nature. In Acting with the World, Andrew Pickering identifies a different pattern of being and doing that can evade this dark side, a pattern that he calls acting-with the world. In contrast to our usual practice of acting on the world, acting-with foregrounds nonhuman or more-than-human agency and aims to attune our practic...

In The Mangle of Practice (1995), the renowned sociologist of science Andrew Pickering argued for a reconceptualization of research practice as a “mangle,” an open-ended, evolutionary, and performative interplay of human and non-human agency. While Pickering’s ideas originated in science and technology studies, this collection aims to extend the mangle’s reach by exploring its application across a wide range of fields including history, philosophy, sociology, geography, environmen...

Andy Pickering was a middle-aged accountant who had loathed his dull job for thirty years. He was on his third mid-life crisis and desperately needed an interesting project before he started self-harming. Although English, Andy had a lifelong fascination with Scotland and was an expert on the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, his specialist subject when he won a place on the BBC's Mastermind. When it was announced that there would be a Scottish independence referendum held in the autumn of 2014 and...

The town of Frome, in the ancient royal forest of Selwood that straddles the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset, was once renowned for its prosperous woollen cloth industry and is now noted as an emerging provincial centre for the arts and crafts. The town and its environs has a fascinating and little-known history. Here we will discover stories of medieval kings and bishops, political intrigue and judicial murder, religious dissent and rebellion, battles and sieges, criminals and crime-fig...

Now that the railway has gone and most visitors disembark from the car and coach bays above the world-famous caves, this book explores Cheddar past and present from the top of its dramatic gorge to the substantial reservoir beyond the bustling village below. While its caves have long served as the village's main attraction, there is a great deal more to discover here regarding a singular tale of mills and trains, churches and schools, strawberries and cheese.Packed with archive and contemp...

Warminster's industrial and agricultural heyday was already past by the dawn of the age of the picture postcard. Its once important role in the Wiltshire woollen cloth industry was a distant memory, and its famous corn market was reduced. Warminster is portrayed by these early photographs as a bustling town; its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prosperity is evident in a wide range of fine civic, commercial, communal and private properties. The absence of any great revival in Warminster'...

The small town of Bruton is one of Somerset's hidden gems. With a history of settlement that stretches back to pre-Conquest times, its charming highways and alleyways ('bartons') have retained much of their ancient character. Although Bruton's industry is now very much a thing of the past, its even older association with education still, in part, defines the town today. This book focuses on the town's rich architectural heritage of schools, churches, businesses, and homes, and the tale of ...

The unique and picturesque village of Cheddar has a long and ancient history, from world-famous landmarks to local myths and ghost stories. From as early as 1130 the beauty of Cheddar Gorge was recognised as one of the ‘Four Wonders of England’. It is through archive and contemporary photographs that the distinctive landscape and history of Cheddar is captured and successfully celebrated. Serving as both a practical guidebook and a nostalgic look back for residents of the village, this boo...

Could all or part of our taken-as-established scientific conclusions, theories, experimental data, ontological commitments, and so forth have been significantly different? Science as It Could Have Been focuses on a crucial issue that contemporary science studies have often neglected: the issue of contingency within science. It considers a number of case studies, past and present, from a wide range of scientific disciplines—physics, biology, geology, mathematics, and psychology—to explore w...

Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory is a unique collection of essays dealing with the intersections between science and mathematics and the radical reconceptions of knowledge, language, proof, truth, and reality currently emerging from poststructuralist literary theory, constructivist history and sociology of science, and related work in contemporary philosophy. Featuring a distinguished group of international contributors, this volume engages themes and issues central ...

Stevenage Through Time is a unique insight into the illustrious history of this part of the country. Reproduced in full colour, this is an exciting examination of Stevenage, the famous streets and the famous faces, and what they meant to the people of this area throughout the 19th and into the 20th Century. Looking beyond the exquisite exterior of these well-kept photos, readers can see the historical context in which they are set and through the author's factual captions for every picture...

It is thought that Barnstaple is the oldest borough in England, dating back to the 900s. But it was the medieval period that most defined Barnstaple's history. Its location helped it to become a thriving trading centre, a base for merchants doing business with Europe, Ireland and the New World. The era of prosperity was interrupted by the Civil War, during which Barnstaple changed hands four times. Bullet holes from the skirmishes can still be found in some of Barnstaple's buildings. After...