- Mar 2024
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Burke, Colin B. Information and Intrigue: From Index Cards to Dewey Decimals to Alger Hiss. History and Foundations of Information Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262027021/information-and-intrigue/
annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:3ca2bc5e94d24cfc51c7b40b4ea7daf9
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- Jan 2024
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Kells, Lyman M., Willis F. Kern, and James R. Bland. K+E Slide Rules: A Self Instruction Manual. New York: Keuffel & Esser Co., 1955.
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- Dec 2023
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Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is notthe sum of all knowledge.
Note the use of the word "heresy" here, which is most often used in the framing of religion at a time when the establishment is moving from religion-based mechanisms into scientific based ones.
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- Nov 2023
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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Chapter 39 of Zoonomia, “On Generation,” presents Erasmus’ ideas on competition, extinction, and how “different fibrils or molecules are detached from…the parent…to form” the child. The Temple of Nature goes even farther, declaring “all vegetables and animals now existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, formed by spontaneous vitality” in ancient oceans.
Interesting to contemplate the evolution of the idea of evolution through the Darwin family.
Charles would obviously have read his grandfather's book, but it also bears noting that he also had access to his grandfather's commonplace book (and likely his other papers).
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archives.library.illinois.edu archives.library.illinois.edu
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fs.blog fs.blog
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Cosmos was unlike any previous book about nature. Humboldt took his readers on a journey from outer space to earth, and then from the surface of the planet into its inner core.
Could Alexander von Humboldt have been one of the early examples of a popular science writer?
Perhaps an early David Attenborough?
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- Oct 2023
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dhayton.haverford.edu dhayton.haverford.edu
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Hayton, Darin. “Washington Irving’s Columbus and the Flat Earth.” History of Science blog. Darin Hayton, December 2, 2014. https://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/2014/12/02/washington-irvings-columbus-and-the-flat-earth/.
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Within a decade, William Whewell had published his History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) (online here). In a section on antipodes, he admitted that most people throughout history had known the earth was round.
Link to https://hypothes.is/a/hvDAtHT0Ee6_Z3em_Dz4bg (Columbus & Washington Irving)
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- Aug 2023
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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These revolutions appear invisible in the history of science, Kuhn explained, because each successive generation learns science through the lens of the current paradigm.
As a result of Kuhn's scientific revolutions perspective, historians of science will need to uncover the frameworks and lenses by which prior generations saw the world to be able to see the world the same way. This will allow them to better piece together histories
How is this related to the ways that experts don't appreciate their own knowledge when trying to teach newcomers their subjects? What is the word/phrase for this effect?
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- Apr 2023
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa ("Incoherence of the Philosophers") is a landmark in the history of philosophy, as it advances the critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th-century Europe.[35]
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- Feb 2023
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www.bl.uk www.bl.uk
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1478-1518, Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci (''The Codex Arundel''). A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as ''a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat'' (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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the essay Of the Plurality of Worlds (1853), in which he argued against the probability of life on other planets
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His best-known works are two voluminous books that attempt to systematize the development of the sciences, History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) and The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History (1840, 1847, 1858–60). While the History traced how each branch of the sciences had evolved since antiquity, Whewell viewed the Philosophy as the "Moral" of the previous work as it sought to extract a universal theory of knowledge through history. In the latter, he attempted to follow Francis Bacon's plan for discovery. He examined ideas ("explication of conceptions") and by the "colligation of facts" endeavored to unite these ideas with the facts and so construct science.[11] This colligation is an "act of thought", a mental operation consisting of bringing together a number of empirical facts by "superinducing" upon them a conception which unites the facts and renders them capable of being expressed in general laws.[22]
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He corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up with neologisms for their discoveries. Whewell coined, among other terms, scientist,[2] physicist, linguistics, consilience, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and astigmatism;[3] he suggested to Michael Faraday the terms electrode, ion, dielectric, anode, and cathode.[4][5]
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- Dec 2022
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important works like Galen’s On Demonstration, Theophrastus’ OnMines and Aristarchus’ treatise on heliocentric theory (which mighthave changed the course of astronomy dramatically if it hadsurvived) all slipped through the cracks of time.
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- Oct 2022
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Thus Paxson was not content to limit historians to the immediateand the ascertainable. Historical truth must appear through some-thing short of scientific method, and in something other than scien-tific form, linked and geared to the unassimilable mass of facts.There was no standard technique suited to all persons and purposes,in note-taking or in composition. "The ordinary methods of his-torical narrative are ineffective before a theme that is in its essen-tials descriptive," he wrote of Archer B. Hulbert's Forty- Niners(1931) in 1932. "In some respects the story of the trails can notbe told until it is thrown into the form of epic poetry, or comes un-der the hand of the historical novelist." 42
This statement makes it appear as if Paxson was aware of the movement in the late 1800s of the attempt to make history a more scientific endeavor by writers like Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos, and others, but that Pomeroy is less so.
How scientific can history be as an area of study? There is the descriptive from which we might draw conclusions, but how much can we know when there are not only so many potential variables, but we generally lack the ability to design and run discrete experiments on history itself?
Recall Paxson's earlier comment that "in history you cannot prove an inference". https://hypothes.is/a/LIWSoFlLEe2zUtvMoEr0nQ
Had enough time elapsed up to this writing in 1953, that the ideal of a scientific history from the late 1800s had been borne out not to be accomplished?
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Helbig, Daniela K. “Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg’s Zettelkasten and History of Science as Theoretical Attitude.” Journal of the History of Ideas 80, no. 1 (2019): 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2019.0005
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A historical perspective on the sciencesbrings into view controversies, and some beliefs and methodological con-victions that retrospectively turn out to be false—among Blumenberg’scharacteristically colorful picks are Augustine writing that “the stars werecreated for the consolation of people obliged to be active at night,” and“Linnaeus’s opinion that the song of the birds at the first light of morningwas instituted as consolation for the insomnia of the old.”84
something poetic about these examples even if they're poor science...
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In “collaboration with his Zettelkasten,”61 Blumenberg worked to por-tray these tensions between different and changing historical meanings ofscientific inquiry.
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academic.oup.com academic.oup.com
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It is argued that Droysen, not Dilthey, is the true father of the method of historical understanding or Verstehen.
Who is the father of the method of historical understanding?
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- Aug 2022
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seventeenth century, “the century ofgenius,”
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mitpress.mit.edu mitpress.mit.edu
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History and Foundations of Information Science
This series of books focuses on the historical approach or theoretical approach to information science and seeks a broader interpretation of what we consider as information (i.e., information is in the eye of the beholder, be it sets of data, scholarly publications, works of art, material objects, or DNA samples), and an emphasis upon how people access and interact with this information.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/history-and-foundations-information-science
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Neurath claimed that magic was unfalsifiable and therefore disenchantment could never be complete in a scientific age.[18]
- Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.
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- Jul 2022
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Mechanical and vitalist systems existed concurrently, and although it might seem easy to distinguish them,when we come to look at most specific characters and their thought, the distinctions appear blurred
Mechanical philosophy and vitalism were popular and co-existed on a non-mutually exclusive spectrum in the seventeenth century.
Mechanical philosophy is a philosophy of nature which arose broadly in the 17th century and sought to explain all natural phenomenon in terms of matter and motion without relying on "action at a distance" or the idea of a cause and effect that occurred without any physical contact or direct motivation.
René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Marin Mersenne all held mechanistic viewpoints.
See also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_philosophy
Link to: - spooky action at a distance (quantum mechanics)
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This perspective has been called an “emblematic worldview”; it is clearly visible in the iconography ofmedieval and Renaissance art, for example. Plants and animals are not merely specimens, as in modernscience; they represent a huge raft of associated things and ideas.
Medieval culture had imbued its perspective of the natural world with a variety of emblematic associations. Plants and animals were not simply specimens or organisms in the world but were emblematic representations of ideas which were also associated with them.
example: peacock / pride
Did this perspective draw from some of the older possibly pagan forms of orality and mnemonics? Or were the potential associations simply natural ones which (re-?)grew either historically or as the result of the use of the art of memory from antiquity?
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Humanist critiques began to erode Pliny—the major source for natural history since antiquity—in the1490s. The lengthy critiques of Ermolao Barbaro (1454–1493) and Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524) were,however, based on Greek texts prior to Pliny, not on the natural world.
Pliny's work had been the standard text for natural history since antiquity. The early humanist movement including critiques by Ermolao Barbaro and Niccolò Leoniceno in the mid 1400s began to erode his stature in the area. Interestingly however, it wasn't new discoveries or science that was displacing Pliny so much as comparison of Pliny with even earlier Greek texts.
Tags
- Niccolò Leoniceno
- open questions
- Pierre Gassendi
- natural history
- René Descartes
- humanism
- history of science
- natural philosophy
- orality and memory
- emblematic wordview
- associative memory
- Ermolao Barbaro
- vitalism
- mechanical philosophy
- spooky action at a distance
- action at a distance
- Pliny
Annotators
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- May 2022
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Whig history (or Whig historiography), often appearing as whig history, is an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from an oppressive and benighted past to a "glorious present".[1] The present described is generally one with modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy: it was originally a satirical term for the patriotic grand narratives praising Britain's adoption of constitutional monarchy and the historical development of the Westminster system.[2] The term has also been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (e.g. in the history of science) to describe "any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the historical process".[3] When the term is used in contexts other than British history, "whig history" (lowercase) is preferred.[3]
Stemming from British history, but often applied in other areas including the history of science, whig history is a historiography that presents history as a path from an oppressive, backward, and wretched past to a glorious present. The term was coined by British Historian Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). It stems from the British Whig party that advocated for the power of Parliament as opposed to the Tories who favored the power of the King.
It would seem to be an unfortunate twist of fate for indigenous science and knowledge that it was almost completely dismissed when the West began to dominate indigenous cultures during the Enlightenment which was still heavily imbued with the influence of scholasticism. Had religion not played such a heavy role in science, we may have had more respect and patience to see and understand the value of indigenous ways of knowing.
Link this to notes from The Dawn of Everything.
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The term “scientist” is aneologism, coined jocularly by William Whewell in 1834.
"Scientist" is a neologism coined in 1834, by William Whewell and was originally meant tongue-in-cheek.
Who coined the word "scientist" in 1834? :: William Whewell
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Chief among these is the need to understand scientific study and discoveryin historical context. Theological, philosophical, social, political, and economic factors deeply impact thedevelopment and shape of science.
Science needs to be seen and understood in its appropriate historical context. Modern culture (and even scientists themselves) often forget the profound impact of theological, philosophical, social, political, and economic factors on how science develops and how we perceive it.
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Principe, Lawrence M. (2013, July 8). History of Science: Antiquity to 1700 (Vol. 1200) [.mp3]. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-science-antiquity-to-1700
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- Mar 2022
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the going through abstraction and re-specification so i think i became interested in cetera carson also because i saw a lot of similarities 01:11:30 to what historians of science describe as experimental work in laboratories and that is especially in the field of science and technology 01:11:43 studies especially the work of hanzio greinberger he works for the max planck institute for history of science in berlin and the way he describes 01:11:55 um experimental work as a form of material deconstruction um is my blueprint for understanding 01:12:10 the work of lumen
Sönke Ahrens used Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's description of experimental work as a form of material deconstruction as a framework for looking at Niklas Luhmann.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (born 12 January 1946) is an historian of science who comes from Liechtenstein. He was director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin from 1997 to 2014. His focus areas within the history of science are the history and epistemology of the experiment, and further the history of molecular biology and protein biosynthesis.
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A sense ofconnectedness is a unique part of Indigenous science. In Westernscience, knowledge is often considered separate from the people whodiscover it, while Indigenous cultures see knowledge as intricatelyconnected to people.
A primary difference between Indigenous science and Western science is the first is intimately connected to the practitioners while the second is wholly separate.
Would Western science be in a healthier space currently if its practice were more tightly bound to the people who need to use it (everyone)? By not being bound to the everyday practice and knowledge of our science, increasingly larger portions of Western society don't believe in science or its value.
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- Dec 2021
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royalsocietypublishing.org royalsocietypublishing.org
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Maxwell's advice was to read the four parts of the Treatise in parallel rather than in sequence.
reading the texts in parallel.
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- Aug 2021
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by the eighteenth century, suchchapters were being expanded into sizeable books that functioned primarily as natural historybibliographies in their own right. An early example of this practice was Johann JakobScheuchzer’s Bibliotheca scriptorium(1716).
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www.dur.ac.uk www.dur.ac.uk
- Dec 2019
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enlightenmens.lmc.gatech.edu enlightenmens.lmc.gatech.edu
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Brown's Vulgar Errours.
Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths (1646), commonly known as Vulgar Errours, was an important text in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Browne, like Francis Bacon, argued that empirical evidence was necessary to support (or disprove) claims, so his "trial" here likely involved many bird dissections.
Browne is credited with introducing a number of words to the scientific discourse, including "electricity" and--interesting for our purposes--"computer" and "hallucination."
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- Nov 2017
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smgprojects.github.io smgprojects.github.io
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ethics of video games in archaeology
Reminds me of this historian’s talk at Pint of Science Montreal 2015. (Sadly, not finding online traces of the event apart from my own section.)
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- Jul 2016
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books.google.ca books.google.ca
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Initially, the digital humanities consisted of the curation and analysis of data that were born digital, and the digitisation and archiving projects that sought to render analogue texts and material objects into digital forms that could be organised and searched and be subjects to basic forms of overarching, automated or guided analysis, such as summary visualisations of content or connections between documents, people or places. Subsequently, its advocates have argued that the field has evolved to provide more sophisticated tools for handling, searching, linking, sharing and analysing data that seek to complement and augment existing humanities methods, and facilitate traditional forms of interpretation and theory building, rather than replacing traditional methods or providing an empiricist or positivistic approach to humanities scholarship.
summary of history of digital humanities
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- Jun 2016
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Beaver and Rosen (1978) have shown how the differentialrates of scientific institutionalization in France, England,and Germany are mirrored in the relative output of coau-thored papers.
bibliography tying rate of coauthorship to professionalisation of science
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Before the precursors of today’s scholarly journals es-tablished themselves in the second half of the 17th century,scientists communicated via letters.
original form of scholarly comm was letters
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- May 2016
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books.google.ca books.google.ca
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p. v. Has an interesting idea that the real contribution of the long eighteenth century to information was the ordering and typology systems.
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