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10306 results in History of science: general interest

Page 199 of 516

  • 13 - Conclusion

  • Stephen Chrisomalis, Wayne State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Numerical Notation
    Published online:
    18 May 2010
    Print publication:
    18 January 2010, pp 430-434

  • Summary

    Out of the darkness, Funes' voice went on talking to me. He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen, he would say (for example) Máximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafi nur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated. ... I tried to explain to him that this rhapsody of incoherent terms was precisely the opposite of a system of numbers. I told him that saying 365 meant saying three hundreds, six tens, five ones, an analysis which is not found in the ‘numbers’ The Negro Timoteo or meat blanket. Funes did not understand me or refused to understand me.

    Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes, the Memorious” (1964)

The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy
  • Sylvia Berryman
  • Published online:
    24 December 2009
    Print publication:
    06 August 2009
  • It has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought.

The Evolution of Darwinism
  • Selection, Adaptation and Progress in Evolutionary Biology
  • Timothy Shanahan
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    15 March 2004
  • No other scientific theory has had as tremendous an impact on our understanding of the world as Darwin's theory as outlined in his Origin of Species, yet from the very beginning the theory has been subject to controversy. The Evolution of Darwinism, first published in 2004, focuses on three issues of debate - the nature of selection, the nature and scope of adaptation, and the question of evolutionary progress. It traces the varying interpretations to which these issues were subjected from the beginning and the fierce contemporary debates that still rage on and explores their implications for the greatest questions of all: Where we come from, who we are and where we might be heading. Written in a clear and non-technical style, this book will be of use as a textbook for students in the philosophy of science who need to become familiar with the background to the debates about evolution.

  • The problem of raccoon intelligence in behaviourist America

  • MICHAEL PETTIT
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 43 / Issue 3 / September 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 December 2009, pp. 391-421
    Print publication:
    September 2010

  • Even during its heyday, American behaviourist psychology was repeatedly criticized for the lack of diversity in its experimental subjects, with its almost exclusive focus on rats and pigeons. This paper revisits this debate by examining the rise and fall of a once promising alternative laboratory animal and model of intelligence, the raccoon. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, psychological investigations of the raccoon existed on the borderlands between laboratory experimentation, natural history and pet-keeping. Moreover, its chief advocate, Lawrence W. Cole, inhabited the institutional and geographic borderlands of the discipline. This liminality ultimately worked against the raccoon's selection as a standardized model during the behaviourist era. The question of raccoon intelligence was also a prominent topic in the contemporaneous debates over the place of sentiment in popular nature writing. Although Cole and others argued that the raccoon provided unique opportunities to study mental attributes such as curiosity and attention, others accused the animal's advocates of sentimentalism, anthropomorphism and nature faking. The paper examines the making and unmaking of this hybrid scientific culture as the lives of experimenters and animals became entangled.

  • Test objects and other epistemic things: a history of a nanoscale object

  • CYRUS C.M. MODY, MICHAEL LYNCH
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 43 / Issue 3 / September 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 December 2009, pp. 423-458
    Print publication:
    September 2010

  • This paper follows the history of an object. The purpose of doing so is to come to terms with a distinctive kind of research object – which we are calling a ‘test object’ – as well as to chronicle a significant line of research and technology development associated with the broader nanoscience/nanotechnology movement. A test object is one of a family of epistemic things that makes up the material culture of laboratory science. Depending upon the case, it can have variable shadings of practical, mathematical and epistemic significance. Clear cases of test objects have highly regular and reproducible visible properties that can be used for testing instruments and training novices. The test object featured in this paper is the silicon (111) 7×7, a particular surface configuration (or, as it is often called, a ‘reconstruction’) of silicon atoms. Research on this object over a period of several decades has been closely bound up with the development of novel instruments for visualizing atomic structures. Despite having little direct commercial value, the Si(111) 7×7 also has been a focal object for the formation of a research community bridging industry and academia. It exhibits a complex structure that became a sustained focus of observation and modelling. Our study follows shifts in the epistemic status of the Si(111) 7×7, and uses it to re-examine familiar conceptions of representation and observation in the history, philosophy and social study of science.

The Cambridge History of Science
  • Volume 6, The Modern Biological and Earth Sciences
  • Edited by Peter J. Bowler, John V. Pickstone
  • Published online:
    28 November 2009
    Print publication:
    13 April 2009
  • This book in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to the history of the life and earth sciences since 1800. It provides comprehensive and authoritative surveys of historical thinking on major developments in these areas of science, on the social and cultural milieus in which the knowledge was generated, and on the wider impact of the major theoretical and practical innovations. The articles are written by acknowledged experts who provide concise accounts of the latest historical thinking coupled with guides to the most important recent literature. In addition to histories of traditional sciences, the book covers the emergence of newer disciplines such as genetics, biochemistry and geophysics. The interaction of scientific techniques with their practical applications in areas such as medicine is a major focus of the book, as is its coverage of controversial areas such as science and religion, and environmentalism.

  • BJH volume 42 issue 4 Cover and Back matter

  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 42 / Issue 4 / December 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    26 November 2009, pp. b1-b4
    Print publication:
    December 2009
    • Article
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  • BJH volume 42 issue 4 Cover and Front matter

  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 42 / Issue 4 / December 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    26 November 2009, pp. f1-f2
    Print publication:
    December 2009
    • Article
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Page 199 of 516