Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #44

Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Volume #44

Monday 20 April 2015

EDITORIAL:

Back once again with Whewell’s Gazette #44 your weekly #histSTM links list bringing you as always as much of the histories od science, technology and medicine that our editorial staff could round up in the last seven days in the Internet and brought to you this week by our super-sonic currier owl.

A message for all those blogging or tweeting about #histSTM are you already included in Michael Barton’s (@darwinsbulldog) HistSci list? If not give the doggie a shout out!

Our birthdays of the week this week feature three people that one might not consider to be scientists Thomas Jefferson, Leonardo da Vinci and Hans Sloane. Jefferson and Sloane get, in our opinion too little attention in the history of science and Leonardo too much.

Jefferson represents a class of people in the history of science who get too little mainstream attention, the educators. Although an amateur scientist in his own right his major contribution to the history of science was as a politician ensuring that science got taught in schools and universities. A healthy scientific culture needs teachers of science and in the early days of the USA Jefferson did much to encourage and support the teaching of science, a service that should be acknowledge more often and more loudly.

Leonardo the epitome of the Renaissance man is every science writers darling and anybody writing about the history of science seems to try to find a way to drop his name into whatever they are writing with little thought given to the relevance. However as one of the posts from The Renaissance Mathematicus linked to here points out Leonardo’s actual influence on the evolution of science was almost nil. Maybe it’s time for historians of science to give more attention to the Jeffersons and Sloanes of this world and somewhat less to Leonardo.

Hans Sloane deserves to be mentioned in the history of science for several reasons but it is above all as a collector that he made his greatest contribution to that histories. The collectors of the Early Modern period made a massive contribution to several branches of the science, above all to the life sciences and the greatest of them all was almost certainly Hans Sloane. Just how great he was can be seen that not only was the British Museum founded on his collection but when part of that collection was split off, the Natural History Museum as well.

It pays to some time to stop and consider that the evolution of science is not just driven by ‘geniuses’ making great discoveries but also by people more in the background, such as Jefferson and Sloane doing more mundane things like furthering the teaching of science or building collections of scientific specimens.

Quotes of the week:

“How wonderful. John Evelyn described butterflies as ‘flying flowers’” – Andrea Wulf

A pitfall for the ‘woman scholar': she tries “to insist upon, & to apologize for, her

erudition in the same breath.” Payne-Gaposchkin, 1956

So cute to watch all the sheltered first-world 20-somethings in academia speak about “wisdom”.” @replicakill

Ein Narr der schweigt, geht für einen Weisen durch. – Christiaan Huygens

“In nature nothing exists alone.” – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

I wish there was a pie chart showing the ratio of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein scholars to all historians of science. – Harun Küçük

“A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker”. David Hume

“But science & everyday life cannot & should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life.”- R. Franklin

“If any good came out of a) WWI, and b) astrology, it would have to be Holst’s The Planets suite.” – @smiffy

History is a race between education and catastrophe – HG Wells ”

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare. – Descartes

“A fool, Mr, Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment.” – Erasmus Darwin

Final (paper draft)≠(final paper) draft. Language is not associative. – Evelyn J Lamb

Birthdays of the Week:

Thomas Jefferson born 13 April

Miniature Portrait of Jefferson by Robert Field (1800)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

“Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson. Enlightenment slaveowner; captures the American contradiction in one life”. – Tom Levenson

“Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight.” – Thomas Jefferson

Constitution Day: 10 facts about Thomas Jefferson for his 272^nd birthday

History of Geology: In Megalonyx We Trust: Jefferson’s patriotic monsters

Leonardo da Vinci born 15 April 1452

Portrait of Leonardo by Francesco Melzi
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Letters from Gondwana: Da Vinci and the Birth of Ichnology

The Guardian: Leonardo da Vinci’s earth-shattering insights about geology

Brain Pickings: Leonardo da Vinci’s Life and Legacy, in a Vintage Pop-Up Book

Lapham’s Quarterly: Leonardo da Vinci

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Pissing on a Holy Cow

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Is Leonardo da Vinci a great artist or a great scientist? Neither actually.

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Leonardo artist-engineer redux

Hans Sloane born 16 April 1660

Hans Sloane
Source: British Museum

The British Museum: Sir Hans Sloane

Figaries: The case of five children: who were inoculated in Dublin, on the 26^th of August, 1725

A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life: Sir Hans Sloane, Cocoa Magnate

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Silicon Republic: Ireland’s Greatest Woman Inventor Finalist – Annie Maunder, pioneering astronomer

American Scientist: Huygens’s Clocks Revisited

The Recipes Project: “Take Good Syrup of Violets”: Robert Boyle and Historical Recipes

Wallifaction: The Discovery of Titan: Huygens’s Cipher and Wallis’s Trick

John Wallis

Royal Observatory Greenwich Blog: Astro Art: cosmic bodies and our solar system

Margaret Maskelyne’s Orrery, by William Jones, ZBA4664.
Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

Nature: Biography of a space telescope: Voices of Hubble

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Wakefield Wright’s Interview

Rejected Princess: Annie Jump Cannon

The Calculator Site: How To Convert Between Fahrenheit and Celsius

Irish Philosophy: Further Elucidations on Newton’s Thoughts

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Asterisms and Constellations and how not to confuse them with Tropical Signs

The constellation Virgo
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Yovisto Blog: Giovanni Riccioli – a man of Encyclopedic Knowledge

Backreaction: A wonderful 100^th anniversary gift for Einstein

Medium.com: Einstein, Schrödinger, and the story you never heard

Smithsonian.com: Why Albert Einstein, the Genius Behind the Theory of Relativity, Loved His Pipe

Slate: Einstein’s Brain Heist

BBC News: The strange afterlife of Einstein’s brain

The Mütter Museum: Exhibitions: Albert Einstein’s Brain

Philly.com: Science icon who struggled with fame

Scientias.nl: Archeologen ontdekken oudste horloge van Noord-Europa in Zutphen

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

British Library: Lines in the Ice: top five highlights

Robert Thorne, Orbis Universalis Descriptio [London : T. Dawson for T. Woodcocke, 1582]. British Library C.24.b.35 Untitled

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Remedia: Peanut Panic

The Public Domain Review: An account of the late improvements in galvanism (1803)

Hiden City Philadelphia: The Curious Case of Body Snatching at Lebanon Cemetery

Niche: Animal Matter: The Making of ‘Pure’ Bovine Vaccine at the Connaught Laboratories and Farm at the Turn of the Century

The New York Times: Sheila Kitzinger, Childbirth Revolutionary, Dies at 86

Sheila Kitzinger complained that “our culture of birth is heavily medicalized,” with women submitting passively. Credit Rex Features, via Associated Press

Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry: Vol. 39 Issue 1 March 2015 – Medicalizing Heroin

Wellcome History: Dysfunctional diasporas?

Telegraph & Argus: How project uses history and technology to help tackle disease

George Campbell Gosling: Teaching Medical History

Dr Alun Withey: Edging the Competition: Surgical Instruments in the 18^th-Century

!8th Century Instrument Set
Image from http://collectmedicalantiques.com/gallery/cased-surgical-sets

It’s About Time: Early Herbals & Pharmacies

Neuron Culture: A rowdy, harrowing, vital book: My Times review of ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ by Alice Dreger

It’s About Time: Making a Herbal with Leonhart Fuchs (1502–1566)

Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel 1542, Sp Coll Hunterian L.1.13, Glasgow University Library Detail of illustrators at work from page 897

Nursing Clio: Sunday Morning Medicine

Ore. Exeter: The Birth of Psychedelic Literature: Drug Writing and the rise of LSD Therapy 1954–1964

TECHNOLOGY:

Distillations Blog: Moore’s Law: A Silicon Story

Distillations Blog: Moore and the Microprocessor

Distillations Blog: Three Reasons Why Moore’s Law Might Be Doomed

Gordon Moore
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Medium.com: Back Channel: How Gordon Moore Made “Moore’s Law”

CNET: Moore’s Law is the reason your iPhone is so thin and cheap

Wired: 50 Years On, Moore’s Law Still Pushes Tech to Double Down

The New York Times: The Enola Gay: A Minor Mystery, Solved!

BBC: Future: Why the fax machine isn’t quite dead yet

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The worst history of technology headline of the year?

Ptak Science Books: Tools of a Scientist, ca. 1700

Ptak Science Books: A Cutaway Infographic of the RAF Wellington, 1941

Atlas Obscura: Steampunk… or just Punk’d?

Conciatore: Glass or Rock?

Board of Longitude Project Blog: Decoding Harrison

The Guardian: Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims

The Burgess B clock trial revealed the truth of the claim by John Harrison that he could build a land timepiece to keep time to within a second over 100 days. Photograph: National Maritime Museum /.

The Independent: John Harrison’s ‘longitude’ clock sets new record – 300 years on

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: Amanz Gressly

Notches: Doing It With Food: Cooking and the History of Sexuality

History of Geology: Clash of the Titans: The Science behind the Iceberg that sank the Titanic

Irish Examiner: Who was John Tyndall?

Linda Hall Library: Scientist of the Day – Patrick Russell

Yovisto: Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers – the Father of British Archaeology

Augustus Pitt Rivers

Embryo Project: Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844)

Embryo Project: Essay: The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate

Yovisto: Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Study of the Instinct

academia.edu: How the Great Chain of Being Fell Apart: Diversity in natural history 1758– 1859

Embryo Project: Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (1867–1941)

Thinking Like a Mountain: The History of the Plant: Cultivating Innovation at the John Innes Centre

Independent: Secret file reveals scandal of the eel expert, the archbishop and the Loch Ness Monster ‘sighting’ that sent Whitehall into a spin

Nessie
Source: Getty

OUP Blog: Darwin’s “gastric flatus”

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: William Arkell

Dan Merkur: Freud’s Mushroom Hunting

Brain Pickings: Thinking with Animals: From Aesop to Darwin to YouTube

The Friends of Charles Darwin: 19^th April, 1882: The Death of a hero

Embryo Project: “Evolution and Tinkering” (1977) by Francois Jacob

CHEMISTRY:

Yovisto: Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and the White Gold

Conciatore: Zaffer

Chemical Heritage Museum: That Beautiful Theory

Joseph Black.
CHF Collections.

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

China.org.cn: Preserving Tibetan medicine, astronomy & astrology systems

New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science: Why is this philosophy?

The Renaissance Mathematicus: There is no such thing as Greek science

The Recipes Project: First Monday Library Chat: University of Glasgow Library

Inscape unimaginable: The Challenges of Beginning a Scholarly Debate in the 21st Century

Ellie Miles: Curator of the Future Conference

CHF: E-newsletter April 2015

JHI Blog: The Early History of Arabic Printing in Europe

Ether Wave Propaganda: Scientists and the History of Science: The Shapin View

Cambridge MA 7//08 Harvard University Professor Steven Shapin (cq) photographed for Ideas Section. Wiggs/Globe Staff Section:Metro; Reporter; slug:06shapin Library Tag 07062008 Ideas

The New York Times: Starving for Wisdom

The Recipes Project: Of recipes, collectors, compilers and contributors

The #EncHist Weekly

HSS: Newsletter Vol. 44 No. 2 April 2015

Royal Museums Greenwich Collections Blog: Royal Museums Greenwich Photographic Studio

Wonders & Marvels: Cabinet of Curiosities: xviii

SciLogs: A Dissertation on Science Blogging

Madison.com: Siegfried, Robert

ESOTERIC:

Occult Minds: How does new age literature cherry-pick its science? A cognitive approach

Conciatore: Primordial Matter