Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #47

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 #47

Monday 11 May 2015

EDITORIAL:

You are feasting your eyes on the forty-seventh edition of your weekly #histSTM links list, Whewell’s Gazette, bringing you all of the best of the histories of science, medicine and technology scooped up by our every hungry editorial crew for you delectation.

The Whewell’s Gazette Editorial Staff at Feeding Time

Following the debacle that was the British general election a group of historians has published a sort of manifesto in History Today under the name ‘Historians For Britain’, claiming that Britain’s exit from the EU would be justified on the basis of the fact that Britain’s history was unique when compared to its European neighbours.

As a British historian I personally object to this manifesto on several grounds. With what right does this group claim to speak for Britain? They speak for themselves with some extremely dodgy and largely incorrect arguments and not for Britain. For any group of historians to claim to speak on behalf of an entire nation is hubris of the highest order.

As a historian of science, who also dabbles in the histories of medicine, technology and mathematics, I must firmly state that also within Britain the histories of these disciplines have a complex intertwined international history that is in no way uniquely British and to try to claim otherwise would be to pervert history.

The Whewell’s Gazette Editorial Policy

Quotes of the week:

“To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child” – Cicero

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see” – Alexandra K. Trenfor

“Ancient history has an air of antiquity—it should be more modern. It’s written as if the spectator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers” – Thoreau 1849

‘Life for us is not just the absence of death’. – Mary Midgley

“To err is human. To err repeatedly is research”. – @AcademicsSay

“It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise”. Wittgenstein

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies” – Groucho Marx

“But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience”. – Kant

The last man on earth walks into a bar. He looks into his beer and says, “Drink, I’d like another bartender.” – @fadesingh

“If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family”. – Ram Dass

“Some peoples idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back that is an outrage” – Winston Churchill

“Science = search for Truth; Art = search for Beauty; Engineering = search for Good Enough” – @LeapingRobot

Birthday of the Week:

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin born 10 May 1900

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin at work

True Anomalies: “So You Want to Do Research”

Yovisto: Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin and the Composition of Stars

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

arXiv.org: Editing Cavendish: Maxwell and the Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish

Drew ex machina: The Mission of Zond 2

Ptak Science Books: Napkins of the Apocalypse

Flamsteed Astronomy Society: William Christie and the Demise of the Royal Greenwich Observatory – History of Astronomy Group Meeting

Sir William Christie (no relation!)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Huygens and Newton:

Ptak Science Books: Dr. Lise Meitner, Fission, and Comic Books (1946)

Source: Ptak Science Books

academia.edu: The Birth of the Mexican National Astronomical Observatory

Ptak Science Books: The Four Seasons in Beautiful Astronomical Detail, 1851

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Ohm Sweet Ohm

The Ohm House in Erlangen
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Pinterest: Section of the Earth on the Plane of the Equator

NPR: Dissolve My Nobel Prize Fast (A True Story)

Nautilus: The Data That Threatened to Break Physics

Planetarium Friesland

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

The Guardian: Better than GPS: a history of cartography in 12 amazing maps

Bird’s Eye View of New York
Photograph: Public domain

Wired: It Just Got Easier to see a Cool Historical Maps Collection

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Nautilus: The Man Who Beat HIV at its Own Game for 30 Years

NYAM: The Strange Case of Father Damien (Part 1 of 3)

Thick Objects: Between text and object: psychological tests as scientific artefacts

The Recipes Project: Bottoms up: beer as medicine

Front page of Van Lis’s 1747 Pharmacopea

Atlas Obscura: Roosevelt Island Octagon Tower

The Chirugeon’s Apprentice: Robert Hooke and the Dog’s Lung: Animal Experimentation in History

Early Modern Medicine: Dead Useful

NYAM: Sigmund Freud on War and Death

The Public Domain Review: Scurvy and the Terra Incognita

Page from the journal of Henry Walsh Mahon showing the effects of scurvy, from his time aboard HM Convict Ship Barrosa (1841-2)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Concocting history: Nursing dolly

Remedia: On the Trail of Medicines at Cambridge University Botanic Garden

Providentia: The Addicted Surgeon

NYAM: The Good Man of Religion (Part 2 of 3)

Advances in the History of Psychology: The Anatomist, The Alienist, The Artist & changing expressions of madness in Victorian Britain

Concocting History: Ode to Laudanum

TECHNOLOGY:

Conciatore: Glass from Tinsel

Magic Transistor: Louis Poyet, Abbé Rousselot’s Apparat für Aufzeichnung der Sprache, 1890