Whewell's Ghost

Newton’s Alchemy and early Geochemistry

davidbressan — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:29:59 +0000

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is today remembered for his contributions to optics, mechanics and gravity, but as a typical polymath of his time he was also interested in alchemy. And through his interest in this early predecessor of chemistry he became also involved in some geological research.

Filed under: Chemistry, Geology, Philosophy

Giants’ Shoulders #56 The Giant Edition

thonyc — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:19:01 +0000

Michael Barton (@darwinsbulldog) has posted a positively gigantic edition of Giants’ Shoulders the history of science blog carnival on his blog The Dispersal of Darwin. It contains enough good bloggage to keep you reading until the next Giants’ Shoulders appears in a month’s time.

Giants’ Shoulders #57 will be hosted by Alison Boyle (@ali_boyle) on the Science Museum Blog on 16^th March. Submission should as always be made direct to the host or to me here at The Renaissance Mathematicus or to Dr SkySkull at Skull in the Stars by 15^th March at the latest.

We have a host for April but after that Giants’ Shoulders will again be an orphan searching for a kindly host on a friendly blog. If you can offer the best history of science blog carnival a home for a month then please contact me here.

Filed under: Giants' Shoulders

Carnivals

thonyc — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:35:20 +0000

Giants’ Shoulders #56 the history of science blog carnival is being hosted by Michael Barton @darwinsbulldog at The Dispersal of Darwin on 16^th February. Submit your favourite #histsci, #histtech & #histmed post to the host or @drskyskull or to me here at RM by the 15^th February.

As always Giants’ Shoulders needs new hosts. If you have a blog and want to host the best history of science blog carnival since the beginning of time then contact me here at RM.

I’m stepping out of my self-imposed boundaries on March 9^th and am hosting Carnivalesque the interdisciplinary blog carnival dedicated to pre-modern history (to c. 1800 C.E.) here at The Renaissance Mathematicus. If you have an interesting history post for Carnivalesque then you can submit it here.

Filed under: Giants' Shoulders

What Kepler and Newton really did.

thonyc — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:15:00 +0000

This has been a good week for people getting the history of astronomy in the seventeenth century wrong. [to find out what they got wrong go here]

Filed under: astronomy, History

Curiosities, Utilities and Authority – Giants’ Shoulders #55

thonyc — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:39:00 +0000

The 55^th edition of the history of science blog carnival Giants’ Shoulders, “Curiosities, Utilities and Authority”, has been posted by this month’s host Lisa Smith (@historybeagle) at The Sloanes Letters Blog. So mosey on over and read Lisa’s selection of the last month’s best history of science, history of medicine and history of technology bloggage. It’s really worth your while.

Next month’s Giants’ Shoulders #56 will be hosted by Michael Barton (@darwinsbulldog) at his The Dispersal of Darwin blog on 16 February. Submissions as usual either direct to the host or to me here at RM by 15 February.

As always Giants’ Shoulders NEEDS YOU! If you would like the honour of hosting a future edition of the universe’s numero uno history of science blog carnival then please contact me here at RM.

Filed under: Giants' Shoulders

How Forensic Seismology investigates into Ship-Disasters, Terrorist-Attacks and secret Nuclear Tests

davidbressan — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 19:44:52 +0000

The collision of the cruise ship “Costa Concordia” on January 13, 2012 was recorded by the seismograph station “Monte Argentario“, situated on the Italian mainland. From the eyewitness testimony and the Automatic System of the ship the time of collision with a submerged rock was estimated at 20:45 (UTC). This time is confirmed by a sudden peak in the seismogram at 20:45:10 (the seismograph station is distant 18km from the site of the collision, the seismic waves needed almost 3-4 seconds to travel this distance). The seismogram shows also after the impact the “noise” generated by the hull of the ship grinding along the rocky substrate. An accurate analysis of “The seismic quake of “Costa Concordia” can even specify the speed of the ship at the moment of the collision…

Filed under: Geology, Science

Giants Shoulders #55: Three Days Left!

thonyc — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 15:29:08 +0000

You have just three days to submit those #histsci, #histmed and #histtech blog posts to the history of science blog carnival Giants Shoulders’ #55 which will be hosted by Lisa Smith (@historybeagle) at The Sloane Letters Blog on 16^th January.

You can make your submission either directly to the host or to me here at the Renaissance Mathematicus.

Giants Shoulders’, as always needs future hosts. If you desire to host the world’s one and only history of science blog carnival then contact me here.

Filed under: Giants' Shoulders

Christmas Trilogy 2012 Part III: What to do if your mother’s a witch.

thonyc — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:02:18 +0000

Johannes Kepler certainly lived in interesting times in the sense of the old Chinese curse. Born 27^th December 1571 he lived through the most intensive phase of the Counter-Reformation being forced, as a Protestant living and working in Catholic territory, to abandoned his home and livelihood more than once. Trained as a Luther priest he served three Catholic Holy Roman Kaisers as mathematicus and the supreme commander of the Catholic forces in the thirty years war as an astrologus. Always walking along a knife-edge. The last twelve years of his life were dominated by that most devastating of European wars. He played a very central role in one of the greatest upheavals in the history of astronomy as well as redefining the science of physical optics. He lost his first wife and several of his children to sickness and was chronically and oft acutely ill all of his life. Paid at best on an irregular basis by his various employers he was often in desperate need of money. He also lived during the highpoint of the European witch craze in which tens of thousands of innocent people, mostly women, were persecuted, tortured and murdered and must experience how his own mother was tried for practicing witchcraft. [want to know more?]

Filed under: Book Reviews, History

Christmas Trilogy 2012 Part II: Charles and Ada: A tale of genius or of exploitation?

thonyc — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:52:31 +0000

This year Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fuelled by the Finding Ada website and twitter account took off big time. Now I have nothing against this celebration and have actively supported it on this blog for the last three years; writing about Emmy Noether in 2010, a quartet of lady astronomers in 2011 and the first female professor at a European university, Laura Brassi, in 2012. I have also posted on other women in the history of science on other occasions. This year I, by chance, also attended, but did not participate in, the edit-thron for STEM women on Wikipedia held at the Royal Society. As I have already said I have nothing against this celebration but as a historian of mathematics and computing each time I do so I have very major misgivings about the organisers choice of figurehead, Ada Lovelace. These qualms were strengthened this month on the tenth, Ada’s birthday, as an echo of Ada Lovelace Day set off a flurry of biographical posts throughout the Intertubes, some of them old and merely linked, others freshly written for the occasion. All of them however had one thing in common, they were not written from original or even well researched secondary sources but simply regurgitated older fundamentally flawed largely mythical short biographies. There is nothing new in what I’m going to say now, in fact I’ve blogged about it before as has one of The Guardian’s excellent lady historians of science Rebekah “Becky” Higgitt. Even the much-maligned Wikipedia gets it largely right in its Ada Lovelace article. All of the short biographies state clearly that Ada was a mathematician and “the first computer programmer”. Both statements are wrong. So what is the truth?

Filed under: History, mathematics

Christmas Trilogy 2012 Part I: Did Isaac really victimise Stephen?

thonyc — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 18:21:21 +0000

Isaac Newton was not a nice man. When he was holding court in a London coffee house dispensing wisdom and his mathematical manuscripts to his acolytes he was probably friendly and magnanimous. Also, when he was chatting over breakfast with his housekeeper niece the society beauty, Catherine Barton, of whom he was very fond he was probably very charming. However when it came to defending his mathematical and philosophical theories against his scientific rivals he had the manners of a rabid wolverine on steroids. His intellectual wars with Robert Hooke, Gottfried Leibniz and John Flamsteed have become the stuff of history of science legends known, at least in outline, even to those only mildly interested in the subject. Frank Manuel in his psychological study of Newton described it thus. Newton regarded the natural world as his garden and it was his privilege and God given duty to uncover its secrets. Others who dared to do so were poachers infringing on his private property. However was Stephen Gray really one of his victims? David H. Clarke and Stephen P. H. Clarke (henceforth referred to as C²) thought so and wrote a whole book about it with the provocative title Newton’s Tyranny: The Suppressed Scientific Discoveries of Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed. [Were they right?]

Filed under: History