Category Archives: Historiography

If not Whig history what then?

Posted on September 15, 2012 by

Some musings on historiography and methodology in the history of science including an explication of my drunken hotel guest theory of scientific progress.

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Nobody invented the scientific method

Posted on August 29, 2012 by

In the past I’ve written posts explaining why the terms “father of” and “the greatest” should be firmly avoided when writing about the history of science. James Sumner has also written an excellent post The F-Word explaining why the term “the first” should also be banned … Continue reading →

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The Historical Science Society of 1840

Posted on August 4, 2012 by

My second post on the new Guardian Science blog, The H Word, is now up – looking at The first HSS, a 19th-century venture doomed to failure as a result of its young founder’s succumbing to bibliophilic temptation.

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Scientific histories: debates among Victorian historians

Posted on June 6, 2012 by

To see a review of Ian Hesketh’s The Science of History in Victorian Britain: Making the Past Speak, hop over to teleskopos.

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Crimes against history: literary imagination and scientific method

Posted on May 26, 2012 by

A recent article in The Nation, by Peter Reddaway and Stephen F. Cohen on ‘Orlando Figes and Stalin’s Victims‘, reveals a fascinating story of the darker side of historical scholarship. It also got me thinking about some old, old debates about … Continue reading →

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Is Leonardo a great artist or a great scientist? Neither actually.

Posted on May 4, 2012 by

Is Leonardo da Vinci a great artist or a great scientist, asks Jonathan Jones on his Guardian On Arts blog and as you might have already guessed from the title the answer is neither, actually. Jones’ question is inspired by the two … Continue reading →

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Calendrical Confusion or The Dangers of Dating!

Posted on March 9, 2012 by

This morning one of the sources I consult to remind me of anniversaries of discoveries, births and deaths in the history of science had two entries concerning the father and son Friesian Renaissance astronomers David and Johannes Fabricius. According to this … Continue reading →

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Being wrong is not a crime; knowing what’s right and deliberately saying the wrong thing is!

Posted on March 2, 2012 by

Inspired or, perhaps better said, provoked by my last post mathematician and artist Edmund Harriss has written a thoughtful post on the virtues of being wrong at his blog Maxwell’s Demon. This reaction to my post has prompted me to try to explain … Continue reading →

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Wanting to believe

Posted on February 6, 2012 by

Sometimes, the extent to which people see what they wish to see seems truly remarkable. However, we shouldn’t be surprised that this very human affliction affects even those with a training or long practice in observation and logic. An article in … Continue reading →

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Ploughing with historical heifers

Posted on July 28, 2011 by

My previous post ended with a quote by Augustus De Morgan and it was such a good one that I make no apologies for quoting him again, this time from an 1846 biography of Newton, which you can find transcribed … Continue reading →

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