The Giant’s Shoulders #25: 2nd Anniversary Edition!

What better way to introduce the second anniversary edition of the history of science blog carnival The Giant’s Shoulders than to share this photo of me, standing on the sholders of one such giant, Albert Einstein. As you may know, this summer I am a science education intern at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland for their exhibit Einstein. We allow kids to climb on this comical bust of Einstein up to his ears, but no farther. We must keep things safe!

Standing on the shoulders of a giant

“If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.” – Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke, February 1676, Newton praising Hooke’s contributions to optics

To begin this edition, which I believe has received the most submissions of any edition to date, let us note that the Royal Society is celebrating 350 years of science this year:

On November 30th 1660 a dozen men gathered to hear the young Christopher Wren give a lecture on astronomy. In the discussion that followed they decided to form a society for the study of the new and still controversial Experimental Philosophy. Two years later Charles II made it his Royal Society and in the 350 years since it was founded, its Fellows have given us gravity, evolution, the electron, the double helix, the internet and a large part of the modern world. In 2010 we celebrate 350 years of scientific brilliance and fearless doubt.

Also, the Royal Society has made their digital archive freely accessible through the end of July. Get to it! Now for the history of science posts. Since there are so many, it’s tough to find some theme to weave through them, so I will list them chronologically from the most recent to the oldest, referring not to the post date, but to the history which is being discussed in the them. (Do inform me of any history of science-themed posts during the last month that I overlooked.)

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General, MZ Skeptica: The Value of Learning History of Science: One Student’s Perspective

General, Reflexivepractice: Being scientific about science

General, The New York Review of Books: The Other Side of Science (book review of Never Pure)

General, Ether Wave Propaganda: Life at the Boundary

General, Ether Wave Propaganda: Wave Three in the Sociological SEE

General, News and Views: The History of Science in America: American Birds

General, Seiler on Science: The Birth of a New Physics, a book by I. Bernard Cohen

General, Heterodoxology: Lawrence Principe and the Rehabilitation of Alchemy (also, info about a thesis workshop on alchemy)

General, Slate: Blogging the Periodic Table

Present, petri dish: prototyping participation over presentation: “the children’s darwin” & “undergrads at the collections”

Present, Panda’s Thumb (Nick Matzke): Luskin, Haeckel, Richardson, and Richards (also see What do Haeckel’s embryo’s signify?)

Late 20th C., Point of Inquiry (podcast): Naomi Oreskes – Merchants of Doubt

Late 20th C., Sandwalk: False History and the Number of Genes

Late 20th C., Thoughts in a Haystack: Science Wars (a quote on Kuhn)

1975, Skulls in the Stars: Invisibility physics: Kerker’s “invisible bodies”

1960, Jane’s Journal: Excerpt from July 14, 1960 (this year is the 50th anniversary of Goodall’s chimp research)

1955, Ptak Science Books: History of Dots #27: Killing Bacteria – Human Experimentation with Conscientious Objectors, 1955

Mid-Late 20th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: Cold War Science Is Everywhere (also see this from Advances in the History of Psychology)

1945, Pauling Blog: The Independent Citizen’s Committe for the Arts, Sciences and Professions

1945, Science: Righting a 65-Year-Old Wrong

1930s – 40s, The Dispersal of Darwin: The shit that refuses to be flushed (on the Darwin-Hitler link)

1935, Pauling Blog: A Theory of the Denaturation of Proteins

1924, Brian Switek (formerly Laelaps): Taung, 2.3 Million Years Ago – Scratched bones and fossil primate bones as keys to a lost world

1913, Are You Scicurious?, Friday Weird Science: The Human Penis Bone

1909, Ptak Science Books: The Medical History of Curing Cancer with Limburger Cheese, Glycerin and Alcohol

Early 20th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: Pluto is not Planet X

Early 20th C., Deep Thoughts and Silliness: More on Mendel’s Manuscript

20th C., Science After Sunclipse: Textbook Cardboard and Physicist’s History

20th C., News and Views: The History of Science in America: Laserfest!

20th C., Uncertain Principles: Are Communication Skills Holding Science Back?

20th C., Science: Belief, Reason, and Insight & Nature: A life both kind and strange (book reviews of The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness)

20th C., Evolving Thoughts: Homology

20th C., Providentia: Unmaking the disease, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

Early 20th C., OU History of Science Collections: Einstein Papers and Archives Project

Late 19th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: History of Science in Philadlephia – The E.D. Cope Residence

Late 19th C., Dinosaur Tracking: When Diplodocus Invaded Europe

Late 19th – Early 20th C., Gambler’s House: Wetherill Day

1895, bit-player: The thrill of the chase

1865, archy: Petermann’s polar lands

1849, Ptak Science Books: History of Dots #26: a Picture of the Speed of Light

Mid-19th C., Hafan Martin: Charles Darwin and I

Mid-19th C., Poseidon Sciences: Charles Darwin’s other passion: rediscovering the origins of barnacle research

1824, archy: Return of the killer mastodons

1817, From the Hands of Quacks: Curtis’ 1817 Letter to the London Asylum

Early 19th C., From the Hands of Quacks: Research Frustrations! RDDE and Lost Records

19th C., Ptak Science Books: A Taxidermological Satirist Adventurer and PsychoBon-Vivant: a few Paragraphs in the History of Boredom

19th C., Ether Wave Propaganda: Walter Bagehot on Ancient and English Civilization

19th C., Southern Fried Scientist: Louis Agassiz and a brief history of early United States marine biology

19th C., Science: Imagination in Chemistry (book review of Image and Reality)

19th C., Ptak Science Books: History of Dots #28: Cellular, Topical and Astronomical (1512-1888)

Late 18th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: A Monument to Joseph Priestley

1830s, The Red Notebook: Reading Darwin’s first masterpiece, Darwin collects a specimen, Darwin performs a blind test… on some condors, The Falklands fox: foolish dog of the South, How to get a large animal into a boat, and Darwin eats an excellent cat

18th C., The Renaissance Mathematicus: The scientific potter

1770, OU History of Science Collections: Longitude at Sea: J.T. Mayer (1770)

Late 17th – Early 18th C., OU History of Science Collections: The Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project

17th C., Aquarium of Vulcan: Oedipus Egypticus

1664, The Renaissance Mathematicus: Birth of the guinea pig

1660s, Quodlibeta: Boyle’s List

1625, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Centraal: First Published Microscopy Article?

Early 16th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: Renaissance Art of Neuroanatomy, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

16th C., Dinosaur Tracking: Leonardo da Vinci – Paleontology Pioneer

16th C., The Renaissance Mathematicus: Gunfight at the Cubic Corral

Late 15th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: Exploring Collections: Tracts on the French Disease in the College of Physicians

15th C., PACHSmörgåsbord: Making Science Fun: Joseph Moxon’s Astronomical Playing Cards

15th C., Cipher Mysteries: Visually mapping Cusanus and Bessarion

1325, PACHSmörgåsbord: Exploring Collections: Walter Burley in the College of Physicians

10th C., In Our Time (podcast): Muslim scholar Al-Biruni (mp3)

6th C., Greg Laden’s Blog: The Myth of Christianity Founding Modern Science and Medicine (graph)

4th C., The Renaissance Mathematicus: Going to the movies (on Agora)

1st C., In Our Time (podcast): Pliny’s Natural History (mp3)

5th – 4th C. BCE, The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics

12th C. BCE, Beyond the Bench: Eclipse in The Odyssey: Science Meets Mythology

14th C. BCE, PACHSmörgåsbord: HoS Micropost: King Tut, again

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Thanks for checking out this special edition of GS and hope you enjoyed some of the posts and, most of all, learned something new! Props to gg for maintaining this blog carnival for two years and hopefully more to come, since we can all use more history of science in our science blogging; and to Thony C. for submitting many of the posts for this edition.

I previously hosted The Giant’s Shoulders in August 2009. Do consider submitting your history of science-themed blog post to the next edition of The Giant’s Shoulders to Scicurious at Are You Scicurious? Alternatively, you can use the carnival submission form.