Month: June 2016
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You can please everyone: a peace plan for David Wootton and Steven Shapin
David Wootton’s The Invention of Science (Allen Lane, 2015) is witty and learned and gloriously ambitious, and although I am not convinced that science as we know it came into existence in the seventeenth century, as Wootton argues, I do think that the seventeenth century is the one that lays the strongest claim to hosting…
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How to write a history of the humanities: A report on a colloquium with Rens Bod and James Turner
On the first of February the early modern historical colloquium on the history of the humanities took place in the fully packed Sweelinck room of Utrecht University. For this extended colloquium the university invited Prof. dr. Rens Bod and Prof. dr. James Turner, two authors of seminal publications on the history of the humanities. Rens…
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‘Everybody say Pannekoek!’
“Everybody say Pannekoek!’ ‘PENNNNEECOOOOKK’ ‘And again!” Emeritus-professor Ed van den Heuvel klom dapper op het muurtje in de tuin van het Trippenhuis van de KNAW om een uniek gezelschap te vereeuwigen. Rondom astronoom en socialist Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) hadden zich op 9 en 10 juni wetenschaps-, kunst- en politiek historici, filosofen, kunstenaars en astronomen verzameld…