Category: Natural science & maths
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Rousseau on Science Education: The Delusion of Radical Independence
How is one to teach science? The conventional method is that a teacher sets out the received view on a certain topic and hopes that their students will somehow assimilate this view. An obvious drawback of this method is that it leaves students in the rather passive role of reproducing the ready-made knowledge presented to…
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Understanding the Nature of Scientific Discovery through Stories about the Chemical Elements
Discovery histories fascinate. They are filled with “bravery, ingenuity, and insurmountable odds”, with “morality and miracles, science and sacrifice”; they are said to “open new horizons, provide new insights, and create cast fortunes.” People may find them compelling because such stories offer glimpses into the exciting world of science, and appear to reveal how scientific…
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A Genealogy of Freudenthal’s Lincos, Part II: Intuitionistic Footprints Amongst the Stars
This article is the second part of a two-part series (the first one is to be found here), aiming to provide a short introduction to the intellectual history and genealogy of Hans Freudenthal’s Lingua Cosmica. This second part aims to show the subtle, yet fundamental influence played by the mathematical and philosophical school known as “intuitionism” in…
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Het kernwapen: geheime wetenschap en verborgen technologie
Het is niet ongewoon om de twee wereldoorlogen in de twintigste eeuw te duiden met de eerste als die van de chemici en de tweede als die van de fysici. De Tweede Wereldoorlog werd inderdaad gedomineerd door vindingen van natuurkundigen zoals rakettechnologie en radar en natuurlijk niet in de laatste plaats door de atoombom. Maar…
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On Trying: An Interview with Peter Galison
Peter Galison: I’m Peter Galison. I am a professor at Harvard University, where I’ve been for quite a while, and before that I taught at Stanford for about ten years. I grew up in New York City, and spent a year at École Polytechnique in Paris in a physics lab before I went to college.…
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A Genealogy of Freudenthal’s Lincos, Part I: Looking up from the ruins of Babel
This article is the first part of a two-part series, aiming to provide a short introduction to the intellectual history and genealogy of Hans Freudenthal’s Lingua Cosmica. This first part aims to describe the many predecessors to Lincos, from the various attempts to create a “philosophical language” in the 17th century to the rise of…
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Het kosmische perspectief: honderd jaar extragalactische sterrenkunde
Afbeelding: ESO/Juan Carlos Muñoz. We zijn eraan gewend geraakt om velerlei fraaie en fascinerende plaatjes van hemelobjecten langs te zien komen in kranten en tijdschriften, op televisie en internet. Een eeuw geleden lag dat nog heel anders. Naast dat waarnemingsinstrumenten zeer veel geavanceerder zijn geworden en korrelige zwart-wit foto’s vervangen zijn door kleurrijke electronische beelden,…
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The Discovery of Fission and Katharine Way, “Dear to the Community of Nuclear Physicists”
Tell me where all times past are. – John Donne 1. Introduction: a missed epoch-making discovery? As the century that saw the dawn of the nuclear age was drawing to a close, John A. Wheeler (1911-2008), approaching his ninetieth year, committed the memories of his long life and career to an autobiographical volume. An eminent…
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CERN: the foundational myth of European science diplomacy
In 2010, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Royal Society published a report entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy. The report argued for a greater use of science in the conduct of international relations between different countries and led to a greater emphasis on science diplomacy in policy circles throughout…
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Reviewing Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer: symbolism, genius, humility and wisdom
The winner of seven Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer (2023) is not only a feast for the historian of science but an overall fan favorite. Although classic themes such as the role of theory and experiments, individual and group work, material conditions, socio-political dimensions and the emergence of “big science” feature prominently in this biopic,…
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Marvin Minsky and the Missing Quotes: Metaphors and Anthropomorphism in AI
We will know less and less what it means to be human – José Saramago The idea of thinking machines is as old as thinking itself. The quest to create artificial life and machines with human-like abilities has deep roots in human culture and history. From mythological figures from the times of ancient Greece like…
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Kleppen van en over Schelpen
Onlangs was in het nieuws dat strandjutters op de Waddeneilanden meer kledingstukken, zwemvesten en schoenen op het strand vinden. Die toename werd in verband gebracht met de oversteek van asielzoekers naar Engeland. Het zou best wel eens kunnen dat linker en rechterschoenen op een verschillende manier aanspoelen, dacht ik. Want het deed me denken aan een onderzoek…
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Wired Fears: Electricity and Technophobia in the Nineteenth Century
Society usually accompanies the introduction of new technologies with both excitement and suspicion, being simultaneously driven by an enthusiasm for the possibility of improvement, as well as profoundly discomforted, with a sense of having little or no control over the direction of radical changes. 5G antennas are a very recent example of this dualism. On…
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Dutch Deltaification
The Dutch care so much about their delta. When widespread use of the word delta unexpectedly increased in the specific geographical area of the Netherlands, we can now speak of an epidemic. I am jesting, of course, but there is a more serious problem: the Netherlands are hardly a delta and the connotations that come…
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De Deltaïficatie van de Lage Landen
Hollanders geven om hun delta. Met de onverwachte toename van het gebruik van het woord delta in een specifiek gebied, namelijk Nederland, kunnen we nu spreken van een epidemie. Ik scherts hier natuurlijk, maar er ligt wel een ernstig probleem onder: Nederland is nauwelijks een delta te noemen en de connotaties die bij het woord…
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Adolphe Quetelet: a statistical method for all
Statistics form the methodological basis of a large variety of disciplines, from humanities to the natural sciences. These statistical methods have their roots in nineteenth-century statistical thinking. Statistical thinking in the nineteenth century could mean different things for different thinkers. We recognise three main trends. First, the practitioners of state sciences, who were called statisticians,…
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Voorbeeldige dubbelbiografie
Recensie van: Margriet van der Heijden, Denken is verrukkelijk. Het leven van Tatiana Afanassjewa en Paul Ehrenfest (Amsterdam: Prometheus 2021). De hoofdzaken over Lorentz’ opvolger als hoogleraar theoretische natuurkunde, Paul Ehrenfest, zullen de meeste lezers van ‘Shells & Pebbles’ wel zo’n beetje voor ogen hebben. De begenadigde docent die in Leiden hele voorraden briljante leerlingen heeft gevormd…
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Henry Oldenburg’s Fear of the Post
Henry Oldenburg (c.1619-1677) had many things to be afraid of. He was perpetually short of money, he was once imprisoned on spurious grounds as a potential spy, and like most seventeenth-century people he lost numerous friends and family to communicable diseases. One other fear, though, recurs in the many letters he sent throughout his life:…
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Making sense of conflicts in science
The history of science is littered with fierce and bitter conflicts. Historians of science have generally shown a strong interest in such personal vendettas. This is not merely because they impart a human interest to their narratives, but also because of their revelatory nature. These clashes often bring into the open thoughts and feelings that…
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Nieuw licht op Zernike?
Eigenlijk was ik die morgen, enkele weken geleden, bij de Bijzondere Collecties in de Universiteitsbibliotheek Groningen van plan de eerste jaargangen van de Universiteitskrant (UK) door te nemen (in september bestaat de UK een halve eeuw en dat is wel een publicatie waard), maar het liep een beetje anders. Terloops informeerde ik namelijk ook nog…
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De opkomst van de universitaire campus in Nederland, 1945-2020
Nu de universiteitsgebouwen in Nederland er verlaten bijliggen vanwege de coronapandemie – en geschikt worden gemaakt voor de anderhalvemetersamenleving – breekt een nieuw hoofdstuk aan in de roerige geschiedenis van de universiteitscampussen in de afgelopen decennia. Universiteiten zijn al enige tijd volop bezig met renovatie, sloop en nieuwbouw, vaak op basis van uitgesproken ideeën over…
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Observing an earthquake in 1734
On Friday October 25th 1734, between three and four at night, an earthquake hit Sussex County in the South of England. Several days later, a local Duke named Charles Lennox wrote a letter to the Royal Society of London in which he reported on the various observations of the earthquake he had collected. The Royal…
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Frozen Science
Last summer, the people of the Arctic Norwegian island of Sommarøy announced that they wanted to abolish time. With months of uninterrupted darkness in winter and daylight in summer, there is no point in living by a fixed 24-hour cycle. The island would be the world’s first ‘time-free zone’. The news was taken over by…
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An Astronomer Calls: George Airy’s Astronomer Royal’s Journal 1836-1847
Stargazing, discovering new planets, and large telescopes tend to dominate the public imagination about nineteenth-century astronomy. Yet, the everyday tasks of astronomers were less dominated by such an image. In fact, astronomers could find themselves in positions very different from these. A great example of this was the British astronomer George Biddell Airy (1801-1892). After…