Category: Uncategorized
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A Day in the Life of a PhD Candidate
Three academic years ago, a rag tag team of PhD Candidates took up the task of resurrecting Shells & Pebbles. Since then, several have completed their PhDs and graduated to new pursuits, or have nearly completed it, and need to devote the entirety of their brain power to finishing. In their place, we’ve had several…
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Notes from the United Nations Buffer Zone
I used to perform this joke when I was still working the comedy circuit in Amsterdam. It was a textbook comparison joke, where the comedian compares something familiar to the audience with something personal, an Other that is humorously introduced through the joke. In this joke, I compared the experience of waking up to birdsong…
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Mini-tentoonstelling historische statistische visualisatie
Dit artikel is een mini-tentoonstelling van vijf Nederlandse historische statistische diagrammen. Dergelijke afbeeldingen zijn tegenwoordig niet meer weg te denken uit ons alledaags leven; het ‘kijken’ naar statistiek in grafieken en diagrammen is gewoon geworden. Zulke statistische visualisaties vinden hun oorsprong in het midden van de negentiende eeuw, toen Nederlandse statistici begonnen te werken met…
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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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Curating for the Curious: An Interview with Prof. Manon Parry
Dr. Manon S. Parry is Professor of Medical and Nursing History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (VU), and Associate Professor of American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In September 2025, Bianca Angelien Claveria, a PhD candidate from the Institute for History, Leiden University, and proud Shells and Pebbles editor, interviewed…
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Living Pasts: Exploring Futures
An innovative course connecting students to history, and history to the world of endless possibilities. The first thing students learn in the Living Pasts: Exploring Futures course is nothing will unfold quite the way they expect. On day one, no detailed overview of the course exists… yet. Students are told that the finer details take…
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A Chat with ChatGPT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been increasingly present in columns of magazines and newspapers, in posts shared thousands of times on social media, and in the preoccupied voices of politicians, teachers, parents, and authorities of various degrees and provenance. The possibility of AI becoming a peril in the future is reflected in the doubts of many…
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Mapalad: Fieldwork Notes from Culion
“Godzilla vs. Kong. Why was this movie chosen to entertain the ferry passengers? Was the movie a personal favorite, or was it the only movie available?” I asked myself, as I craned my neck and shifted uncomfortably on my seat to get a better view of the medium-sized television screen mounted on the wall several…
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Shells and Pebbles Summer Travel Tips
“It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.” – Henry James As this academic year comes to a close, our team of editors wanted to cultivate a tradition started last year of sending our readers off into the summer with something more personal. Last year, we offered recommendations for your…
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‘Kennis die is opgedaan in koloniale context wordt overgedragen op studenten zonder stil te staan bij de historie ervan’
Elian Schure is promovenda bij de Universiteit Utrecht, waar ze onderzoek doet naar menselijke categorisatie in biologisch onderzoek. Tijdens haar Master in History and Philosophy of Science aan de UU deed ze onderzoek naar de rol van Nederlandse wetenschappers in de voormalige koloniën. In december 2024 heeft Yavanne van Tiggelen haar hierover geïnterviewd voor de…
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‘Knowledge gathered in a colonial context is transferred to students without regard to its history’
Elian Schure is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University (UU). She is currently working on her research on human categorization in biological research. During her master’s degree in History and Philosophy of Science at the UU, she studied the actions of Dutch scientists in the former Dutch colonies. In December 2024, Yavanne van Tiggelen interviewed…
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Final Report: ‘Beyond Switching Plastic Straws’
Tenth Belgian-Dutch PhD Conference in the History of Science, Medicine, and the Humanities Eibergen, 8-10 April 2025 The PhD conference ‘Beyond Switching Plastic Straws’ was a success. There were 24 people: (a) 15 were women, (b) at least 5 were foreigners, (c) many talked about recovering the agency of historical actors, (d) several had car-shared,…
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Mind the Gap
De laatste decennia van de twintigste eeuw werden gekenmerkt door een geglobaliseerde wereld. Nu, in de jaren twintig van de eenentwintigste eeuw zien we de terugkeer van machtsblokken. Drie wel te verstaan: de Verenigde Staten, Rusland en China. Met een vierde blok dat alle moeite doet om op het wereldtoneel voor vol mee te tellen:…
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Das Kapital? The Cambridge Capital Controversy
What is capital? The concept is central to theoretical economics, but also to applications of economic theory in industry and policy. One would thus assume that there is at least a tentative agreement regarding the meaning of the word, whether it be Karl Marx’s das Kapital or something else. However, the history of theoretical economics…
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A Weaver Becomes a Historian: Reproduction as a Historical Method
I was sitting in a lab wearing a white coat, while getting introduced to the process of making ink. At first, just like anyone would, I found myself being transported back to when I was sixteen, in a random chemistry class at high school. But then, all of a sudden, a different memory got triggered,…
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MEISJE! DENK AAN JE TOEKOMST: Van wetenschappelijk onderzoek tot podcast
“Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent.” Deze woorden zijn afkomstig van Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), de Amerikaanse pionier op het gebied van anticonceptie. Door anticonceptiemiddelen en informatie hierover te verspreiden, probeerde Sanger het aantal abortussen in de Verenigde Staten terug te dringen. Abortus bleef namelijk in de twintigste eeuw in de Verenigde Staten,…
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Een vijftiende-eeuws vrouwenlichaam ontleed
Toen de lade van de archiefkast openging en het document zichtbaar werd, leek het op het eerste gezicht niet meer dan een gehavend blad uit vervlogen tijden. We keken naar het enige middeleeuws archiefstuk van Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden, afkomstig uit de verzameling van de Nederlandse arts Jan Gerard de Lint. De online catalogus van…
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De ‘levenslijn’ van Christiaan Huygens
Christiaan Huygens schreef in 1669: ‘… door het trekken van een kromme lijn, waarop ik met den passer het leven afmeet van elken willekeurigen persoon, [zie ik] b.v. dat gij, op uw leeftijd van 38 jaar, nog ongeveer 19 jaren en 4 maanden leven kunt’ Met deze woorden introduceerde Christiaan het wonderlijke hulpmiddel dat hij…
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A Last Resort: Legitimizing Medical Experiments in the Colony
It is something that is considered to be self-evident today: in order to test a new pharmaceutical drug, a randomized controlled trial should be set up and the informed consent of those participating is needed. Before the Second World War, however, few such guidelines existed in print. Rather, medical ethics were implicit and flexible. This…
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‘A number of curious entomological works’
This story is published simultaneously by Gauronica (blog Special Collections of the University Library of the University of Groningen) and Shells and Pebbles. Recently, a number of colleagues from other university libraries visited us in Groningen. As usual, we did our very best to show them the beautiful objects we have in our Special Collections.…