Promoting scholarly and public understanding of history of science, technology and medicine.
Featured Event
February 3, 2012
Nathaniel Comfort, Matthew Jones, Susan Lindee
What Matters about History of Science and What Do We Do About It?
Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science
Join three distinguished scholars for an evening of big questions: What do historians want audiences to understand about history of science, technology and medicine? What do historians want students to take away from classes, audiences from events, readers from books? What answers to these questions does the community of historians share in common? How do—or should—historians promote what matters about history of science?
News and Notes
“Experiment and Good Sense Must Direct You”: the Social Relations of Health, Healing and Knowledge-Making in Eighteenth-Century Plantation America.
Claire Gherini is a student at Johns Hopkins University. She received a 2011-2012 Dissertation Research Fellowship for her research that links the formal, printed medical ideas theorizing the relationship between illness, season, and climate that emerged among physicians in the eighteenth century to the experimentation with new treatments for illness that took place on the ground in plantations in South Carolina, Virginia, and the British West Indies.
PACHSmörgåsbord Group Blog
Grinding Telescope Mirrors, Then and Now
January 27, 2012 by Darin Hayton
The recent article at NPR on grinding mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope reveals that tacit knowledge and skills are as important now as ever. Technological developments and sophistication do not reduce the role of the skilled technician.
An Introductory History of Astrolabes
January 26, 2012 by Darin Hayton
Shanna Freeman over at Curiosity.com made a significant error in her comments about the astrolabe. In order to correct her missteps, I decided to post a draft of a history of astrolabes I wrote a few years back.
The Politics of Calendar Reform
January 20, 2012 by Darin Hayton
Yesterday’s debates about whether or not to continue inserting a leap second are nothing new. In fact, these most recent debates and, ultimately, the decision to postpone making decision, sound a lot like medieval and early modern effort to reform a calendar or adjust time keeping practices.
Retro-Diagnosis Run Amok—Sophocles’ Plague of Thebes
January 17, 2012 by Darin Hayton
In recent efforts to retro-diagnose a plague physicians have turned their attention to a fictional plague. How can this be good history or good science?
BSHS Travel Guide Seeks History of Science Articles about Philadelphia
January 14, 2012 by Paul Halpern
The British Society for History of Science seeks articles about Philadelphia history of science attractions.
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