history of science
clock | July 31, 2008Broca's Area, 1865:
This doesn't sound too out there to us now, but at the time it caused a lot of controversy. The problems wasn't the localization to the inferior frontal lobe, it was Broca's claim that it was the LEFT inferior frontal lobe. This didn't sit well with a lot of scientists at the time. It was pretty accepted that, when you had two sides or halves of an organ, the both acted in the same way. Both kidneys do the same thing, both sides of your lungs, and both of your ovaries or testes. Your legs and arms will do essentially the same thing, though due to handedness (or…
laelaps | July 28, 2008
A silverback Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed on July 23, 2008 at the Bronx zoo.
During my elementary school years I was spoon-fed the classic, textbook mythology about evolutionary theory. Although Jean Baptiste Lamarck had come up with a ridiculous notion to explain the neck of the giraffe the world was wholly unprepared for Charles Darwin's crystal clear scientific revelation in 1859, On the Origin of Species instantaneously being accepted as the only reasonable explanation for the unity and diversity of life. This is absolute nonsense, of course, but as we approach the "…
clock | July 27, 2008The second edition of The Giant's Shoulders, carnival of history of science, will be hosted by The Lay Scientist on August 15th. Check out the first edition to see what it is all about, then submit your stuff. If you appeared in a previous edition, you need to write something new, but if this will be your first time, you can sneak in some of your best old stuff, I'm sure that will be OK...
laelaps | July 25, 2008Beyond the importance of his ideas I find the life of Charles Darwin fascinating because of all the innumerable opportunities for history to have turned out differently. If his father had kept Darwin off the HMS Beagle, for instance, Darwin may well have had the quiet country parsonage he longed for, finding a non-controversial refuge in changing times. History, of course, turned out quite differently, but the more I learn about Darwin's life the more I appreciate the struggle involved in the development of evolution by natural selection.
Although Darwin unintentionally imitated some of his…
laelaps | July 24, 2008
An ebony langur (Trachypithecus auratus), photographed July 23th, 2008 at the Bronx zoo. Of all the animals at the zoo people stop to watch primates more than nearly any other group of animals. The monkeys & apes watch the primates on the other side of the barrier, too.
"What's that animal?"
"It's like a zebra mixed with a horse!"
"I don't like it."
And with that mother and teenage daughter walked off to inspect the red river hogs and gorillas of the Bronx zoo's Congo exhibit, ignoring the plastic slab explaining that the okapi in front of them is related to giraffes. I've seen the…
clock | July 23, 2008Olivia Judson has, so far, posted four parts of her Darwin series. We ("we" meaning "bloggers' including myself) have already commented on some of these, but here is the entire series (so far, I hope there will be more) for ease of use:
Darwinmania!
An Original Confession
Let's Get Rid of Darwinism
A Natural Selection
clock | July 16, 2008Olivia Judson is absolutely right - let's get rid of the terms "Darwinist" and "Darwinism". She writes, among else:
I'd like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually…
laelaps | July 16, 2008Bora has got the first edition of the history of science carnival The Giant's Shoulders up at A Blog Around the Clock. There's lots of great stuff, and I certainly recommend that you give it a look.
Speaking of carnivals, after giving it some thought I'd decided to pick up The Boneyard again, albeit in a slightly modified form. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement about the new format this week.
clock | July 15, 2008Welcome to the Firstest, Biggestest, Inaugural Edition of The Giant's Shoulders, the carnival of History Of Science! The carnival grew out of the Classic Papers Challenge by gg of Skulls in the Stars. That was so much fun, several of us thought this is something that should be done regularly, perhaps every month. So, gg and I got together and got this thing started.
I know some of the future hosts will do this very creatively (and yes, you can volunteer to host, though you will have to wait six months for your turn!), and I envisioned doing this in a form of, perhaps, a vigorous debate at…
clock | July 12, 2008The deadline for your entries for the first edition of The Giant's Shoulders is the end of July 15th (deadline is midnight EDT). Your posts should cover one of the following:
Classic Papers - your blog post should describe what is in a paper that is considered to be a classical paper, or explanation why you think the paper should be considered classical, or foundational, or monumental, or seminal, or mind-boggling/earth-shaking/paradigm-shifting, or just plain cool. Then place the work in some kind of context: historical, philosophical, theoretical, technological, political, social. Try to…
laelaps | July 12, 2008
It's only been in the last year that I've obtained a deeper appreciation for the history of science. Natural history is utterly enthralling, of course, but the history of the naturalists that have shaped our understanding of the world are just as fascinating. For my own part, the essays of Stephen Jay Gould (particularly in The Lying Stones of Marrakech, which I first picked up last year) have given me a deeper appreciation for the history of thought in paleontology and evolution. In fact, I was so struck with Gould's titular essay from Lying Stones that I immediately ordered a copy of The…
laelaps | July 4, 2008
Edouard de Montule's 1816 painting of the mastodon reconstructed in the Peale Museum. Note the down-turned tusks which were later turned the right way up.
Thomas Jefferson had an axe to grind when he wrote his Notes on the State of Virginia in 1781. Twenty years earlier the French naturalist Buffon had published the 9th volume of his epic series Histoire naturelle in which he compared the great, ferocious beasts of the Old World with the pitiful creatures found in the New World;
In general, all the animals there [in the Americas] are smaller than those of the old world, & there is not…
laelaps | July 3, 2008Note: Many thanks to Lars Dietz (see comments) who has done so much to correct some errors of attribution I made in this piece. He truly went above and beyond to dig up the truth behind John Hill's book and I am certainly thankful that he has done so.
In 1751 John Hill, upset the Royal Society of London rejected his application for membership, published a scathing critique of credulous papers printed by that body. One such review focused on a paper printed about an old, but common, legend that the Brent-Goose (probably Branta bernicla) was born not of eggs but of seashells dropped like fruit…
laelaps | July 2, 2008Michael Bolton and I share the same birth date, February 26th (he being considerably older than I, of course). Who is better? It's an absurd question (I opted out of comparing myself to Johnny Cash and Victor Hugo; I know when I'm beat), especially since it's like comparing apples and lawnmowers. The ever-respectable, serious journalists over at Newsweek have decided to do just that, though, setting Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln (who were born on the same day, February 12, 1809) up for a no-holds-barred deathmatch to see who would come out on top. Ok, maybe it's not that over-hyped but…
clock | July 2, 2008Archy tackles that question expertly. He's on a roll these days! And this is the mammoth story, so of course, his blog is the place to go for such answers.
laelaps | July 2, 2008If you haven't had enough of Wallace and Darwin yet, head on over to the Beagle Project Blog where there is a guest post by George Beccaloni that summarizes Wallace's involvement in the events that occurred on July 1, 1858. I don't agree with his hypothesis about why Wallace was forgotten or ignored for a time (it seems that lately there are many more people who ask "But what about Wallace?" if you fail to mention his contributions when discussing natural selection), but it is still a good read.
Also focusing on Wallace, the blog Mystery of Mysteries put up part one of a series on Wallace…
laelaps | July 1, 2008It is one thing to remember the date of an anniversary and quite another to truly recognize the significance of it. When it comes to Charles Darwin it seems that we have too much of the former and not enough of the latter, especially concerning what transpired 150 years ago today. Many are saying that today is the 150th birthday of natural selection, yet this is not really true. William Wells, Patrick Matthew, and Edward Blyth all preceded both Darwin and A.R. Wallace in print, each scratching the surface of the idea of natural selection but either misconstuing it as a preservative mechanism…
clock | July 1, 2008You can listen to the short and sweet Takeaway podcast:
A look at Charles Darwin's legacy as the theory of evolution turns 150:
One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection were presented at the Linnean Society of London. A year and a half later, Darwin published what is now a monumental work: "The Origin of the Species." The Takeaway looks at Darwin's legacy and the continuing debate surrounding evolution.
By John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji.
laelaps | July 1, 2008It seems that today is going to be a big day for science bloggers. Although updates were scheduled to go up yesterday, both Carl Zimmer and Phil Plait have delayed their announcements until sometime today. I've got a big announcement, too, something that I am definitely excited about.
My abstract on T.H. Huxley's thoughts about dinosaurs & birds has been accepted for the Dinosaurs: A Historical Perspective volume.
I truly am honored to be allowed to contribute to the book, and have to thank Mike Taylor for his advice and encouragement. I've got a lot of work to do this month but I am…