measured takes on science history and the future of science
This essay was first published on the Elicit blog. Oh, most magnificent and noble Nature! Have I not worshipped thee with such a love As never mortal man before displayed? Adored thee in thy majesty of visible creation, And searched into thy hidden and mysterious ways As Poet, as Philosopher, as Sage? Humphry Davy, as quoted in John Davy’s “Fragmentary Remains” It may seem that…
This essay was first published on the Elicit blog . In the 1880s, there was a famous debate between the English poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold and the biologist and anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley (also known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” 1 ). The debate concerned the place of natural sciences vs humanities and arts in contemporary education and culture. In Arnold’s definition, the meaning of…
This essay was first published on the Elicit blog . But it really makes no difference whether the unknown lies in the lap of Nature or, instead, is buried among the pages of worthless manuscripts read by no one; because an idea that has not entered the bloodstream of science, and does not circulate seminally in it, in practice does not exist for us. Stanisław Lem, His Master’s Voice In the…
“Time is the greatest innovator.” - Francis Bacon In the late 1980s-early 2000s, there was a famous debate between Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris about the nature of the evolutionary process. Gould thought that evolution is radically contingent: if “the tape of life” were to be rerun, even a minute change would result in widely divergent outcomes, and the…
"…There is even a stronger feeling inspired of the presence of that Truth to which we all profess to minister, when we find our own discoveries, such as they are, coincide independently with the discoveries of other men. The voice which is heard by two at once appears to be more real and external - one is more sure that it is no personal and private fancy, no idiosyncratic peculiarity, no…
If there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d, Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss The second burthen of a former child! William Shakespeare, Sonnet 59 This blog is setting sail as a stan account of Robert K. Merton. I first came across the name in a book titled “Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and…