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Posts Tagged “History of Science”

Entrance to the seed vault

Schrödinger’s History (TIME 100)

Posted on December 2nd, 2011 by Alun Salt

How can you say something is historically important or not unless you observe it? What happens if you set up conditions where you intentionally cannot observe a site’s historical importance? I said in the opening post that some sites might have been chosen as a deliberate trolling for comment, and I think the Svalbard Global [...]

Mendel's garden in St. Thomas's Abbey, Brno.

In search of the Platzgeist (TIME 100)

Posted on November 30th, 2011 by Alun Salt

It’s easy to pin scientific credit on a person. He or she usually has a name on the key publication, but how do you credit a place? Science is a human activity, so is it just the humans that matter or are there things were place contributes as much as people? While I was kicking [...]

The Galapagos Islands, iconic in the history of Evolutionary Theory, but is this the place it was discovered?

The scale of science and history (TIME 100)

Posted on November 28th, 2011 by Alun Salt

TIME has recently published 100 greatest places in the world. The book is a collection of sites that, the editors argue, have had the biggest impact on world history. It’s excellent blog material because hardly anyone has read it (including me), any list will be personal and omit something someone feels is important and, following [...]