The Journal of the History of Ideas Blog

Tag History of Science

The Taste of Water

by contributing editor Luna Sarti

John Parkinson and the Rise of Botany in the 17th Century

By Guest Contributor Molly Nebiolo The roots of contemporary botany have been traced back to the botanical systems laid out by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. Yet going back in further in time reveals some of the key figures who… Continue Reading →

Functional Promiscuity: The Choreography and Architecture of the Zinc Gang

By Contributing Editor Nuala F. Caomhánach   The tale about gag knuckles, taz-two, hairpin, ribbons, and treble clef is quite elusive.  Although they sound more like nicknames of a 1920’s bootlegging gang (at least to me) they are the formal… Continue Reading →

“To seek God in all things”: The Jesuit encounter with botany in India

By contributing writer Joseph Satish V Only a month after India gained independence from the British in 1947, the Indian botanist Debabrata Chatterjee wrote of his hope that in the new India the Government will… effect among other things the… Continue Reading →

Dispatches from Princeton’s History of Science Colloquium: Jutta Schickore’s “Contributions to a History of Experimental Controls”

By Guest Contributor Alison McManus Princeton’s History of Science Colloquium series recently welcomed Jutta Schickore, professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, to present a talk titled, “Contributions to a History of Experimental Controls.” In addition to… Continue Reading →

Review Essay: Caomhánach on Hamlin, Milam, and Schiebinger

By Contributing Editor Nuala F. Caomhánach Kimberly A. Hamlin. From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Erika Lorraine Milam. Looking for a Few Good Males:… Continue Reading →

What has Athens to do with London? Plague.

By Editor Spencer J. Weinreich It is seldom recalled that there were several “Great Plagues of London.” In scholarship and popular parlance alike, only the devastating epidemic of bubonic plague that struck the city in 1665 and lasted the better… Continue Reading →

A Story of Everything

By guest contributor Nuala F. Caomhánach In his A Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings (2017), Nasser Zakariya pries open a Latourian black box to reveal how natural philosophers and later scientists constructed “scientific epics” using four possible  “genres of… Continue Reading →

An “Extreme Turn”? Some Thoughts on Material Culture, Exploration, and Interdisciplinary Directions

By Contributing Writer Sarah Pickman In 1848 Peter Halkett, a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy, published his designs for a most curious invention. Halkett was interested in the numerous exploratory expeditions the Navy had sent to the Canadian Arctic… Continue Reading →

Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Brothers of Continuity

By guest contributor Audrey Borowski At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a young German polymath ventured into the heart of the South American jungle, climbed the Chimborazo volcano, crawled through the Andes, conducted experiments on animal electricity, and delineated… Continue Reading →

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