#history-of-science — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #history-of-science, aggregated by home.social.
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Happy birthday, James Clerk Maxwell! 🎂 🎓️ ⚡️
Let's remember him not only for essentially formulating the full theory of electromagnetism, but also for founding kinetic theory and statistical mechanics (with Boltzmann and Gibbs), for his contributions to thermodynamics, the mechanics of continua, the theory of colours (I heard he took the world's first colour photograph); for his views about probability theory; and for MANY other things.
Among my favourite quotes:
> "They say that Understanding ought to work by the rules of right reason. These rules are, or ought to be, contained in Logic; but the actual science of Logic is conversant at present only with things either certain, impossible, or *entirely* doubtful, none of which (fortunately) we have to reason on. Therefore the true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability (which is, or which ought to be in a reasonable man's mind)." – Letter to L. Campbell, 1850 <https://
archive.org/details/lifeofjamesclerk00campuoft>.> "In the popular treatise, whatever shreds of the science are allowed to appear, are exhibited in an exceedingly diffuse and attenuated form, apparently with the hope that the mental faculties of the reader, though they would reject any stronger food, may insensibly become saturated with scientific phraseology, provided it is diluted with a sufficient quantity of more familiar language. In this way, by simple reading, the student may become possessed of the phrases of the science without having been put to the trouble of thinking a single thought about it. The loss implied in such an acquisition can be estimated only by those who have been compelled to unlearn a science that they might at length begin to learn it." – In "Tait's 'Thermodynamics'", 1878 <https://
doi.org/10.1038/017257a0>.> "it is our part to provide for the diffusion and cultivation, not only of true scientific principles, but of a spirit of sound criticism, founded on an examination of the evidences on which statements apparently scientific depend." – Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics, 1871 <https://
archive.org/details/scientificpapers02maxwuoft>.<https://
clerkmaxwellfoundation.org>#onthisday #physics #statistics #probability #historyofscience
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Happy birthday, James Clerk Maxwell! 🎂 🎓️ ⚡️
Let's remember him not only for essentially formulating the full theory of electromagnetism, but also for founding kinetic theory and statistical mechanics (with Boltzmann and Gibbs), for his contributions to thermodynamics, the mechanics of continua, the theory of colours (I heard he took the world's first colour photograph); for his views about probability theory; and for MANY other things.
Among my favourite quotes:
> "They say that Understanding ought to work by the rules of right reason. These rules are, or ought to be, contained in Logic; but the actual science of Logic is conversant at present only with things either certain, impossible, or *entirely* doubtful, none of which (fortunately) we have to reason on. Therefore the true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability (which is, or which ought to be in a reasonable man's mind)." – Letter to L. Campbell, 1850 <https://
archive.org/details/lifeofjamesclerk00campuoft>.> "In the popular treatise, whatever shreds of the science are allowed to appear, are exhibited in an exceedingly diffuse and attenuated form, apparently with the hope that the mental faculties of the reader, though they would reject any stronger food, may insensibly become saturated with scientific phraseology, provided it is diluted with a sufficient quantity of more familiar language. In this way, by simple reading, the student may become possessed of the phrases of the science without having been put to the trouble of thinking a single thought about it. The loss implied in such an acquisition can be estimated only by those who have been compelled to unlearn a science that they might at length begin to learn it." – In "Tait's 'Thermodynamics'", 1878 <https://
doi.org/10.1038/017257a0>.> "it is our part to provide for the diffusion and cultivation, not only of true scientific principles, but of a spirit of sound criticism, founded on an examination of the evidences on which statements apparently scientific depend." – Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics, 1871 <https://
archive.org/details/scientificpapers02maxwuoft>.<https://
clerkmaxwellfoundation.org>#onthisday #physics #statistics #probability #historyofscience
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📯#DigitalHistoryOFK: Adrian Wüthrich (TU Berlin) presents “Network Epistemology in Practice”.
How are theories of network epistemology reflected in historical scientific practice? The NEPI project uses born-digital sources from large research collaborations (like CERN's ATLAS) to study knowledge production through computational analysis.
📅10 June 2026, 4pm CET, online
ℹ️https://dhistory.hypotheses.org/13693 -
📯#DigitalHistoryOFK: Adrian Wüthrich (TU Berlin) presents “Network Epistemology in Practice”.
How are theories of network epistemology reflected in historical scientific practice? The NEPI project uses born-digital sources from large research collaborations (like CERN's ATLAS) to study knowledge production through computational analysis.
📅10 June 2026, 4pm CET, online
ℹ️https://dhistory.hypotheses.org/13693 -
#OnThisDay in 1826, physicist Georges Sire was born. His thesis on the “globular state of liquids” contributed to the early study of the #LeidenfrostEffect.
🔗Discover his contribution: https://www.leidenforce.eu/georges-sire-history-of-the-leidenfrost-effect
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On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the #StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 780), I discuss the books of #FrankTallis, the series #ViennaBlood, and the phenomenon of #SigmundFreud in #GenreFiction. #ScienceFiction #HistoryOfScience #Mystery #CrimeFiction #Gothic #Horror #HistoricalFiction #SFF #ForensicScience #Books #Bookstodon
Here is the link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/starshipsofa-780-p-a-cornell/id166360307?i=1000770891894
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On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the #StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 780), I discuss the books of #FrankTallis, the series #ViennaBlood, and the phenomenon of #SigmundFreud in #GenreFiction. #ScienceFiction #HistoryOfScience #Mystery #CrimeFiction #Gothic #Horror #HistoricalFiction #SFF #ForensicScience #Books #Bookstodon
Here is the link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/starshipsofa-780-p-a-cornell/id166360307?i=1000770891894
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Lovely exhibition of astronomical instruments (modern reproductions)!
Left to right:
A torquetum (converting celestial coordinates)
A Rojas astrolabe (time, coordinates)
A brass ‘mirror of the world’ (time around the world)
Quadrants, nocturnals. -
Lovely exhibition of astronomical instruments (modern reproductions)!
Left to right:
A torquetum (converting celestial coordinates)
A Rojas astrolabe (time, coordinates)
A brass ‘mirror of the world’ (time around the world)
Quadrants, nocturnals. -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nagel
German ornithologist and artist ... beautiful artworks, hope the Bremen state archives puts out all the digitized contents.
#Wikipedia #newarticles #biology #ornithology #historyofscience
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nagel
German ornithologist and artist ... beautiful artworks, hope the Bremen state archives puts out all the digitized contents.
#Wikipedia #newarticles #biology #ornithology #historyofscience
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@minouette The marine dimension caught my attention, as I knew of Silent Spring, but not of earlier books on #SeaLife & work in aquatic biology - now fixed in my mind by the power of an image. Thank you for all the delightful insights into the lives & impact of individuals & the #HistoryOfScience.
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@minouette The marine dimension caught my attention, as I knew of Silent Spring, but not of earlier books on #SeaLife & work in aquatic biology - now fixed in my mind by the power of an image. Thank you for all the delightful insights into the lives & impact of individuals & the #HistoryOfScience.
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🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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Today, it is 70 years since #GeorgeMurrayLevick passed away. This British Antarctic explorer made observations on penguins that were considered too shocking for the world. They are recounted in A Polar Affair, an unusual and colourful book of #PolarExploration, #Penguins, and perversion.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm
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Today, it is 70 years since #GeorgeMurrayLevick passed away. This British Antarctic explorer made observations on penguins that were considered too shocking for the world. They are recounted in A Polar Affair, an unusual and colourful book of #PolarExploration, #Penguins, and perversion.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm
-
🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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150(!) years ago today, #HMSChallenger returned to Spithead from a scientific expedition that birthed the discipline of #Oceanography, but what did they find? Read more about this in Full Fathom 5000, an engaging book that focuses on the many animals the expedition found in the deep sea.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Oceans #MarineBiology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci
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150(!) years ago today, #HMSChallenger returned to Spithead from a scientific expedition that birthed the discipline of #Oceanography, but what did they find? Read more about this in Full Fathom 5000, an engaging book that focuses on the many animals the expedition found in the deep sea.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Oceans #MarineBiology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci
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This week's #NewBooks at the library: Who is excited about the next few books he will be reviewing?
- After an impressive debut, I am looking forward to reading Cal Flyn's second book, The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness, published by HarperCollins.
- Time for another deep dive into the history of my favourite discipline, #EvolutionaryBiology. I really enjoyed Costa's annotated version of Wallace's notebook, and am very excited about delving into this annotated version of #CharlesDarwin's The Descent of Man, beautifully published here by @princetonupress. Expect me to go dark for a while, it's over 760 pages!
- And for context, I will be adding a review of Jeremy DeSilva's A Most Interesting Problem: What #Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about #HumanEvolution, published a few years back, also by Princeton.
#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Evolution #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci @bookstodon
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This week's #NewBooks at the library: Who is excited about the next few books he will be reviewing?
- After an impressive debut, I am looking forward to reading Cal Flyn's second book, The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness, published by HarperCollins.
- Time for another deep dive into the history of my favourite discipline, #EvolutionaryBiology. I really enjoyed Costa's annotated version of Wallace's notebook, and am very excited about delving into this annotated version of #CharlesDarwin's The Descent of Man, beautifully published here by @princetonupress. Expect me to go dark for a while, it's over 760 pages!
- And for context, I will be adding a review of Jeremy DeSilva's A Most Interesting Problem: What #Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about #HumanEvolution, published a few years back, also by Princeton.
#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Evolution #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci @bookstodon
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319 years ago today #CarlLinnaeus was born. The scholarly #biography The Man Who Organized Nature provides a full immersion in his life, revealing the polymath behind his reputation as the father of taxonomy.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Taxonomy #Botany #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm @princetonupress
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319 years ago today #CarlLinnaeus was born. The scholarly #biography The Man Who Organized Nature provides a full immersion in his life, revealing the polymath behind his reputation as the father of taxonomy.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Taxonomy #Botany #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm @princetonupress
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Dark Ages: WHEN AND WHY SCIENCE GOES IN REVERSE
Abstract: Granting that inequality, the rise of a plutocracy, tends to cause civilizational collapse, how does the mechanism of collapse exactly work? Does it have to do with creating a supine population which has lost natural curiosity and mental agency? Indeed a large civilization is a dynamic phenomenon, exhausting old resources while finding new ones rendered possible by new science. So science is no idle pursuit, but the engine of creation. And this is exactly why plutocracy targets it.
To stay in power, while the civilization which brought it is in decline, plutocracy savages the thinkers who could remedy the decline by criticizing the plutocratic management, or the thinking which would reveal to We The People that they have been turned into bleating, terrorized sheep. And that must include the teaching of sophisticated thought, including science.
***
The logic of scientific discovery is not just a matter of curiosity or history. It’s also a matter of logic: finding what was found first, because it is often what is the most apparent and obvious. Thus studying the history of science has a pedagogical aspect.
But not just that: often the logic of discovery has been obscured and one of the reasons has been to dissimulate how clever and “scientific”, or technological people could be in the past [1]. It has also obscured how the several Dark Ages we know of happened. In the Dark Age which terminated the Bronze Age, the savagery got so intense that writing was lost to the point that the old writing systems disappeared (the Phoenician alphabet, which gave rise to the Greek alphabet, did not derive from Cretan alphabets; it was derived from something else 1000 year old).
So by studying how and why science got destroyed, one can study forces to that effect… They keep on coming back…
***
The Loss Of Ancient Science Was Astounding:
Examples are the discovery that the Earth was round and correct computation of its size (Phyteas of Marseilles, an explorer who may have got to Iceland; generations later, Eratosthenes). Much of that knowledge like the rest of Greco-Roman science was erased by Christian Terror and Obscurantism… Itself propelled and engineered by obscurantist plutocracy, precisely to create unreason and stupidification.
Thus the Ankyterea mechanism, a very sophisticated mechanical computer, or the start of infinitesimal calculus or Aristarchus of Samos’ heliocentric arguments… The argument, relaunched by Buridan around 1340 CE, that the Sun was gigantic and thus ought to be the one turned around, was pretty obvious: after computing the distance of the Moon from Earth’s shadow, studying the terminator of the Moon, the Greeks knew the Sun was at least three million kilometers away and thus much bigger… Also Greece earned a lot of income by breeding better animals thus knowing about selection…
***
Science was destroyed by Christianism and its plutocratic sponsors to create the meta-worship of unreason: if one venerates unreason, one may as well believe that there is more wisdom in One-man rule, rather than in debate…. Thus “Orthodox Catholicism” was translated into the worship of the Emperor/Monarch, representative of the great Dog barking from Heaven.
Buridan and other top intellectuals, and the science and mathematics they produced, and that includes the geometric calculus which Newton would use, were condemned. more than a century after Buridan’s death, when the French King Louis XI, Europe’s most powerful monarch, made an alliance with the Pope. This holy alliance of fiends had long term consequences, like sending to be burned alive many thinkers, including the medical doctor who discovered blood circulation, Servet… Who was burned alive very slowly, over several hours in Geneva, by the always very attentionate fanatic, a French lawyer called Calvin, Geneva’s tyrant, whom the abuse of God had rendered completely insane and amazingly vicious…
Fortunately, the complete fall in the Dark Ages was avoided in the Sixteenth Century: several of the monarchs in power were not too enarmored by the existing order and kept their distances from the Pope (Charles Quint, Henry VIII, Henri III, Henri IV)… Technological superiority won wars and thus science was well received by the powers that be. Rome under Emperor Vespasian (circa 70 CE) could afford to despise the advancement of technology… But Elizabeth I could not because her sea captains had to be the best in the best ships, lest the Great Armada took Britain over… While Basque fishermen had long learned to discreet about the abundant cod and right whales off Newfoundland…
***
Later science was diverted to cultivate nationalism or ethnicism. The numeral system, launched by the Greeks and amplified by Indians, who added the crucial zero was called an “Arab” invention generally in conjunction with singing the praises of Islam. However the transmission and amplification (if any) was due to a Central Asian, Al-Khwarizmi in the House Of Wisdom… the House of Wisdom in Baghdad which one can euphemistically describe as the good side of Islam (Mahomet advocated for science at some point; something Christ never did to my knowledge).
***
A Striking Example of Historical Disinformation Is to Stamp Mechanics WithThe Label “Newton”:
Nearly all Newton’s laws were discovered before Newton, three of them by French physicists (horror!). Ishmael Bullaldius/Boulliaut, a French priest (with now a crater on the Moon), discovered the Gravitation Law, and the proof of F = ma for gravitation is in Buridan, three centuries earlier (I read it verbatim; In Buridan Axiomatics, F = ma is a theorem…). BTW, Newton himself argued that in his dispute with Hooke… “I saw further because I was standing on the shoulders of giants… “ a famous quote from Bernard of Chartres, who died in 1124 CE, 550 years before Newton… Which Newton used tongue in cheek… While discreetly insulting the dwarfy Hooke…
Not to say Newton was not great. He was! His proofs of how various axioms of mechanics implied each other was crucial.However, it’s Buridan who found momentum, three centuries before Newton and F = m dv/dt…
And look at Émilie du Châtelet: long considered, even in France, just as Voltaire’s girlfriend.. She was more important than him! But that was ignored because she was a woman (who decided to dress like a man to be taken seriously…) Émilie, translating Newton from Latin to French, realized that Newton had confused momentum and energy. She did not just translate: she redid Newton’s math, chapter by chapter and added supplements, for example on tides, or on Earth’s inclination (her translation is still the copy of Newton in French in 2026, BTW)
All of this is of great contemporary interest: In Europe the partisans of “degrowth” succeeded to make “degrowth” official European policy in many countries (for example Elizabeth Bornes, French PM, wanted to reduce French electric consommation by 35% by 2035… while turning everything electric; so agency would have been radically decreased). That grotesque and anti-civilizational, even anti-humanistic policy of degrowth is now increasingly contested, as it is becoming ever more obvious that Europe is losing AGENCY.
Thus the partisans of degrowth, cornered like the antihumanists they are, now want to double up on their evil scheme and outright advocate loudly “DESCIENCE”. An immediate battle is the FCC, the Future Circular Collider in the greater Geneva area, a new extension of CERN. This is to study high energy physics, the architecture of nature, and it costs peanuts relative to the profits of the luxury handbag industry in France alone…
The truth is that, without much more advanced science, most of the present world’s population will have to vanish, because the present technologies are unsustainable in many different ways…
Who found what, when and how shows us how to inquire. It’s a must, not just to figure things out, and to learn how to figure things out, but also because, if we don’t, civilization may well die, and not nicely…. This is what the epidemics of unreason and de-science in the past have shown, and what we must study, including the Maya collapse…
To explain civilizational collapse, one generally look at Inequality. However, the Inequality is the fruit of a Plutocracy, and the Plutocracy, as its name indicates, uses evil ways to stay in power: removing agency in those over whom Plutocracy exert its power is foremost and most crucial. That is best implemented not by using physical chains, but mental chains. Hence Plutocracies tend to stupidify their subjects. And how to do this? By implementing de-science!
The de-science, and, more generally cognitive derangement syndrome, in turn generates a population which is uncurious, impotent, unwilling and incapable of solving problems, and thus easy for foreign powers to dominate, invade and occupy.
Patrice Ayme
***
BURIDAN: MOMENTUM, FORCE, INERTIA, F = MA, MIDDLE AGES…
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/momentum-force-inertia-middle-ages-buridan/
***
[1] And this happens also in a granular fashion. When general Vespasian succeeded, after the year of the four emperors, to Nero, he abandoned or demolished several of Nero’s technological projects (like the hydropower revolving restaurant, or the giant canal projects). Vespasian actively discouraged the advancement of engineering… To save jobs, he said, the same old argument which has resurfaced with AI. After Vespasian, there are no quarrels on advancing technology: that’s abandoned. It’s in Gaul that mechanical harvesters would be used while in Italy, slaves laboring in giant latifundia would be preferred. The former explains why Gaul became the power of the future and Italy would never recover all the way to Mussolini… So a grain of degrowth, de-science and de-tech like Vespasian can bring an entire state, here the Roman state to fall…
She found energy, infrared… What did Newton find?
#articles #Civilization #Collapse #DarkAges #DeScience #Degrowth #Education #Faith #history #HistoryOfScience #plutocracy #Religion #Science #Unreason -
Dark Ages: WHEN AND WHY SCIENCE GOES IN REVERSE
The logic of scientific discovery is not just a matter of curiosity or history. It’s also a matter of logic: finding what was found first, because it is often what is the most apparent and obvious. Thus studying the history of science has a pedagogical aspect.
But not just that: often the logic of discovery has been obscured and one of the reasons has been to dissimulate how clever and “scientific”, or technological people could be in the past [1]. It has also obscured how the several Dark Ages we know of happened. In the Dark Age which terminated the Bronze Age, the savagery got so intense that writing was lost to the point that the old writing systems disappeared (the Phoenician alphabet, which gave rise to the Greek alphabet, did not derive from Cretan alphabets; it was derived from something else 1000 year old).
So by studying how and why science got destroyed, one can study forces to that effect… They keep on coming back…
***
The Loss Of Ancient Science Was Astounding:
Examples are the discovery that the Earth was round and correct computation of its size (Phyteas of Marseilles, an explorer who may have got to Iceland; generations later, Eratosthenes). Much of that knowledge like the rest of Greco-Roman science was erased by Christian Terror and Obscurantism… Itself propelled and engineered by obscurantist plutocracy, precisely to create unreason and stupidification.
Thus the Ankyterea mechanism, a very sophisticated mechanical computer, or the start of infinitesimal calculus or Aristarchus of Samos’ heliocentric arguments… The argument, relaunched by Buridan around 1340 CE, that the Sun was gigantic and thus ought to be the one turned around, was pretty obvious: after computing the distance of the Moon from Earth’s shadow, studying the terminator of the Moon, the Greeks knew the Sun was at least three million kilometers away and thus much bigger… Also Greece earned a lot of income by breeding better animals thus knowing about selection…
***
Science was destroyed by Christianism and its plutocratic sponsors to create the meta-worship of unreason: if one venerates unreason, one may as well believe that there is more wisdom in One-man rule, rather than in debate…. Thus “Orthodox Catholicism” was translated into the worship of the Emperor/Monarch, representative of the great Dog barking from Heaven.
Buridan and other top intellectuals, and the science and mathematics they produced, and that includes the geometric calculus which Newton would use, were condemned. more than a century after Buridan’s death, when the French King Louis XI, Europe’s most powerful monarch, made an alliance with the Pope. This holy alliance of fiends had long term consequences, like sending to be burned alive many thinkers, including the medical doctor who discovered blood circulation, Servet… Who was burned alive very slowly, over several hours in Geneva, by the always very attentionate fanatic, a French lawyer called Calvin, Geneva’s tyrant, whom the abuse of God had rendered completely insane and amazingly vicious…
Fortunately, the complete fall in the Dark Ages was avoided in the Sixteenth Century: several of the monarchs in power were not too enarmored by the existing order and kept their distances from the Pope (Charles Quint, Henry VIII, Henri III, Henri IV)… Technological superiority won wars and thus science was well received by the powers that be. Rome under Emperor Vespasian (circa 70 CE) could afford to despise the advancement of technology… But Elizabeth I could not because her sea captains had to be the best in the best ships, lest the Great Armada took Britain over… While Basque fishermen had long learned to discreet about the abundant cod and right whales off Newfoundland…
***
Later science was diverted to cultivate nationalism or ethnicism. The numeral system, launched by the Greeks and amplified by Indians, who added the crucial zero was called an “Arab” invention generally in conjunction with singing the praises of Islam. However the transmission and amplification (if any) was due to a Central Asian, Al-Khwarizmi in the House Of Wisdom… the House of Wisdom in Baghdad which one can euphemistically describe as the good side of Islam (Mahomet advocated for science at some point; something Christ never did to my knowledge).
***
A Striking Example of Historical Disinformation Is to Stamp Mechanics WithThe Label “Newton”:
Nearly all Newton’s laws were discovered before Newton, three of them by French physicists (horror!). Ishmael Bullaldius/Boulliaut, a French priest (with now a crater on the Moon), discovered the Gravitation Law, and the proof of F = ma for gravitation is in Buridan, three centuries earlier (I read it verbatim; In Buridan Axiomatics, F = ma is a theorem…). BTW, Newton himself argued that in his dispute with Hooke… “I saw further because I was standing on the shoulders of giants… “ a famous quote from Bernard of Chartres, who died in 1124 CE, 550 years before Newton… Which Newton used tongue in cheek… While discreetly insulting the dwarfy Hooke…
Not to say Newton was not great. He was! His proofs of how various axioms of mechanics implied each other was crucial.However, it’s Buridan who found momentum, three centuries before Newton and F = m dv/dt…
And look at Émilie du Châtelet: long considered, even in France, just as Voltaire’s girlfriend.. She was more important than him! But that was ignored because she was a woman (who decided to dress like a man to be taken seriously…) Émilie, translating Newton from Latin to French, realized that Newton had confused momentum and energy. She did not just translate: she redid Newton’s math, chapter by chapter and added supplements, for example on tides, or on Earth’s inclination (her translation is still the copy of Newton in French in 2026, BTW)
All of this is of great contemporary interest: In Europe the partisans of “degrowth” succeeded to make “degrowth” official European policy in many countries (for example Elizabeth Bornes, French PM, wanted to reduce French electric consommation by 35% by 20235, while turning everything electric). That grotesque and anti-civilizational, even anti-humanistic policy of degrowth is now increasingly contested, as it is becoming ever more obvious that Europe is losing AGENCY.
Thus the partisans of degrowth, cornered like the antihumanists they are, now want to double up on their evil scheme and advocate outright “DESCIENCE”. An immediate battle is the FCC, the Future Circular Collider in the greater Geneva area, a new extension of CERN. This is to study high energy physics, the architecture of nature, and it costs peanuts relative to the handbag industry in France alone…
The truth is that, without much more advanced science, most of the present world’s population will have to vanish, because the present technologies are unsustainable in many different ways…
Who found what, when and how shows us how to inquire. It’s a must, not just to figure things out, and to learn how to figure things out, but also because, if we don’t, civilization may well die, and not nicely…. This is what the epidemics of unreason and de-science in the past have shown, and what we must study, including the Maya collapse…
To explain civilizational collapse, one generally look at Inequality. However, the Inequality is the fruit of a Plutocracy, and the Plutocracy, as its name indicates, uses evil ways to stay in power: removing agency in those over whom Plutocracy exert its power is crucial. That is best implemented not by using physical chains, but mental chains. Hence Plutocracies tend to stupidify their subjects. And how to do this? By implementing de-science!
Patrice Ayme
***
BURIDAN: MOMENTUM, FORCE, INERTIA, F = MA, MIDDLE AGES…
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/momentum-force-inertia-middle-ages-buridan/
***
[1] And this happens also in a granular fashion. When general Vespasian succeeded, after the year of the four emperors, to Nero, he abandoned or demolished several of Nero’s technological projects (like the hydropower revolving restaurant, or the giant canal projects). Vespasian actively discouraged the advancement of engineering… To save jobs, he said, the same old argument which has resurfaced with AI. After Vespasian, there are no quarrels on advancing technology: that’s abandoned. It’s in Gaul that mechanical harvesters would be used while in Italy, slaves laboring in giant latifundia would be preferred. The former explains why Gaul became the power of the future and Italy would never recover all the way to Mussolini… So a grain of degrowth, de-science and de-tech like Vespasian can bring an entire state, here the Roman state to fall…
She found energy, infrared… What did Newton find?
#Civilization #Collapse #DarkAges #DeScience #Degrowth #HistoryOfScience #plutocracy #Religion #Science #Unreason -
🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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@Pyb What a profound epitaph. She gave everything to a science that didn't yet know how to protect her.
Elizabeth Fleischman, Marie Curie, and many others paid with their lives for knowledge we now take for granted. The least we can do is remember their names.
"I believe that I have done some good in this world." She did. 💙
#ElizabethFleischman #HistoryOfScience #WomenInScience #Radiology
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@Pyb What a profound epitaph. She gave everything to a science that didn't yet know how to protect her.
Elizabeth Fleischman, Marie Curie, and many others paid with their lives for knowledge we now take for granted. The least we can do is remember their names.
"I believe that I have done some good in this world." She did. 💙
#ElizabethFleischman #HistoryOfScience #WomenInScience #Radiology
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Today is 167 years since the death of #AlexanderVonHumboldt. This admirably concise biography offers a factual and nuanced picture of his life and work, and critically interrogates previous portrayals.
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/02/11/book-review-alexander-von-humboldt-a-concise-biography/
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Biography #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm @princetonupress @princetonnature
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Today is 167 years since the death of #AlexanderVonHumboldt. This admirably concise biography offers a factual and nuanced picture of his life and work, and critically interrogates previous portrayals.
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/02/11/book-review-alexander-von-humboldt-a-concise-biography/
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Biography #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm @princetonupress @princetonnature
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Notes about notebooks?
Ulkar Aghayeva writes about the history of laboratory notebooks.
Aghayeva, U. “A Brief History of Lab Notebooks.” Asimov Press (2026). DOI: 10.62211/52wg-76ye
Source: Scott Nesbitt’s The Monday Kickoff - well worth subscribing to.#notetaking #notebooks #historyofscience https://www.asimov.press/p/lab-notebooks
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Notes about notebooks?
Ulkar Aghayeva writes about the history of laboratory notebooks.
Aghayeva, U. “A Brief History of Lab Notebooks.” Asimov Press (2026). DOI: 10.62211/52wg-76ye
Source: Scott Nesbitt’s The Monday Kickoff - well worth subscribing to.#notetaking #notebooks #historyofscience https://www.asimov.press/p/lab-notebooks
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Engaging Essays In Cosmology by A. Tomilin
About the Book
A book of essays and short stories in three parts and ten chapters about the people and the achievements of the great science of the structure and development of the Universe from antiquity to the present day, composed and written on the basis of many sources by the author.
About the Author
A. Tomilin is a lecturer at an institute. Engaging Essays on Cosmology is not the first book by this author.
Young readers have repeatedly encountered his name in the pages of journals and popular
science collections. Several works have come from his pen, published by the “Children’s
Literature” publishing house, including the booklet For What – Nothing, written in
collaboration with N.V. Terebinskaya, the book Project Alpha K–2, as well as the book Engaging Essays on Astronomy, issued by “Molodaya Gvardiya.”This English translation of the book in English by Damitr Mazanav, has an extended epilogue containing exciting new discoveries the theories from 1970s to 2026 that have fundamentally changed our views about Universe.
Translated from the Russian and typeset in LaTeX by Damitr Mazanav using Quattrocento
Illustrations: G. Kovanov and V. Kovynev
This English translation released on the Web by The Mir Titles Project in 2026
under Creative Commons Share Alike 4.0 License.You can get the book here and here
Translator’s Note
This is the fourth book I am translating the Eureka series. The author A.N.~Tomilin has written several popular science books. We have earlier seen his book on cosmogony, titled Fascinating Cosmogony. This book is on a related theme of Cosmology. I was first introduced to ideas of cosmology and general relativity during my masters. Since then, the idea that we can infact study and make sense of the origins and structure of the universe at the largest scale have fascinated me. Translating this book in many ways was refreshing some of the ideas of cosmology and general relativity that I had learned. The quote by Corliss is indicative of how with limited data, we here on Earth, an insignificant part of the universe can make sense of it at all, constructing theories that will make sense of what we observe.
Since the book was written in 1971, several speculative hypotheses presented in the book have not been supported by data. To indicate this, at some places I have added sidenotes with my initials “DM”. I have also added an \textbf{Epilogue: Cosmology as of 2026} which summarises some of the major landmarks in the themes discussed since the book was written in 1970s. Another change that I have added is to give the chapters descriptive titles. Originally, the chapters were just numbered, but I thought giving descriptive titles would be a better choice.
The reader will occasionally encounter brief, aphoristic remarks attributed to Kozma Prutkov in the last chapter. These are not incidental embellishments, but deliberate inclusions. Kozma Prutkov was not a single individual, but a fictional author created in nineteenth-century Russia by a group of writers, including Aleksey Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers. Presented as a pompous yet self-assured thinker, Prutkov’s writings consist of concise maxims, paradoxes, and satirical observations on knowledge, reason, and human pretension.
At first glance, such a figure may seem out of place in a discussion of cosmology. Yet the inclusion is not without purpose. Scientific inquiry, particularly in a field as vast and abstract as cosmology, carries with it a natural tendency towards overconfidence in models, measurements, and interpretations. Prutkov’s aphorisms serve as a quiet counterpoint to this tendency. They remind us — often with a touch of irony — that clarity is hard-won, that appearances can mislead, and that systems of thought, however elegant, may conceal their own limitations.
There is also a more practical reason. Cosmology deals with scales and concepts far removed from everyday experience. At such distances, both literal and intellectual, language can easily become either overly technical or excessively grand. A well-placed aphorism has the virtue of restoring proportion. It compresses an idea into a form that can be held in mind, even as the surrounding discussion expands beyond immediate intuition.
The remarks of Kozma Prutkov are therefore included not as commentary on specific results, but as companions to them. They are meant to be read not as authorities, but as provocations — brief interruptions that invite the reader to pause, reflect, and occasionally question the very framework within which the narrative unfolds. Mistakes and omissions (and I am sure they will be there), if any, are my own.
Contents
Translator’s Note vii
Instead Of An Introduction xviiI. People 1
1. The Miletus Manifesto 3
1.1. When the Earth Was Flat… 4
1.2. In the Homeland of Science .
1.3. Thales of Miletus 11
1.4. Heraclitus of Ephesus 21
1.5. Philosophy + Mathematics = ? 24
1.6. Elea: Xenophanes and Parmenides 31
1.7. Zeno of Elea and His Paradoxes 35
1.8. The Atomists 40
1.9. Summa summarum of Greek materialism 432. The Philosopher King of Physics
2.1. Aristotle 47
2.2. The Triumph of Aristotelianism 53
2.3. At the Decline of Classical Greco-Roman Culture 58
2.4. Zigzag of History 64
2.5. Flames of Bonfires Do Not Dispel the Night 67
2.6. The Principles of Papal Infallibility 70
2.7. The Catholic Church and Progress 75
2.8. The Middle Ages and Technology 803. From Cusa to Calculus 89
3.1. Nicholas of Cusa 91
3.2. Cosmological Rubicon 96
3.3. The Immortality of the Great Heretic 102
3.4. Eppur si muove!. 110
3.5. René Descartes (Cartesius) 124
3.6. Isaac Newton 132
3.7. How Useful It Is When There Are No Great Discoveries 136
3.8. Newton’s Apple 142
3.9. The Universe of Sir Isaac 148II. Successes and Doubts 157
4. The Star-Struck Philosophers 159
4.1. The World in Lomonosov’s Hands 162
4.2. The Universe as a System — Early Speculations 166
4.3. Immanuel Kant — Natural Philosopher 170
4.4. Epilogue of the Philosopher’s Life 178
4.5. Johann Lambert 183
4.6. William Herschel 1875. The Dark Night of the Paradox 195
5.1. Olbers’ Paradox 198
5.2. Knights of the “Heat Death” 203
5.3. Hugo von Seeliger 210
5.4. A Celestial Census Saves the Situation 2136. The Copernicus of Curves 219
6.1. What Euclid Taught 222
6.2. The King Midas of the Land of Mathematics 229
6.3. Visiting the Flatfolk 235
6.4. Gauss’s “Magnificent Theorem” 241
6.5. The Copernicus of Geometry 245
6.6. The Real Construction of the “Imaginary World”256
6.7. The Astonishing Spaces of Bernhard Riemann 261III. Ideas 269
7. The Symphony of Space-Time 271
7.1. Can a “Decisive Experiment” Fail? 273
7.2. Overture to the Symphony of Relativity 279
7.3. In Search of the Harmony of the Universe 286
7.4. The Fourth Dimension 293
7.5. Special Theory of Relativity 302
7.6. The next step was inevitable… 305
7.7. “Look!” 3148. The Priest, the Prize, and the Point of Origin 331
8.1. Nineteen Hundred And Seventeen, February 332
8.2. “I Only Solve The Equations” 342
8.3. Yet Another Great Discovery 354
8.4. Horizons of the Universe 365
8.5. Father Georges Solves Equations 369
8.6. Genius of George Gamow 372
8.7. “Big Bang” 3779. A Journey Along the t-Axis 387
9.1. From “Radio Stars” to Star-like Objects 389
9.2. Quasars, or What Practice Does to Theory 395
9.3. A Journey Along the t-Axis 399
9.4. The Universe, the Year 1971 40710. The Battle for the Soul of the Cosmos 413
10.1. When an Idea Is Not Mad Enough 415
10.2. Kabbalistics of the Twentieth Century 424
10.3. Matter + Antimatter = ? 434
10.4. The Battle of Ideas Continues 441
10.5. What Is the Universe? 446IV. Epilogue: Cosmology as of 2026 453
11. The Dark Side of the Cosmos 455
11.1. The Mystery of the Missing Mass 457
#Ccbysa #Oer #astronomy #bigBangTheory #cosmicMicrowaveBackground #cosmology #damitrMazanav #einstein #galaxies #galileo #historyOfAstronomy #historyOfScience #ideasAboutTheUniverse #largeScaleStructure #newton #popularScience #relicRadiation #sovietLiterature #translation
11.2. A Hi-Res Echo of the Beginning 460
11.3. WMAP and the Age of Precision 465
11.4. Planck: The Ultimate Map (So far…) 467
11.5. Seconds after the Bang 470
11.6. The Cosmic Web: The Universe Draws Its Own Map 474
11.7. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey 476
11.8. Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe 479
11.9. The Hubble Deep Field 483
11.10. Hearing the Black Holes 487
11.11. The Future of the “t-Axis” 490
11.12. The Hubble Tension 496
11.13. The Next Horizon: The Engines of Discovery 499
11.14. The Mathematical Horizon 503
11.15. Concluding Thoughts 504 -
‘Muslim kids are really underrepresented’: the animated movie where medieval maths meets eager young minds https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/apr/21/muslim-kids-are-really-underrepresented-the-animated-movie-where-medieval-maths-meets-eager-young-minds #AnimationInFilm #Film #Islam #HistoryOfScience #Mathematics #Canada #FamilyFilms #Culture #Education #Mathematics #Religion #Science #WorldNews
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‘Muslim kids are really underrepresented’: the animated movie where medieval maths meets eager young minds https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/apr/21/muslim-kids-are-really-underrepresented-the-animated-movie-where-medieval-maths-meets-eager-young-minds #AnimationInFilm #Film #Islam #HistoryOfScience #Mathematics #Canada #FamilyFilms #Culture #Education #Mathematics #Religion #Science #WorldNews
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Martian Memories
Five years ago on this day, April 19, 2021, first flight of Ingenuity, the little Mars Helicopter, at Van Zyl Overlook in Jezero Crater. The historic moment is captured by Perseverance with her Mastcam Zoom camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnOo2zcjXA
#Mars #Ingenuity #Perseverance #space #helicopter #history #science #historyOfScience #Jezero #VanZylOverlook #OTD
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Martian Memories
Five years ago on this day, April 19, 2021, first flight of Ingenuity, the little Mars Helicopter, at Van Zyl Overlook in Jezero Crater. The historic moment is captured by Perseverance with her Mastcam Zoom camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnOo2zcjXA
#Mars #Ingenuity #Perseverance #space #helicopter #history #science #historyOfScience #Jezero #VanZylOverlook #OTD
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I was today years old when I learned that scientists from the 17th century had their own form of "preprints" to lay claim to ideas before they got them officially published.
Galileo wrote in a letter to Kepler "Haec immatura a me iam frustra leguntur o.y.", in English "These are now too young to be read by me".
*After* his work was formally published, he explained the anagram to Kepler:
"Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum" (The mother of love imitates the shape of Cynthia)
By sending the letter, Galileo could prove to Kepler and others that he had observed that Venus (mother of love) had phases like the moon (Cynthia), without giving Kepler a chance to scoop him before his own work was published.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_Venus
#HistoryOfScience #Astronomy #History #PrePrint #AcademicPublishing
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I was today years old when I learned that scientists from the 17th century had their own form of "preprints" to lay claim to ideas before they got them officially published.
Galileo wrote in a letter to Kepler "Haec immatura a me iam frustra leguntur o.y.", in English "These are now too young to be read by me".
*After* his work was formally published, he explained the anagram to Kepler:
"Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum" (The mother of love imitates the shape of Cynthia)
By sending the letter, Galileo could prove to Kepler and others that he had observed that Venus (mother of love) had phases like the moon (Cynthia), without giving Kepler a chance to scoop him before his own work was published.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_Venus
#HistoryOfScience #Astronomy #History #PrePrint #AcademicPublishing
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On this day 45 years ago: touchdown of the first Space Shuttle Mission
April 14, 1981, Columbia (STS-1) lands on Rogers dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California to successfully complete a stay in space of more than two days.
#SpaceShuttle #STS1 #Columbia #space #science #history #HistoryOfScience #NASA #OTD #astrodon
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On this day 45 years ago: touchdown of the first Space Shuttle Mission
April 14, 1981, Columbia (STS-1) lands on Rogers dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California to successfully complete a stay in space of more than two days.
#SpaceShuttle #STS1 #Columbia #space #science #history #HistoryOfScience #NASA #OTD #astrodon
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Why do so few scientists use Fahrenheit? According to Isaac Asimov, the original 100°F "fixed point" may have been based on a sick cow with a fever. A 300-year-old error that still dictates US weather today. Precision matters. #HistoryOfScience #Physics #Brevity #Celsius
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How it started, how it's going
Left: Lunar Orbiter I, 1966
Right: Artemis II, 2026https://flic.kr/p/8Grtp2
https://flic.kr/p/2s68RXM#Moon #Earth #Earthset #Lunarorbiter #Artemis #Artemis2 #Orion #Integrity #OrionIntegrity #spacecraft #NASA #Moon #space #news #astrodon #lunar #flyby #lunarflyby #history #historyOfScience