The scientific mind, according to Aristotle
One of my all-time favorite passages from Aristotle is in his Parts of Animals (Book 1, Chapter 5).
The scientific mind, according to Aristotle Read More »
One of my all-time favorite passages from Aristotle is in his Parts of Animals (Book 1, Chapter 5).
The scientific mind, according to Aristotle Read More »
A fun anecdote from the history of medicine. (Fun in hindsight, though not necessarily fun for those who lived through the medical history.) The late-medieval Iatrochemists believed that progress could be made by uniting medicine with alchemy. Their intellectual leader was Paracelsus (1493-1541), a Swiss physician whose goal was to reform medical chemistry by rejecting
Iatrochemists: why iron salts cure anemia Read More »
I posted earlier on The Knife Man and John Hunter, the great 18th-century anatomist and surgeon. In Hunter’s era surgery was brutal, in large part due to surgeons’ ignorance of anatomy, and in that earlier post I wondered: Why there was still such ignorance of anatomy given that the 1700s were two centuries after Andreas
Anatomy and the Practicality of Philosophy Read More »
Current infant mortality rates are about half of one percent, and it is awful for parents who lose a child. But in the 1700s, before the achievements of the Enlightenment were widespread, infant mortality rates were over 50%. I came across this in Robert K. Massie’s Catherine the Great: Peter the Great (1682-1725) and his
More appalling infant mortality numbers, then and now Read More »
How media report statistics according to their philosophy: Enlightenment headline: SCIENCE and CAPITALISM a great success. Jaded-feminist headline: The PATRIARCHY encouraging women to be BABY-MAKING MACHINES. Socialist-Marxist headline: Europeans gain by EXPLOITING poor women in the THIRD WORLD. Postmodern headline: NO news here — “HEALTH” and “PROGRESS” mere SUBJECTIVE narratives.
Mortality headlines [humor alert] Read More »
Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard. His letter is to a board member of the AAAS, which publishes Science, in response to a fundraising letter. Excerpts: My own experience as a scientific communicator confirms that there is enormous distrust of the scientific and academic establishments, because people believe these establishments have been captured
Excellent letter from Steven Pinker on politicizing science and *Science* Read More »
In this unit of the Objectivity course we feature Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he questions whether science is or can be an objective process based upon observational facts that makes progress toward truth. Thomas Kuhn was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Atlas Intellectuals] Read More »
I’d like to know what was in his mind at that moment. Bathysaurus ferox (literally meaning “fierce deep-sea lizard”) lives by “burying itself on the deep seafloor, 3,300 to 8,200 feet (1,000 to 2,500 m) below the water’s surface. When unsuspecting prey swims by, B. ferox darts out of the sediment and snatches up the meal in its formidable
On the fifth day, God created the fierce deep-sea lizard Read More »