Historians Of Science

"Science started having significant applications more than a hundred and fifty years ago (e.g., in the rising chemical and electrical industries) and those applications were based on theories that have been abandoned (e.g., on an ether-based electromagnetic theory)."

"In the early 1960s, Kuhn and Feyerabend pointed out that the meaning of scientific terms changes over time."

"Amy Bix's fine book, carefully researched and gracefully written, surveys the extent of everyday hardship during the . She concentrates on the debates over in the United States, debates that were "entwined with particular musings about the meaning of American history, the western frontier, and a sense of national destiny" (p. 8). She convincingly describes the lives and emotions of employed and unemployed Americans. She also summarizes some of the social research conducted during the depression years."

"Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the course of American health research was increasingly shaped by for two particular diseases, and . Even as national stakes rose, both in dollars spent and growing demands on the medical system, breast cancer and AIDS advocates made government policy-making for research ever more public and controversial. Through skillful cultivation of political strength, interest groups transformed individual health problems into collective demands, winning notable policy influence in federal agencies such as the (NIH) and (FDA). Activists directly challenged fundamental principles of both government and medical systems, fighting to affect distribution of research funds and questioning well-established scientific methods and professional values. In the contest for decision-making power, those players achieved remarkable success in influencing and infiltrating (some critics said, undermining) both the politics and science of medical research. Between 1990 and 1995, federal appropriations for breast cancer study rose from $90 million to $465 million, while in that same period, NIH AIDS research rose from $743.53 million to $1,338 billion."

"During the colonial era of American life, "" offered young girls elementary literacy, while s taught wealthier girls to raise their matrimonial prospects by becoming proficient in attractive arts, including , and , music, dancing, and . But by the Revolutionary and early national periods, influential figures such as , Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Rush argued for extending young women's education beyond such "ornamental" skills as a political and social asset to the country."

"Engineering education in the United States has had a gendered history, one that until relatively recently prevented women from finding a place in the predominantly male technical world. For decades, Americans treated the professional study of technology as men's territory (Bix 2000b; Ogilvie 1986l Rossiter 1982, 1995). Until World War II and beyond, many leading engineering schools, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology, remained closed to women. The few women admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) struggled against a hostile intellectual and social environment. Women studying or working in engineering were popularly perceived as oddities at best, outcasts at worst, defying traditional gender norms. As late as the 1960s, women still made up less than 1 percent of students studying engineering in the United States, and critics either dismissed or ridiculed interest in the profession. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, activists fought to change that situation, to win acknowledgment of women's ability to become engineers."

"The palaeoanthropologists of the early twentieth century were thus able to put together a view of human evolution which can be seen as an extension of the cyclic or rhythmic theory of progress advocated throughout the Victorian era. Despite its emphasis on struggle as the means by which higher types displaced their primitive antecedents, this was no product of Darwinian gradualism. Most of its supporters rejected natural selection as the motor of progressive evolution, preferring to invoke some vaguely defined creative force in the central Asian heartland. The fact that both the concept of progress through cycles and the fascination with Asia as the centre of development survived well into the twentieth century reveals the power these Victorian ages had to shape the imagination. The echoes of Max Muller's account of Aryan migrations can still be heard in the theories of human origins by archaeologists and anthropologists committed to the idea of continuous evolution. But once the faith in continuous progress was undermined by growing militarism in the age of imperial rivalries, the model of progress through conquest emerged from the wings to extend its influence over ideas on human origins. The early twentieth century merely extended the sense of racial destiny that had been growing throughout the Victorian era."

"Theology and science have got a lot in common. For one thing, they’re often considered too hard, or too abstract, for ordinary people to understand. Their study is — apparently — reserved to those rare brains who can understand the complexity of the natural or social world. Ordinary people can only begin to understand a simplified version of these subjects. But despite this stereotype, both subjects also form part of our common human heritage, helping us to ask and answer key questions about what makes up the world around us, as well as how and why it works. (2022)"

"But science fiction’s entanglement with theology goes far deeper... Writers in this genre explore the consequences of technological innovation for human communities and individual human lives, whether those consequences are intentional or accidental, emotional or economic. They consider the impact that scientific theories and concepts have had on our understandings of what it means to be human, and on the limits of individual human identity. They examine how the characteristics that make us human (big brains, tool-making hands) might also lead to the end of humanity, either with a bang (“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”) or a whimper (“Day of the Triffids”) or both (“Threads,” “The Day After”). As such, science fiction asks its audiences not just who they think they are, but who they want to be. It creates visions both of the world as it could be and as it must not be allowed to be, with science and technology together building the future of faith."

"Every time we think about the past, we rewrite history as part of bringing a moral order to the present. (2021)"

"The great majority of British naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in fact considered foreign organisms much more exciting and interesting than those found at home. This is not to say that local natural history suffered: David Allen's important book describing the Naturalist in Britain indicates the wealth of popular interest in animals and plants and the depth of knowledge relating to British organisms ... Yet the inexhaustible lure of travel and the anticipated pleasures of foreign lands, both mental, moral, and physical, were important components in the history of this subject. Excitement, change, and the thrill of difference were integral emotional factors in the growth of British interest in biogeographical topics—indeed crucial as the relaxed aura of eighteenth-century social life metamorphosed into a strait-laced Victorian era. Nevertheless, a love for natural history and a desire to travel were in no way sufficient reasons to account for the increase of overseas activitiy among naturalists. Far more significant was the hierarchical structure of British society and expansionist national ethos."

"Darwin was a traveler, a family man, a thinker, a much-loved husband, father, friend, and neighbor—a likeable and genial figure, as expressive in his letters as he must have been in life. Although his theories were first conceived in the smoky atmosphere of London, just after his return from the in 1836, his major books and articles were all researched and constructed in the domestic setting of his home at in Kent. There he lived for 40 years with his wife Emma Wedgwood and 10 children, of whom only seven survived to adulthood. The house still exists and is now a museum restored to show how it was in Darwin’s time. It is an inspiring place to visit, quiet and rural, and one can almost imagine Darwin stepping in through a doorway. Visitors used to record how he would greet them with an outstretched hand."

"Taxonomic systems of the past—particularly those found in , biology, and geology—are now seen to be one of the most important resources for understanding the interconnections of science and culture."

"The first nation (to have cultivated science) is India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, and a rich kingdom (possession). India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the branches of knowledge."

"The kings of China have stated that the kings of the world are five in number and all the people of the world are their subjects. They mentioned the king of China, the king of India, the king of the Turks, the king of the Furs (Persians) and the king of the Romans (1). They referred to the king of China as the "king of humans" because the people of China are more obedient to authority and are stronger followers of government policies than all the other peoples of the world. They referred to the king of India as the "king of wisdom" because of the Indians careful treatment of `ul?m (sciences) and their advancement in all the branches of knowledge. They referred to the king of the Turks as the "king of lions" because of the courage and the ferocity of the Turks. They referred to the king of Persia as the "king of kings" because of the richness, glory and importance of his kingdom, since Persia had subdued the kings of the center of the populated world, and because it controlled, to the exclusion of other kingdoms, the most fertile of the climatic regions. And they referred to the king of the Romans as the "king of men" because the Romans, of all the peoples, have the most beautiful faces, the best built bodies and the most robust physique."

"Some astrologers came up with an explanation for this condition; they said that both Saturn and Mercury control the destiny of the Indian people. Because of the influence of Saturn, their color turned black, while the influence of Mercury provided them with intellectual power and fine spirit. Saturn in partnership with Mercury gave them correctness of reasoning and depth of perception. This is why they enjoy the purity of talent and the power of distinction, making them totally different from the people of Sudan (Blacks) (2) such as the Zinj, the Abyssinians, the Ethiopians and others. To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers (3) and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances."

"The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal [essence] of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions. In spite of the fact that their color is in the first stage of blackness, which puts them in the same category as the blacks, Allah, in His glory, did not give them the low characters, the poor manners, or the inferior principles associated with this group and ranked them above a large number of white and brown peoples."

"One who was well versed in that science was called in ancient India as samkhyajna (the expert of numbers), parimanajna (the expert in measuring), sama-sutra-niranchaka (Uinform-rope-stretcher), Shulba-vid (the expert in Shulba) and Shulba-pariprcchaka (the inquirer into the Shulba). Of these term, viz, 'sama-sutra-niranchaka' perhaps deserves more particular notice. For we find an almost identical term, 'harpedonaptae' (rope-stretcher) appearing in the writings of the Greek Democritos (c. 440 BC). It seems to be an instance of Hindu influence on Greek geometry. For the idea in that Greek term is neither of the Greeks nor of their acknowledged teachers in the science of geometry, the Egyptians, but it is characteristically of Hindu origin." The English word 'Geometry' has a Greek root which itself is derived from the Sanskrit word 'Jyamiti'. In Sanskrit 'Jya' means an arc or curve and 'Miti' means correct perception or measurement."

"That which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking and the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols and secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played and its pieces are being maneuvered, there appear the beauty of structure and the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions and noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies and points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers. And in this, there is considerable gain and useful profit."

"Although Darwin was an innovator, his ideas rested on a foundation of fact and analysis that naturalists and explorers around the world had built up over the course of a century or more."

"The name Charles Darwin calls to mind a man and a theory. The theory may refer to its classical formulations in various editions of the Origin of Species or to neo-Darwinism. Charles Darwin's name may also be employed as shorthand to stand for a wide range of subjects touching on evolution. Historians of science have important roles to play in elucidating all these uses of Darwin's name: establishing the details of the man's life, filling out its context and associations, and providing historical analysis of issues current in evolutionary biology."

"As a young man Darwin was known both popularly and professionally as a geologist. In February 1859 the Geological Society awarded him its highest honor, the , for his signal contributions to the field. In reading the citation for the medal, Charles Lyell noted Darwin's studies on the growth of s, on evidence for the modern elevation of Chile and the repeated elevation of the Andes, on South American geology generally, on the distribution of boulders in Britain, and on fossil s."

""But, though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a wide-spread plain bordered by the waters, yet he [Magellan] comforted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, is the substance." It was a stout heart - a heart of triple brass - which could thus, against such authority, extract unyielding faith from a shadow."

"Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government."

"Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all others, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race—Mohammed… To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a messenger of God."

"Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling."

"The Koran abounds in excellent moral suggestions and precepts; its composition is so fragmentary that we can not turn to a single page without finding maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary construction yields texts, and mottoes, and rules complete in themselves, suitable for common men in any of the incidents of life."

"I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit can not be perpetuated forever. … The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe, as, before long, Christendom will have to confess; he has indelibly written it on the heavens, as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe."

"Living cells respond to DNA damage by a variety of mechanisms, including a series of biochemical pathways called DNA repair. These include three discrete pathways for the excision of damaged bases, called base excision repair, mismatch repair and nucleotide excision repair (NER). NER in human cells is a complex biochemical process during which a large multiprotein complex is assembled at several types of base damage. This multiprotein complex (NER machine) catalyses the excision of damaged bases as oligonucleotide fragments."

"The aesthetic appeal of the DNA double helix initially hindered notions of DNA mutation and repair, which would necessarily interfere with its pristine state. But it has since been recognized that DNA is subject to continuous damage and the cell has an arsenal of ways of responding to such injury. Although mutations or deficiencies in repair can have catastrophic consequences, causing a range of human diseases, mutations are nonetheless fundamental to life and evolution."

"Because of the questions posed by Schrödinger and the nature of the problem of identifying and describing the gene itself, the early development of molecular biology relied greatly on scientists who brought insights from physics to biology—Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, George Gamow, Sir Lawrence Bragg, Francis Crick, Max Perutz, John Kendrew, Maurice Wilkins, Desmond Bernal, and Linus Pauling being the best known of these scientists."

"Till now consciousness, reason and morality were localised on planet Earth; by resurrecting all the generations who have lived on this Earth, consciousness will be disseminated to all the worlds of the Universe. Resurrection is the transformation of the Universe from that chaos towards which it is moving into cosmos — into the greatness of incorruptibility and indestructibility."

"Nature, within man, was conscious of the evil of death, of its own imperfection. So the rebellion of the living (the vertical posture) and the resurrection of the dead, in the form of tombstones, are natural acts for a feeling, rational being. It was when the living (who had suffered a loss) rebelled and turned to heaven, and when the dead were resurrected in the form of tombstones, that art began. Prayer was the beginning of art. Prayer and the (vertical) prayer posture constituted the first acts of art; this was theo-anthropurgic art, which consisted of God creating man through man himself. For man is not only a product of nature but also a creation and concern of art. The last act of divine creation was the first act of human art, for man's purpose is to be a free being and consequently self-created, since only a self-created being can be free. In this act of self-creation – that is, in rebelling and turning towards heaven – man discovers God and God reveals himself to man; or, more precisely, on discovering the God of the fathers, the being who has made the discovery becomes not just a man, but a son of man. And only in the abstract sense, forgetting the loss, is it possible to say that the being which has discovered God has become man."

"If the question, 'What has art become?', is synonymous with 'What are the reasons for the unbrotherliness between people and for the rift in the relations between nature and people?' then the question, 'What should art be?' is the same as the problem of establishing brotherly unity in order to transform the blind force of nature into a force guided by the reasoning powers of all the resurrected generations. In other words, what we are talking about is universal resurrection, since it is this that represents the complete restoration of kinship and that will provide art with the appropriate course to follow, and show it its goal. Transforming all the worlds into worlds guided by the reasoning powers of resurrected generations will constitute a complete resolution of the Copernican question and is at the same time identical to the primeval view – that is, the patrification of the heavens (the turning of the heavens into the fathers' abode), or catasterisation (the transferral of the fathers' souls to the stars) – which also finds its expression in church sculpture and painting. For children this primeval view is the most straightforward, an explanation and resolution of the Copernican question. To turn all the worlds into worlds guided by the reasoning powers of resurrected generations is also the most important goal of art."

"[T]he present generation is too frightened by the magnitude of time and space revealed by geology and astronomy, and has been so conditioned by four centuries of nature worship that it feels only its insignificance, and fears even to contemplate such an endeavour as weather control."

"When external regulation has been achieved, the inner psychophysiological force will tilt the balance away from sexual drive and lust towards love for the parents, and will even replace them, thus transforming the force of procreation into one of re-creation, the lethal into a vivifying force; in other words, childbirth will be replaced by patrification, in fulfilment of the will of the God of the fathers."

"[M]an has always felt and recognised the imperfection of nature, and has never accepted it as law. He broke this law when he took his first step, because his vertical posture challenged gravity, the most universal law of nature. This upright position is not natural to man – it is supranatural – and he has achieved it artificially, through effort (by swaddling and other methods of adaptation). One cannot say of man that he is the creation of nature. On the contrary, he is the result of under-creation, of deprivation, of a natural pauperism which is shared by rich and poor alike; he is a proletarian, a pariah among living creatures. Yet in this lay the origin of his future greatness; deprived of natural cover and means of defence, he had to create all this himself by his own labour. Therefore man values only that which has been created by working, or which expands the area of application of work; it is not difficult to guess that the culmination of this forward movement must be that everything on which human life depends will ultimately be achieved through work, so that humans will depend solely on their labour. Consequently the entire world, the meteorological, telluric and cosmic processes, will be the responsibility of man, and nature will be his work. Man is driven towards this goal by hunger, disease and every other calamity, so that whenever he delays in expanding the area of work, the scope for disasters expands. Thus nature punishes man by death for his ignorance and sloth, and drives him to ever-expanding labour."

"To abdicate the task of resuscitation leaves the human race only the choice between constitutional debating and despotism. To retain Easter as a feast only and the liturgy as a church service, an expression of an as yet incomplete love for the fathers which does not entail actual resuscitation, or, by abdicating completely brotherhood and filial love, to indulge on the graves of the fathers in bestial orgies followed by savage mutual extermination; to retain the art of dead likenesses or to annihilate any true likenesses; not merely to censure parents for giving life to their offspring without their consent, but to curse one's procreators; to retain academic class science or, rejecting all knowledge, to descend into the hopeless darkness of obscurantism; to remain in the perennial city of brides and bridegrooms, surrounded by toys and trifles, indulging in pleasures and entertainments, or else, rejecting not only fathers and forebears but even progeny, sons (artificially childless marriages), in order to indulge in boundless lechery; to retain will as either lust or mortification of the flesh; to retain sensuousness or to be satisfied by mere grieving for the dead or — the last and greatest evil — to plunge into nirvana, the product of total evil negation — such are the fruits of abdicating the task of resuscitation."

"[A]utocracy is the task of the sons which becomes, with the full union of those sons, the return of life to the dust of the fathers – that is to say, struggle not against members of our own species but against the dark force which procreates and destroys life."

"Negative virginity is not yet a celestial virtue; chastity is not yet active wisdom; not to beget is not yet liberation from death — resurrection. It is essential that unconscious procreation be replaced by the task of resuscitation."

"Before talking about resurrection one must state firmly that, just as death is impossible where there exist sinlessness and knowledge that can control the forces of nature, so resurrection is impossible where there exist sin, ignorance and other misfortunes resulting from man's dependence on the blind forces of nature."

"Neither the universal return to life, universal resurrection, nor even death itself, have hitherto been the subject of knowledge or well founded judgement. For there would have been full, detailed investigations into the reasons and conditions that have given rise to the phenomenon. For most people, death appears to be an absolute, inevitable phenomenon; but just how unfounded is this conclusion is obvious from the fact that it is considered acceptable to talk about the opposite of death, about immortality, and even about resurrection; and it is talked about as a possibility, in circumstances where all sorts of sins prevail among people, and all sorts of calamities and evils, arising from the folly of nature. But if the coexistence of the one with the other is unthinkable, since the one excludes the other, then can one talk about the possibility of death where there is moral and physical sinlessness, where nature shows such a benign attitude both within and outside man, of the sort that is deemed possible when man's knowledge and control of nature are complete?"

"To solve the question, 'What should art be?' will be to solve the contradiction between rational being and the blind force of nature, to fathom the most abnormal relationship between man and nature, to solve the question of the subordination of rational being to blind force. Will nature always remain blind and, in its blindness, a destructive force, while art remains the creation of nothing but dead imitations? Will this division be temporary, or will it last for ever? Perfection lies in the unity of nature and art."

"[The] transformation of the blind course of nature into one that is rational [...] is bound to appear to the learned as a disruption of order, although this order of theirs brings only disorder among men, striking them down with famine, plague, and death."

"How unnatural it is to ask, ‘Why does that which exist, exist?' and yet how completely natural it is to ask, ‘Why do the living die?"

"The learned, who have fragmented science into a multiplicity of branches, imagine that the calamities that strike and oppress us are within the competence of specialised disciplines to control, whereas in fact they constitute a single problem common to all of us, namely the lack of kinship relations between a blind force and rational beings. This blind force makes no demand on us other than to endow it with what it lacks: rational direction, or regulation. Yet no regulation is possible owing to our disunity, and our disunity persists because there is no common task to unite men. Regulation, the control of the blind force of nature, can and must become the great task common to us all."

"Contrary to Schopenhauer's 'world as will and representation', it should be 'world as slavery and the project of liberation from enslavement', from dependence, from subordination to a blind force; for us the world has no will, and for beings endowed with feeling and capable of action and not mere contemplation, the world is not solely a representation but a project of liberation from bondage. The expression 'the world as will and representation' could be justifiably replaced by the expression 'the world as lust', for lust procreates and kills, giving birth to sons and destroying the fathers. For us the world is not a representation but a project, moreover one that does not oppose lust (the opposite of lust is asceticism) but transforms the procreating force into a re-creating one, the lethal into a vivifying. Then the world can no longer remain a representation but becomes a project of the restoration of the predecessors by the offspring, that is, a project of resuscitation. That is how it should be, but at the present time the world is as it is — lust and representation."

"What will nature — which, in its present, unconscious state, is a force that procreates and kills - become when it achieves consciousness, if not a force restoring what it has destroyed in its blindness ? How senseless are statements about the incommensurability of the forces of man, that is, of nature striving towards consciousness and control, and the forces of the same blind nature. And should one term 'human force' merely that of man's own hand, or include what he can achieve through nature ? And are human force and human activity to be limited to what man achieves now by using the forces of nature ? Why, the true, the natural task has not even begun..."

"The will to procreate, as lust, engenders wealth and leads the human race to demoralisation (of which the Universal Exhibition is a striking expression), whereas the will to resuscitate, when the problem of returning life is seen as the purpose of conscious beings, moralises all the worlds of the Universe, because then all the worlds that are moved by insensate forces will be governed by the brotherly feelings of all the resurrected generations. This involves both their moralisation and their rationalisation, because then the worlds of the Universe will no longer be moved by blind insensate forces but will be governed by the feelings and reason of the resurrected generations."

"If, however, progress is the transformation of the spontaneous (procreation) into conscious work, we must regard parasites as an inherent evil. The control method used is undoubtedly immoral, since it takes advantage of the natural evil of an epidemic. Nor can the annihilation of any insect be considered moral. Only the complete transfiguration of a blind force (procreation) into a conscious act can be called moral."