History Of Science

10 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Darwin’s changing image

Taken from Michael Barton’s The Dispersal of Darwin blog, here’s a fascinating talk by William Kimler on the changing image of Darwin over time. Images of Darwin and the Nature of Science from American Scientist on Vimeo.

25 November 2010 ~ 1 Comment

Creating an interactive course website (and not using Blackboard)

I’m not a big fan of Blackboard. While it has great functionality and is well suited for online courses, I find it clunky and hard to navigate. Therefore I’ve started a project to build my own course website with the useful functions of Blackboard in mind, but on WordPress. It is for a graduate-level course [...]

29 April 2010 ~ 0 Comments

Henri Poincare's elegant statement about the nature of science

History of Science Nature of Science

From “Science and Hypothesis” published in 1908: “Science is built up of facts as a house is of stones, but a collection of facts is no more a science than a pile of stones is a house.” Also, on the issue of public misconceptions of science… “For a superficial observer, scientific truth is beyond the [...]

29 April 2010 ~ 1 Comment

A history of laughing gas (NPR: Radio Lab)

History of Science Nature of Science

Using episodes from the history of science is a great way to provide context for students to discuss the nature of science. This Radio Lab episode tells the story of the discovery of laughing gas. In it we learn that we “too often we think about the history of science as a story of progress, [...]