Philosophy of Science

Center for Philosphy of Science - University of Pittsburg

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr/

Author:

The Center for Philosphy of Science

Excerpt:

The Center for Philosophy of Science exists to promote scholarship and research, to encourage scholarly exchanges, and to foster publications in the philosophy of science as well as in philosophically informed history of science and related fields. The Center is dedicated to bridging the gulf between the sciences and the humanities, and to helping to develop and disseminate a philosophical understanding and appreciation of the sciences.

Annotation:

This site introduces and gives a brief history of this well-known center at the University of Pittsburgh, which is clearly oriented more toward the philosophy of science than the history of science itself. Two of the center's publications, the Pittsburgh Series in Philosophy and History of Science and the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy and History of Science, cover topics germane to those interested in the history of science. There is also a link to the University's Archives of Scientific Philosophy that covers the twentieth century and includes famous philosophers of science such as Carnap and Wittgenstein.

Words & Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/mcchtml/corhome.html

Author:

Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division Project Director, Library of Congress

Excerpt:

In honor of the Manuscript Division's centennial, its staff has selected for online display approximately ninety representative documents spanning from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Included are the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, military officers and diplomats, reformers and political activists, artists and writers, scientists and inventors, and other prominent Americans whose lives reflect our country's evolution. Most of the selected items fall within one of eight major themes or categories which reflect the division's strengths. Each of these themes is the focus of a separate essay containing links to digital reproductions of selected documents. A detailed description accompanies each document, and additional information about the parent collections may be obtained by following links to catalog records and finding aids.

Annotation:

A Library of Congress Manuscript Division online exhibit to celebrate the Manuscript Division's centenary, this site contains approximately 90 representative documents from the 15th to the mid-20th century. The selected documents include the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, congressmen, Supereme Court justices, military officers, diplomats, reformers, artists, writers, scientists, and other Americans who made a mark in history. Most items fall with eight categories that reflect the division's strengths: "The Presidency"; "Congress, Law, and Politics"; "Military Affairs"; "Diplomacy and Foreign Policy"; "Arts and Literature"; "Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention"; "African-American History and Culture"; "Women's History"; and "Miscellany." Each theme contains a roughly 250-word essay with links to digital reproductions of selected documents. A detailed description (200 words) accompanies each document, and additional information about the collections from which a document came is available through links to the collection records and finding aids. The exhibit also includes roughly 25 images, primarily in the "Science, Medicine, Exploration and Invention" category. There is a special presentation entitled "Collecting, Preserving, and Researching History: A Peek into the Library of Congress Manuscript Division." This site provides a description of the division, its holdings, definitions of terms like "personal papers" and why they are important, how the Library of Congress acquires manuscripts, how the staff prepares, conserves, and stores them, and who uses the documents. The site also has links to the Library of Congress's ordering and reproduction policies, the American Memory site, and to the Library of Congress collection catalogs. This easily navigable site is keyword and subject searchable. This site is ideal for conducting research in many areas of American History, as well as answering the question: "What do archives do?"

New Media Encyclopedia

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.newmedia-art.org

Author:

Centre Georges Pompidou, Museum Ludwig and Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine

Excerpt:

CITY OF ANGELS, TERRA DELLA DEA MADRE, TERMINAL GARDEN
The three parts of this video work entitled "CONTINENTAL VIDEOSERIES" incorporate elements of earlier works by Ulay/Abramovic: Firstly, they are shot in different locations in the eastern and western world: Bangkok, Sicily and Cambridge, whose ritual and traditional peculiarities are picked out as a central theme. The artists are working with the stylistic device of the "tableau vivant", combining it with speech in a way that creates the impression of ritual acts. The strings of speech cannot be deciphered, only in "Terra della dea madre" snatches of words seem to be Italian or Greek. The language is reminiscent of an ancient epos. With the exception of the "Cambridge" sequence, the singsong of the speaker’s voice and the undecipherable text in the remaining parts make the aspect of contents and narrative virtually disappear in favour of a pictorial whole that encompasses the peculiarities of the language system.

Annotation:

This site serves as a scholarly research tool for the study of new media's relationship with artistic expression. The site contains brief biographies of new media artists and critical descriptions of their works, which users may view with a RealPlayer or QuickTime plug-in. The site also includes a chronology by decade (1950 to the present), and a glossary and bibliography, each arranged alphabetically. The site can serve as an important online resource for understanding the development of new media arts and the progression of specific artists, their work, and their use of technology. Historians of technology and culture will find this site extremely useful.

Time 100: The Most Important People of the 20th Century

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.time.com/time/time100/

Author:

Time Magazine

Excerpt:

One century, 100 remarkable people. TIME has profiled those individuals who - for better or worse - most influenced the last 100 years. They are considered in five fields of endeavor, culminating with Person of the Century: Albert Einstein.

Annotation:

Time proposes the following to be the most important figures in science and thinking during the twentieth century: Leo Baekeland; Tim Berners-Lee; Rachel Carson; Francis Crick; James Watson; Albert Einstein; Philo Farnsworth; Enrico Fermi; Alexander Fleming; Sigmund Freud; Robert Goddard; Kurt Gödel; Edwin Hubble; John Maynard Keynes; Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey; Jean Piaget; Jonas Salk; William Shockley; Alan Turing; Ludwig Wittgenstein; and Wilbur and Orville Wright. They additionally identify twenty individuals as the twentieth century's most important Leaders and Revolutionaries; Artists and Entertainers; Builders and Titans; and Heroes and Icons. Each entry contains a biography and assessment of the individual's accomplishments, as well as links to related stories from Time's archives.

NARA Archival Information Locator (NAIL)

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:18.

URL:

http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html

Author:

National Archives and Records Administration

Excerpt:

The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC area, Regional Archives and Presidential Libraries. ARC allows you to perform a keyword, digitized image and location search. ARC's advanced functionalities also allow you to search by organization, person, or topic.

Annotation:

The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) developed the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) to help users locate and access records held in a multitude of government libraries and repositories throughout the United States. To assist researchers, the site has a powerful search tool, a description of steps to finding records, and information on research tutorials and workshops. Links connect the NARA site with sites for individual archives and libraries and online articles outline government record-keeping procedures. Besides acting as a finding tool, the NARA also works to develop better techniques for preserving records that are valuable to the documentation of American history.

Hippocrates

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:18.

URL:

http://allsands.com/Science/hippocratesbiog_rtb_gn.htm

Author:

Pagewise

Excerpt:

Hippocrates was a very educated man and he was a pioneer in shifting the medical view of the world. Hippocrates was a key component in the movement to rid Ancient Greece of medical beliefs, which revolved heavily around the religious beliefs of the time. Demonic possession or evil spirits were seen as the main reason for an illness. The “doctors” would try to rid the patient of the demon causing the illness. Hippocrates shifted the cause of illness to a mostly scientific cause. Hippocrates had acquired immense knowledge of natural sciences including chemistry, physics, and biology. “

WWW Virtual Library

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:18.

URL:

http://vlib.org/

Excerpt:

The VL is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; even though it isn't the biggest index of the web, the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web.

Annotation:

Collection of links to other virtual libraries which catalog sites in the following topics: Agriculture, The Arts, Business and Economics, Communications and Media, Computing and Computer Science, Education, Engineering, Humanities and Humanistic Studies, Information and Libraries, International Affairs, Law, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Recreation, Regional Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Society. Material is well maintained and can be browsed by subject or searched, and is available in English, Spanish, French and Chinese.