University

We would like to gather important facts including what happened in the last decades, years, or even weeks. In addition, we want to provide interpretations - yours and ours. In the spirit of stimulating discussions, we will juxtapose different accounts of the same episode. You may decide that only one is right - you might find several accounts possible. Compare for example the following two brief explanations of the origin of the modern discipline of materials science and engineering:

At the International Conference on the History of Computing held in Los Alamos in 1976, R.W. Hamming placed his proposed agenda in the title of his paper[1]: "We Would Know What They Thought When They Did It." He pleaded for a history of computing that pursued the contextual development of ideas, rather than merely listing names, dates, and places of "firsts". Moreover, he exhorted historians to go beyond the documents to "informed speculation" about the results of undocumented practice. What people actually did and what they thought they were doing may well not be accurately reflected in what they wrote and what they said they were thinking. His own experience had taught him that.

Perhaps more than any other contemporary American scientist Stephen Jay Gould has presented the modes, implications, benefits, and shortcomings of science to a literate public. As an inventive and productive scholar he has shaped and participated in crucial debates of the biological and geological sciences, particularly with regard to the theory of evolution, the interpretation of fossil evidence, and the meaning of diversity and change in biology. As the readership for his nearly twenty books and hundreds of essays, reviews, and articles has grown he has become one of the most popular and well-known writers and lecturers on scientific topics. He has distinguished himself by elaborating his critique of contemporary evolutionary theory via an eclectic range of discourse, deriving inspiration from his personal reflections across an astonishing array of historical and humanistic disciplines, popular culture, and sports.

John Henry trained as a historian of science at Leeds and the Open Universities, and was a research fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London before moving to Edinburgh University in 1986. He is interested in the interactions of and relations between science, philosophy, medicine, magic and religion in the Renaissance and early modern periods. He has recently published The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (Macmillian Press and St Martin's Press, 1997

The Virtual Laboratory (VL) is a digitalization project devoted to the history of the experimentalization of life. Its main focus is the interaction between the life sciences, arts and architecture, media and technology. It consists of two related parts, an archive and an essay section. As an archive, the VL offers numerous scans of texts and images concerning experiments, instruments, buildings, scientists and artists between 1830 and 1930. The essay section constitutes a platform where historians of science, culture and technology as well as students can present their recent research on the experimentalization of life and explore new modes of writing history.

The History of Bioinformatics

Marin Mersenne
The Truth of the Sciences

René Descartes
On Motion

Christiaan Huygens
On the Motion of Bodies Resulting from Impact

Christiaan Huygens
On Centrifugal Force

Christiaan Huygens
Horologium Oscillatorium, Part IV
On the Center of Oscillation

Sharon is interested in the dynamics of environmental and technological controversies and has special interest in the social aspects of engineering, environmental politics, the rhetoric of sustainable development, the philosophies behind environmental economics, and trends in environmentalism and corporate activism/public relations. Most recently she has broadened her research interests to include the promotion of the work ethic, market solutions to social problems anda critique of neoliberalism.

Daniel Bernoulli was born on January 29th 1700. He came from a long line of mathematicians. His father Johann was head of mathematics at Groningen University in the Netherlands. The family was prone to bitter rivalry: something he was to suffer when he became estranged from his father some 30 years later.

At the age of five, the Bernoulli family returned home to Basel in Switzerland, so that Johann's wife could be with her ailing father. Some years earlier Johann had applied to become professor of mathematics at Basel University, but this was denied him because his elder brother, Jakob had deliberately schemed to prevent him getting the post. Later Jakob got the professorship. En route to Basel, Johann learned that Jakob had just died of tuberculosis. He later recalled rather shamelessly that " ... I could succeed to my brother's position." He set about lobbying for the vacant position and in less than two months he got his way.

This work is one of the most influential in history. The famous
phrase, "COGITO ERGO SUM" (I think, therefore I am) is a central
theme. Descartes' beliefs on that dual nature of mind and body,
and his emphasis on the role of doubt in all inquiry, formed the
basis for centuries of science and social thought.
This etext was created by Ilana and Greg Newby. They used a Mac
IIci and Apple One Flatbed Scanner donated by Apple. Caere text
scanning and character recognition software (OmniPage) was used.
Greg is a professor in the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in
the Grad. School of Library and Information Science. Ilana is a
reference librarian at the Urbana Free Library. Thanks to Apple
and Caere for their donations and to the Computer Service Office
of the University of Illinois for their unofficial support.