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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.

Dr Brian Martin is associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong.

Outline of the History of Biology in Finland

1642 Pascal's calculator
At age 19, Blaise Pascal (France) constructs the first mechanical calculator and offers it for sale. The machine is capable of adding and subtracting.
[Oxford Reference English Dictionary (1996): under "Pascal" and "Appendix 2 - Chronology of Scientific Developments"]
1647: Leibniz
1674 Leibniz's machine
Gottfried Leibniz (Germany) designs a machine for multiplication and division.
[Oxford Reference English Dictionary (1996): under "Leibniz" and "Appendix 2 - Chronology of Scientific Developments"]

If Thales was the first of all the great Greek philosophers, Plato must remain the best known of all the Greeks. The original name of this Athenian aristocrat was Aristocles, but in his school days he received the nickname Platon (meaning "broad" ) because of his broad shoulders. (He is not the only great man to be known universally by a nickname. The Roman orator Cicero is another. )

OHIO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
CONTRIBUTIONS BY COUNTY
1. ADAMS
Natural Scientific Features/Events:
• Notable natural areas in Adams County are found in the following locations [27,53-56,187]:
Bratton Twp.: Woodland Altars
Franklin Twp: Brush Creek Forest & Strait Creek Prairie Bluff
Green Twp.: Cave Hollow & Laurel Strath
Jefferson Twp.: Blue Cedar Bog, Buzzardroost Rock, Cedar Falls, Lynx, Red Rock, Sparrowood, & The Wilderness
Meets Twp.: Davis Memorial Forest

In this section we should again mention the names of Mark Antun Dominis and Rugjer Boskovic, whose work was veritably encyclopaedistic.
The first known manual about book-keeping was "Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto," written by Benko Kotruljic (born in Dubrovnik, 15th century). Its French translation appeared under the title "Parfait négociant" in Lyon in 1613.

If the word hydraulics is understood to mean the use of water for the benefit of mankind, then its practice must be considered to be even older than recorded history itself. Traces of irrigation canals from prehistoric times still exist in Egypt and Mesopotamia; the Nile is known to have been dammed at Memphis some six thousand years ago to provide the necessary water supply, and the Euphrates River was diverted into the Tigris even earlier for the same purpose. Ancient wells still in existence reach to surprisingly great depths; and underground aqueducts were bored considerable distances, even through bedrock. In what is now Pakistan, houses were provided with ceramic conduits for water supply and drainage some five thousand years ago; and legend tells of vast flood-control projects in China barely a millenium later. All of this [1] clearly demonstrates that men must have begun to deal with the flow of water countless millenia before these times.

Outline: "Bohm, Bell - and Boom! The End of Modern Dualism"

The End of Cartesian Dualism: Physics (re)discovers Philosophy: over against Cartesian and especially 19th ct. positivist dualisms which separate physics and philosophy - the emergence of quantum mechanics forces physicists to be become philosophers again. Indeed, the logic of complementarity which q.m. requires ripples into a larger (re)turn to complementary relationships between physics, philosophy, and religion.

I shall begin my case history by telling you about some experiments that tested how accurately people can assign numbers to the magnitudes of various aspects of a stimulus. In the traditional language of psychology these would be called experiments in absolute judgment. Historical accident, however, has decreed that they should have another name. We now call them experiments on the capacity of people to transmit information. Since these experiments would not have been done without the appearance of information theory on the psychological scene, and since the results are analyzed in terms of the concepts of information theory, I shall have to preface my discussion with a few remarks about this theory.