The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution, and Victorian Civilization, Rob Boddice Rob Boddice makes the argument in The Science of Sympathy that a new, scientific sympathy was developed in the mid- to late-nineteenth century by Charles Darwin and his (mostly) like-minded contemporaries, that this sympathy was at odds with what he terms “common compassion,” or vernacular … More The Science of Sympathy
Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior, Robert Richards The three chapters of Robert Richards’s work we were to focus on for class dealt with how a few prominent Victorian thinkers — with a decided emphasis on Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer — integrated the theory of evolution with human morality and … More Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior
This week’s readings took on a more global perspective, offering an increasingly holistic picture of what the relationship between science and religion — and the academic analysis of it — looks like. As was expressed in class, religions other than Christianity and locales outside the West have received scant attention from historians of science, and … More Science & Religion: A Global Perspective
In my junior year as an undergraduate, I took a collaborative class titled, “The Darwin Course.” It was put together and led by a science education professor, and we covered the science of evolutionary theory (via physics, anthropology, geology, and biology professors in two-week stints), Charles Darwin’s formation of it, its troublesome reception (although this … More Science & Religion: Debunking the Conflict Thesis
Arwen Mohun, “On the Frontier of The Empire of Chance: Statistics, Accidents, and Risk in Industrializing America.” Science in Context 3 (2005): 337-357. In “On the Frontier of The Empire of Chance,” author Arwen Mohun examines the rise in statistics and probabilistic thinking in the American vernacular context from the late nineteenth through the early … More “On the Frontier of the Empire of Chance”
The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life, Gerd Gigerenzer, Zeno Swijtink, Theodore Porter, Lorrain Daston, John Beatty, and Lorenz Krüger In their collaborative work, authors Gerd Gigerenzer, Zeno Swijtink, Theodore Porter, Lorrain Daston, John Beatty, and Lorenz Krüger attempt a cohesive study of how the science of statistics “transformed our … More The Empire of Chance
Engineers of Happyland, Rudolf Mrázek Rudolf Mrázek’s work, clothed in the language of a history of technology, was in fact not a history of technology at all. Instead, Mrázek artfully uses technology to discuss his real interest — nationalism and modernity in the colonial setting. Through the lenses of the ways that people make and … More Engineers of Happyland
“(Auto)mobility, Accidents, and Danger,” Technology and Culture The format of this issue is different in that it starts out with the presentation of a simplistic framework proposed by Peter Norton, and the articles that follow employ that framework and the questions it urges, showing how it does and does not fit into much more … More “(Auto)mobility, Accidents, and Danger”
“Shifting Gears,” Technology and Culture Unsophisticated logic and a lack of in-depth thinking about technological advancement leads to the belief — held by many, I’ve learned in my brief tenure as Dr. Heyck’s teaching assistant — that decisions about what technologies will be adopted are based on that technology’s efficiency, the improvement it offers, … More “Shifting Gears”
The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle, Bernhard Rieger As someone quite illiterate insofar as the history of technology is concerned, I thought this book did an excellent job of elucidating through example just how ingrained in a society’s beliefs, prejudices, and self-perceptions technologies are, and equally important, how easily the same … More The People’s Car
Quillets and Quackery 