Portal:History of science/Article/2006 archive
This is an archive of article summaries that have appeared in the Selected article section of Portal:History of science in 2006. For past archives, see the Portal:History of science/Article.
February 8 - February 17, 2006
The Voyage of the Beagle is a title commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, which brought him considerable fame and respect. The title refers to the second survey expedition of the ship HMS Beagle which set out on 27 December 1831 under the command of captain Robert FitzRoy. While the expedition was originally planned to last two years, it lasted almost five—the Beagle did not return until 2 October 1836. Darwin spent most of this time exploring on land (three years and three months on land; 18 months at sea).
Darwin's account of the voyage is a vivid and exciting travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific field journal covering biology, geology and anthropology that demonstrates Darwin's keen powers of observation, written at a time when the West were still discovering and exploring much of the rest of the world. With hindsight, one can find hints of the ideas Darwin would later develop into the theory of evolution.
February 17 - March 3, 2006
The Great Chain of Being is a classical and western medieval conception of the order of the universe, whose chief characteristic is a strict hierarchal system.
It is a conception of the world's structure that was accepted, and unquestioned, by most educated men from the time of Lucretius until the Copernican revolution and the ultimate flowering of the Renaissance. The Chain of Being is composed of a great number of hierarchal links, from the most base and foundational elements up to the very highest perfection - in other words, God, or the Prime Mover.
Moving on up the chain, each succeeding link contains the positive attributes of the previous link, and adds (at least) one other. Rocks possess only existence; the next link up, plants, possess life and existence. Beasts add not only motion, but appetite as well. Man is a special instance in this conception. He is both mortal flesh, as those below him, and also spirit, like the angels and God above.
The Great Chain of Being was central to work in natural history before the time of Linnaeus and Buffon.
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 10, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 12, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 14, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 16, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 18, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 20, 2006
Paradigm shift is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describe the process and result of a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 24, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 26, 2006
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 28, 2006
Lysenkoism was a campaign against genetics and geneticists which happened in the Soviet Union from the middle of the 1930s to the middle of the 1960s, centered around the figure of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. In a broader context, Lysenkoism is often invoked to imply the overt subversion of science by political forces.
When Lysenko began his fieldwork in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, the agriculture of the Soviet Union was in a massive crisis due to the forced collectivization movement. There were few agricultural specialists who were willing to work committedly towards the success of the new and troubled collective farms. Among biologists of the day, the most popular topic was not agriculture at all but the new genetics that was emerging out of studies of Drosophila melanogaster, fruit flies with very simplistic genetic structures which allowed for easy studying of Mendelian ratios and heritability. Only much later would this research have obvious application to the problem of agriculture, and during the 1920s and 1930s it was easy for a radical like Lysenko to castigate these theoretical biologists for spending their time bent over trays of fruit flies while famine raged on around them.
In 1928, a previously unknown agronomist, Trofim Lysenko "invented" a new agricultural technique, vernalization (using humidity and low temperatures to make wheat grow in spring). Soviet mass media presented him as a genius who had developed a new, revolutionary technique. He was supported by the Soviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes and omitted mention of his failures. Instead of making controlled experiments, Lysenko relied upon questionnaires from farmers, using them to "prove" that vernalization increases wheat yields by 15%. Lysenko's influence continued to grow, and in 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued.
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 32, 2006
- Weeks 34 & 35
- August 20-September 2
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 34, 2006
- Weeks 36 & 37
- September 3-September 16
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 36, 2006
- Weeks 38 & 39
- September 17-September 30
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 38, 2006
- Weeks 40 & 41
- October 1-October 14
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 40, 2006
- Weeks 42 & 43
- October 15-October 28
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 42, 2006
- Weeks 44 & 45
- October 29-November 11
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 44, 2006
- Weeks 46 & 47
- November 12-November 25
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 46, 2006
- Weeks 48 & 49
- November 26-December 9
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 48, 2006
- Weeks 50 & 51
- December 10-December 23
Portal:History of science/Article/Week 50, 2006
- Weeks 52 & 53
- December 24-January 6, 2007
