Burke, Colin B. Information and Intrigue: From Index Cards to Dewey Decimals to Alger Hiss. History and Foundations of Information Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262027021/information-and-intrigue/

annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:3ca2bc5e94d24cfc51c7b40b4ea7daf9

alternate: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A3ca2bc5e94d24cfc51c7b40b4ea7daf9

Kells, Lyman M., Willis F. Kern, and James R. Bland. K+E Slide Rules: A Self Instruction Manual. New York: Keuffel & Esser Co., 1955.

Note the use of the word "heresy" here, which is most often used in the framing of religion at a time when the establishment is moving from religion-based mechanisms into scientific based ones.

Interesting to contemplate the evolution of the idea of evolution through the Darwin family.

Charles would obviously have read his grandfather's book, but it also bears noting that he also had access to his grandfather's commonplace book (and likely his other papers).

See also: https://hypothes.is/a/FmVxQuqJEey33Uu0UTcMlg

https://archives.library.illinois.edu/thought-collective/cyberneticians/w-ross-ashby/

Could Alexander von Humboldt have been one of the early examples of a popular science writer?

Perhaps an early David Attenborough?

Hayton, Darin. “Washington Irving’s Columbus and the Flat Earth.” History of Science blog. Darin Hayton, December 2, 2014. https://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/2014/12/02/washington-irvings-columbus-and-the-flat-earth/.

Link to https://hypothes.is/a/hvDAtHT0Ee6_Z3em_Dz4bg (Columbus & Washington Irving)

As a result of Kuhn's scientific revolutions perspective, historians of science will need to uncover the frameworks and lenses by which prior generations saw the world to be able to see the world the same way. This will allow them to better piece together histories

How is this related to the ways that experts don't appreciate their own knowledge when trying to teach newcomers their subjects? What is the word/phrase for this effect?

1478-1518, Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci (''The Codex Arundel''). A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as ''a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat'' (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams.

This statement makes it appear as if Paxson was aware of the movement in the late 1800s of the attempt to make history a more scientific endeavor by writers like Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos, and others, but that Pomeroy is less so.

How scientific can history be as an area of study? There is the descriptive from which we might draw conclusions, but how much can we know when there are not only so many potential variables, but we generally lack the ability to design and run discrete experiments on history itself?

Recall Paxson's earlier comment that "in history you cannot prove an inference". https://hypothes.is/a/LIWSoFlLEe2zUtvMoEr0nQ

Had enough time elapsed up to this writing in 1953, that the ideal of a scientific history from the late 1800s had been borne out not to be accomplished?

Helbig, Daniela K. “Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg’s Zettelkasten and History of Science as Theoretical Attitude.” Journal of the History of Ideas 80, no. 1 (2019): 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2019.0005

something poetic about these examples even if they're poor science...

Who is the father of the method of historical understanding?

History and Foundations of Information Science

This series of books focuses on the historical approach or theoretical approach to information science and seeks a broader interpretation of what we consider as information (i.e., information is in the eye of the beholder, be it sets of data, scholarly publications, works of art, material objects, or DNA samples), and an emphasis upon how people access and interact with this information.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/history-and-foundations-information-science

1. Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.

Mechanical philosophy and vitalism were popular and co-existed on a non-mutually exclusive spectrum in the seventeenth century.

Mechanical philosophy is a philosophy of nature which arose broadly in the 17th century and sought to explain all natural phenomenon in terms of matter and motion without relying on "action at a distance" or the idea of a cause and effect that occurred without any physical contact or direct motivation.

René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Marin Mersenne all held mechanistic viewpoints.

See also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_philosophy

Link to: - spooky action at a distance (quantum mechanics)

Medieval culture had imbued its perspective of the natural world with a variety of emblematic associations. Plants and animals were not simply specimens or organisms in the world but were emblematic representations of ideas which were also associated with them.

example: peacock / pride

Did this perspective draw from some of the older possibly pagan forms of orality and mnemonics? Or were the potential associations simply natural ones which (re-?)grew either historically or as the result of the use of the art of memory from antiquity?

Pliny's work had been the standard text for natural history since antiquity. The early humanist movement including critiques by Ermolao Barbaro and Niccolò Leoniceno in the mid 1400s began to erode his stature in the area. Interestingly however, it wasn't new discoveries or science that was displacing Pliny so much as comparison of Pliny with even earlier Greek texts.

Stemming from British history, but often applied in other areas including the history of science, whig history is a historiography that presents history as a path from an oppressive, backward, and wretched past to a glorious present. The term was coined by British Historian Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). It stems from the British Whig party that advocated for the power of Parliament as opposed to the Tories who favored the power of the King.

It would seem to be an unfortunate twist of fate for indigenous science and knowledge that it was almost completely dismissed when the West began to dominate indigenous cultures during the Enlightenment which was still heavily imbued with the influence of scholasticism. Had religion not played such a heavy role in science, we may have had more respect and patience to see and understand the value of indigenous ways of knowing.

Link this to notes from The Dawn of Everything.

"Scientist" is a neologism coined in 1834, by William Whewell and was originally meant tongue-in-cheek.

Who coined the word "scientist" in 1834? :: William Whewell

Science needs to be seen and understood in its appropriate historical context. Modern culture (and even scientists themselves) often forget the profound impact of theological, philosophical, social, political, and economic factors on how science develops and how we perceive it.

Principe, Lawrence M. (2013, July 8). History of Science: Antiquity to 1700 (Vol. 1200) [.mp3]. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-science-antiquity-to-1700

Sönke Ahrens used Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's description of experimental work as a form of material deconstruction as a framework for looking at Niklas Luhmann.

A primary difference between Indigenous science and Western science is the first is intimately connected to the practitioners while the second is wholly separate.

Would Western science be in a healthier space currently if its practice were more tightly bound to the people who need to use it (everyone)? By not being bound to the everyday practice and knowledge of our science, increasingly larger portions of Western society don't believe in science or its value.

reading the texts in parallel.

Matthew Daniel Eddy https://www.dur.ac.uk/directory/profile/?id=1715

Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths (1646), commonly known as Vulgar Errours, was an important text in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Browne, like Francis Bacon, argued that empirical evidence was necessary to support (or disprove) claims, so his "trial" here likely involved many bird dissections.

Browne is credited with introducing a number of words to the scientific discourse, including "electricity" and--interesting for our purposes--"computer" and "hallucination."

Reminds me of this historian’s talk at Pint of Science Montreal 2015. (Sadly, not finding online traces of the event apart from my own section.)

p. 141

Initially, the digital humanities consisted of the curation and analysis of data that were born digital, and the digitisation and archiving projects that sought to render analogue texts and material objects into digital forms that could be organised and searched and be subjects to basic forms of overarching, automated or guided analysis, such as summary visualisations of content or connections between documents, people or places. Subsequently, its advocates have argued that the field has evolved to provide more sophisticated tools for handling, searching, linking, sharing and analysing data that seek to complement and augment existing humanities methods, and facilitate traditional forms of interpretation and theory building, rather than replacing traditional methods or providing an empiricist or positivistic approach to humanities scholarship.

summary of history of digital humanities

bibliography tying rate of coauthorship to professionalisation of science

original form of scholarly comm was letters

p. v. Has an interesting idea that the real contribution of the long eighteenth century to information was the ordering and typology systems.