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Warning: This episode contains frank discussions of human anatomy and some violence.

Ever wondered why wonder is so important in science? We’re taught from an early edge that science is a world of wonder, and encouraged to indulge our natural curiosity as a first step to achieving scientific rationality. Today, we’ll investigate the fascinating history of wonder, including times when wonder was not in fashion and times when it led grown men to kick old women in the stomach. (Yes, you will need to listen to find what that refers to.)

Guest voice: Many thanks to Tim Ralphs of the Room Behind the Bookcase podcast for playing Ambroise Paré.

For further reading:

• Mary Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP, 2004).
• Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonder and the Orders of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books, 2001).
• Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
• G. E. R. Lloyd, The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China (Cambridge UP, 2002).
• Fred Nadis, Wonder Shows: Performing Science, Magic, and Religion in America (Rutgers UP, 2005).
• Ambroise Paré, On Monsters and Marvels, trans. Janis L. Pallister (originally published ; University of Chicago Press, 1982).
• Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
• Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2001).
• Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
• Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology (Vintage, 1996).

On the shelf:

Other links:

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

Listen to this episode.

Most of us encounter science through the the world of popular science: the books, TV shows, museum exhibits, kits, and toys that are packaged for general consumption. Today, we explore the early days of mass-produced popular science, particularly the books written for women and children.

Guest essay - Michal Meyer, “No Place for a Lady”

For further reading:

• Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789-1979 (Rutgers UP, 1987).
• Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Maria Edgeworth, Harry and Lucy; with Other Tales (Harper & Bros., 1842). The original edition of this book was published in 1801.
• Aileen Fyfe, “Reading Children’s Books in Late Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Families,” The Historical Journal 43 (2000): 453-473.
• Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman, eds., Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
• Judith Yaross Lee, “The Feminization of Technology: Mechanical Characters in Picture Books,” in Literature and Technology, ed. Mark L. Greenberg and Lance Schachterle, pp. 206-224 (Lehigh UP, 1992).
• Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
• Greg Myers, “Science for Women and Children: The Dialogue of Popular Science in the Nineteenth Century,” in Nature Transfigured: Science and Literature, 1700-1900, ed. John Christie and Sally Shuttleworth, pp. 171-200 (Manchester UP, 1989).
• Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind (Cambridge UP, 2001).
• James A. Secord, “Newton in the Nursery: Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and Balls, 1761-1838,” History of Science 23, no. 2 (1985): 127-151.
• Elizabeth Chambers Patterson, Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815-1840 (Martinus Nijhoff, 1983).
• Mary Fairfax Somerville, Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age of Mary Somerville: With Selections from her Correspondence, ed. Martha Charters Somerville (Adamant Media Corporation, 2001).
• Ruth Watts, Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History (Routledge, 2007).
  

On the shelf:

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

Listen to this episode.

Creationism and intelligent design are widely understood as the province of American Protestants. Today’s episode explores how people in some of the world’s other religious traditions - particularly Jews, Catholics, and Muslims - have positioned themselves in the evolution-intelligent design debate.

First guest essay - Emily Jenkins, “Why Genesis Doesn’t Mean Creationism for (Most) Jews”

Second guest essay - David Squires, “The Jesuits: Between Science and Faith”

For further reading

• Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz, eds., Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2006).
• Counterbalance Foundation, interview with George Coyne.
• George V. Coyne, “God’s Chance Creation,” The Tablet (6 Aug 2005).
• —–, “Infinite Wonder of the Divine,” The Tablet (10 Dec 2005).
• —– and Alessandro Omizzolo, Wayfarers in the Cosmos: The Human Quest for Meaning (Crossroad General Interest, 2002).
• Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Broadway, 2006).
• Taner Edis, “Islamic Creationism: A Short History,” History of Science Society Newsletter 37 (2008).
• —–, An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam (Prometheus Books, 2007).
• Noah J. Efron, Judaism and Science: A Historical Introduction (Greenwood Press, 2006).
• Mordechai Feingold, ed., Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters (MIT Press, 2002).
• John F. Haught, God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview, 2007).
• B. Alan Wallace, ed., Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (Columbia UP, 2003).

On the shelf:

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

Listen to this episode.

How did the Civil War and the Cold War affect the acceptance of evolution in the United States? Tune in to today’s program to find out. This is the second episode in a three-part series on the history behind the evolution-intelligent design controversy.

First guest essay - Caitlin McShea, “Atomic Bombs and Evolutionary Mushroom Clouds“

Second guest essay - Kate Peteet, “Evolution Is Not a Dirty Word”

For further reading:

• Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1945).
• CBS News, “Poll: Majority Reject Evolution” (22 October 2005).
• Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What You Should Know about Science, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998).
• Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000).
• Harris Poll, “Nearly Two-thirds of U.S. Adults Believe Human Beings Were Created by God,” Harris Interactive (6 July 2005).
• M. Paul Holsinger, War and American Popular Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999).
• Karl Kautsky, Social Democracy vs Communism (New York: The Rand School Press, 1946).
• Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
• Edward J. Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution (New York: Oxford UP, 2003).
• Chris Mooney, “Polling for ID,” Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (11 September 2003).
• Nathan Reingold, Science in America: A Documentary History, 1900-1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
• John L. Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
• Michael Ruse, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2006).

On the Shelf:

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

Listen to this episode.

This episode inaugurates our series on the history behind the evolution-intelligent design controversy. Today, we examine the deep history of scientific method, and how the rules evolved to the point where intelligent design cannot follow them.

Guest essay - John Burchfield and Shalane Giles, “The Evolution of Scientific Method”

• for further reading:
  • A. J. Ayer, Logical Positivism (Free Press, 1959).
  • William A. Dembski, Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press, 2004).
  • William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA (Cambridge UP, 2004).
  • Barry Gower, Scientific Method: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2002).
  • Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper, the Formative Years, 1902-1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna (Cambridge UP, 2000).
  • David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., When Science and Christianity Meet (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
  • Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Harvard UP, 2006).
  • Michael Ruse, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Harvard UP, 2006).
  • Sergio Sismondo, Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (Blackwell, 2004).
  • The TalkOrigins Archive: an online collection of articles on the evolution-intelligent design controversy, including documents from the McLean v. Arkansas case.

On the Shelf:

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

(To some of you, the subject line of this post and what I am about to say will be complete gibberish. If it is, then what follows probably doesn’t affect you, so fret not.)

I have changed the RSS feed for the podcast. This is only an issue if you have subscribed to the podcast using a podcatcher that is not iTunes.

• If you subscribe via iTunes, then your subscription should have shifted over automatically.
• If you subscribe using another podcatcher, you will need to resubscribe using the RSS feed listed at the right. (Look for the orange icon.)
• If you listen to the podcast directly from the website (that is, if you click on “Listen to this episode”), then this change will not affect you.

My apologies for the inconvenience. If you must know, I got fed up with Libsyn’s poor excuse for a statistics generator.

Right. Let’s all get back to something more interesting.

Listen to this episode.

This month, guest essayist Scott Lough concludes his exploration of time’s strange behavior, this time focusing on how early human societies understood and measured it.

Guest essay - Scott Lough, “The Weirdness of Time” (part 2)

• for further reading:
  • Abel, K. Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History. Montreal and Kingston: McGill and Queen’s UP, 2005.
  • Aveni, A. F. “Old and new world naked eye astronomy.” In Brecher, K., Feirtag, M., (eds.), Astronomy of the Ancients (pp. 61-89). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979.
  • Aveni, A. F. Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1989.
  • Aveni, A. F. Conversing with the Planets: How Science and Myth Invented the Cosmos. New York: Times Books, 1992.
  • Barbour, J. B. The End of Time. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
  • Cobo, Bernabé. Inca Religion and Customs. Hamilton, R. (ed. and trans.), Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
  • Ferris, T. Coming of Age in the Milky Way. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
  • Galison, P. L. Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.
  • Gleick, J. Faster. New York: Vintage, 2000.
  • Hawking, S. W. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. New York: Bantam, 1998.
  • Hesiod. Works and Days. Tandy, D. W., Neale, W. C. (eds. and trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
  • Krupp, E. C. In Search of Ancient Astronomies. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.
  • Krupp, E. C. Echoes of the Ancient Skies. New York: Meridian, 1983.
  • Krupp, E. C. Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.
  • MacDonald, J. The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum/Nunavut Research Institute, 2000.
  • Massie, P. “Time and Contingency in Duns Scotus.” The Saint Anselm Journal 3, no. 2 (2006): 17-31.
  • Smith, A. A., II. “Time and the Medieval World.” Philosophy Now Magazine 62 (July/Aug. 2007): 18-20.
  • Smolin, L. The Life of the Cosmos. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
  • Staley, K. M. “Omniscience, Time, Eternity: Is Aquinas Inconsistent?” The Saint Anselm Journal 3, no. 2 (2006): 9-16.
  • Urton, G. At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

On the Shelf:

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

Listen to this episode.

This episode explores two cases when we have realized that what we thought was common sense - well - wasn’t.

Guest essay - Scott Lough, “The Weirdness of Time” (part 1)

• for further reading:
  • Anthony Aveni, Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures (UP of Colorado, 2002).
• Scott Lough is a husband, father, Montessori teacher trainer, educational consultant, science writer, lay preacher and resident of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, in Canada.

Host essay - “Quantity vs. Quality”

• for further reading:
  • Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Cornell UP, 1992).
  • Marcia Ascher, Mathematics Elsewhere: An Exploration of Ideas across Cultures (Princeton UP, 2002).
  • Zakes Mda, The Heart of Redness: A Novel (Picador, 2003).
  • Marguerite Poland, David Hammond-Tooke, and Leigh Voigt, The Abundant Herds: A Celebration of the Cattle of the Zulu People (Fernwood Press, 2003).
  • Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800 (Oxford UP, 1983).

On the Shelf:

• Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007).

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

• Sunburn in Cyprus, History (intro & outro)
• Happy Gemini 3, Pondering the 10^th Planet (transitions)
• Ichiro Nakagawa, Slightly Different Flow of Time (during first segment)
• nurse, Daylight Savings Time Again (following first segment)
• Daniel Berkman, Heartstrings 2004 (during second segment; courtesy of Magnatune)
• Thee Phantom 5ive, Cattle Swagger (following second segment)
• Sound effects courtesy of the FreeSound Project:
  • Tibetan bell
  • Turkish market in Kreuzberg section of Berlin
  • Xhosa boys milking cows in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
  • Book pages turning

The sixth episode is running a little late, but will be up by the end of the first week in January.

The seventh episode will be back on schedule for the end of January. My apologies for the delay.

Listen to this episode.

When did the sciences become so technical that the general public saw them as beyond its grasp? What impact does that have on the scientists’ moral obligations?

This episode transports us to two conferences that can help us answer these questions. First, you will tag along with me to the History of Science Society (HSS) annual meeting that took place recently in Washington, DC. I’ll share with you some excerpts from Ted Porter’s fascinating lecture on “How Science Became Technical.”

Then, we’ll travel back a half-century to the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, a remarkable event at which 21 eminent scientists - including Leo Szilard, Joseph Rotblat, and Herman Muller - met to discuss the threat posed to world peace by thermonuclear weapons.

Segment 1 - “How the Sciences Became Technical” at the History of Science Society meeting in Washington

• for further reading:
  • Porter, Theodore M, Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005).
  • Porter, Theodore M., Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996).
  • Porter, Theodore M., The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988).

Segment 2 - Pugwash: Cold War Scientists and Nuclear Disarmament

• for further reading:
  • Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, including two articles on Pugwash’s history:
    • Mike Moore, “Forty Years of Pugwash,” (Nov/Dec 1997): 40-45.
    • Metta Spencer, ” ‘Political’ Scientists,” (Jul/Aug 1995): 62-68.
  • Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
  • Student Pugwash USA
  • Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1995).
  • Jessica Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism and the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
  • Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash: A History of the Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1967). No longer in print, but worth reading as a first-hand account by a key player.

On the shelf:

Jim Endersby, A Guinea Pig’s History of Biology (Harvard UP, 2007).

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, except where noted.

• Sunburn in Cyprus, History (intro & outro)
• Happy Gemini 3, Pondering the 10^th Planet (transitions)
• Science Groove, “Oxidative Phosphorylation” (following first segment)
• Leon McCawley, “Papillones Op. 2″ (during second segment; courtesy of Magnatune)
• Mister Vague, “Miss Atom Bomb 1951″ (following second segment)

Other links:

• History of Science Society
• British Society for the History of Science
• Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science
• International Union of History and Philosophy of Science