Be Part of Where You Live

What concerns me is how our information networks have enabled us to become hyper-connected to geographically distant communities, while at the same time disconnected from our local ones. Virtual and long-distance relationships can enrich our lives in myriad ways, but I fear that our reliance on them has the potential to erode our physical communities and diminish our sense of place. Wendell Berry once said that “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.” Knowing wh...

 When Science Became a Profession

The possibilities of modem technology were first in practice realised in England by the energy of a prosperous middle class. Accordingly, the industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly realised the methods by which the deeper veins in the mine of science could be reached. In their technological schools and universities progress did not have to wait for the occasional genius or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats of scholarship during the nineteenth century were the ...

 The Individual Cannot Escape Reliance on Society

The individual cannot escape his dependence on society even when he acts on his own. A scientist who spends his lifetime in a laboratory may delude himself that he is a modern version of Robinson Crusoe, but the material of his activity and the apparatus and skills with which he operates are social products. They are inerasable signs of the cooperation which binds men together. The very language in which a scientist thinks has been learned in a particular society. Social context also determin...

 Do What All Good Scientists Do

You all have learned reliance On the sacred teachings of Science, So I hope, through life, you will never decline In spite of philistine Defiance To do what all good scientists do. Experiment. Make it your motto day and night. Experiment. And it will lead you to the light.

 The Myriad Reasons for Untruths

Untruth naturally afflicts historical information. There are various reasons that make this unavoidable. One of them is partisanship for opinions and schools... Another reason making untruth unavoidable in historical information is reliance upon transmitters... Another reason is unawareness of the purpose of an event ... Another reason is unfounded assumption as to the truth of a thing. ... Another reason is ignorance of how conditions conform with reality... Another reason is the fact that p...

 Herschel Compares Scientific Discovery to Columbus' Explo...

Herschel prophetically implied that electricity and electro-magnetism still hid many secrets, and that their investigation would become the leading science of the new age. This would indeed be Faraday’s coming field of triumph. He summarised (paragraph no. 376) this pursuit in the image of a great and noble sea voyage of exploration. ‘There is something in this which reminds us of the obstinate adherence of Columbus to his notion of the necessary existence of the New World; and the whole ...