# kb

id: hagiopolitan-octoechos-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiopolitan_Octoechos-9.md
category: reference
title: Hagiopolitan Octoechos
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiopolitan_Octoechos
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:20.479308+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hagiopolitan-octoechos-20260505-0
summary:
== Studies == Alexandru, Maria (2000). Studie über die 'großen Zeichen' der byzantinischen musikalischen Notation unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Periode vom Ende des 12. bis Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts. University Copenhagen. Amargianakis, George (1977). "An Analysis of Stichera in the Deuteros Modes: The Stichera idiomela for the Month of September in the Modes Deuteros, Plagal Deuteros, and Nenano; transcribed from the Manuscript Sinai 1230 <A.D. 1365>" (PDF). Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin. 22–23: 1–269. Atkinson, Charles M. (2001). "Tonus in the Carolingian Era: A Terminal Spannungsfeld.". In Bernhard, Michael (ed.). Quellen und Studien zur Musiktheorie des Mittelalters (PDF). Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. pp. 19–46. ISBN 978-3-76-966008-1. Atkinson, Charles M. (2008). The critical nexus: Tone-System, Mode, and Notation in Early Medieval Music. Oxford, New York [etc.]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514888-6. Busse Berger, Anna Maria (2005), Medieval Music and the Art of Memory, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-19-514888-6. Chrysanthos of Madytos (1832), Θεωρητικὸν μεγὰ τῆς Μουσικῆς, Triest: Michele Weis, retrieved 11 April 2012. Floros, Constantin; Neil K. Moran (2009). The Origins of Russian Music - Introduction to the Kondakarian Notation. Frankfurt/Main etc.: Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-59553-4. Frøyshov, Stig Simeon R. (2007). "The


id: hagiopolitan-octoechos-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiopolitan_Octoechos-10.md
category: reference
title: Hagiopolitan Octoechos
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiopolitan_Octoechos
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:20.479308+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hagiopolitan-octoechos-20260505-0
summary:
== External links == Jeffery, Peter (4 December 2010). "At the Origins of the Byzantine Musical Tradition: The Eight Modes". White Plains: Axion Estin Foundation. Retrieved 29 January 2013. "Hesperinos psalm with the sticheron anastasimon «Νίκην ἔχον Χριστὲ» in echos plagios devteros". Music School «Ὁ ἅγιος Ἀχίλλιος» of Larissa. 2 October 2021. Retrieved 17 May 2024. Father Nektarios of the Skete Hagia Anna on Mount Athos. "Sticheron idiomelon «Σὲ τὸν ἐπὶ ὑδάτων» (Holy Saturday) in echos plagios devteros". YouTube. Retrieved 17 May 2024. Petros Peloponnesios (February 2018). "Katavasies (heirmologion argon) «Σταυρὸν χαράξας Μωσῆς» (odes 1, 7 and 9 of the canon) for the feast of the elevation of the cross (14 September) in echos plagios tetartos". Archon Protopsaltes Demosthenis Païkopoulos. Retrieved 17 May 2024. Meyer, Christian; et al. "Sources of Medieval Music Theory". Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften online. Retrieved 16 January 2012. "Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum". Index for the 9th-11th century. Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405. Retrieved 19 December 2025. Ibn al-Munadjdjim (French)


id: jennifer-michael-hecht-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht-0.md
category: reference
title: Jennifer Michael Hecht
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:21.684457+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: jennifer-michael-hecht-20260505-0
summary:
Jennifer Michael Hecht (born November 23, 1965) is a teacher, author, poet, historian, and philosopher. She was an associate professor of history at Nassau Community College (1994–2007) and most recently taught at The New School in New York City. Hecht has seven published books, her scholarly articles have been published in many journals and magazines, and her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Ms. Magazine, and Poetry Magazine, among others. She has also written essays and book reviews for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The American Scholar, The Boston Globe and other publications. She has written several columns for The New York Times online "Times Select." In 2010 Hecht was one of the five nonfiction judges for the National Book Award. Hecht is a longtime blogger for The Best American Poetry series web site and maintains a personal blog on her website. She resides in Brooklyn, New York. == Background == Born in Glen Cove, New York on Long Island, Hecht attended Adelphi University, where she earned a BA in history, for a time studying at the Université de Caen, and the Université d'Angers. She earned her PhD in the history


id: jennifer-michael-hecht-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht-1.md
category: reference
title: Jennifer Michael Hecht
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:21.684457+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: jennifer-michael-hecht-20260505-0
summary:
Hecht believes that, "the basic modern assumptions about how to be happy are nonsense." In a review of her book, The Happiness Myth for The New York Times, Alison McCulloch summed it up, "What you think you should do to be happy, like getting fitter and thinner, is part of a 'cultural code' — 'an unscientific web of symbolic cultural fantasies' — and once you realize this, you will perhaps feel a little more free to be a lot more happy." Similarly, in an interview on the Point of Inquiry podcast in 2007, she said "I'm not trying really to get somebody out of depression, but I sure am trying to get people to not be so worried, so anxious over things that really don't matter." She has written against agnosticism, calling "philosophically silly" the argument that because you can't prove a negative we have to allow for the possibility of God. "Either you doubt everything to the point where you can't speak, or you make reasoned decisions." Hecht is an anti-suicide advocate, writing an entire book (Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It) arguing against it. She believes not only that "Suicide is delayed homicide", but


id: jennifer-michael-hecht-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht-2.md
category: reference
title: Jennifer Michael Hecht
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hecht
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:21.684457+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: jennifer-michael-hecht-20260505-0
summary:
== Published works == Her debut poetry collection, The Next Ancient World, artfully mixes contemporary and ancient world views, histories, and myths. In 2002 it received the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize in Poetry, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, as well as ForeWord Magazine's award for Poetry Book of the Year. Her second collection, Funny, explores the implications of the human love of humor and jokes. It won the 2005 Felix Pollak Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press. Her most recent collection, Who Said (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), playfully asks the title question of some of the most iconic English language poems. In 2003 Hecht published two books of history and philosophy with two different publishers. The first, Doubt: A History, is an epic, worldwide study of religious doubt throughout history. The other, The End of the Soul, is a profile of an unusual group of nineteenth-century French anthropologists who formed the Society of Mutual Autopsy to discover links between personality, ability and brain morphology. It received the prestigious Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for 2004 from Phi Beta Kappa society "for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural


id: hellenophilia-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenophilia-0.md
category: reference
title: Hellenophilia
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenophilia
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:22.872899+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hellenophilia-20260505-0
summary:
Hellenophilia is the idea that all western science began in Greek tradition. This is discussed in length by David Pingree in his address to colleagues. Hellenophilia is a way of thought that allows those who look into the history of science to be blinded to science born in other cultures. Pingree states, in explanation of the term that "a Hellenophile suffers from a form of madness that blinds him or her to historical truth" He continues by explaining the main symptoms of Hellenophilia "the first of these is that the Greeks invented science; the second is that they discovered a way to truth, the scientific method, that we are now successfully following; the third is that the only real sciences are those that began in Greece; and the fourth (and last?) is that the true definition of science is just that which scientists happen to be doing now, following a method or methods adumbrated by the Greeks, but never fully understood or utilized by them". An anthropological etiology of Greek innovation in natural science is advanced by sociologist Michael G. Horowitz in "The Scientific Dialectic of Ancient Greece and the Cultural Tradition of Indo-European Speakers". Although Hellenophilia relates directly to


id: history-of-geology-and-mining-information-system-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Geology_and_Mining_(Information_System)-0.md
category: reference
title: History of Geology and Mining (Information System)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Geology_and_Mining_(Information_System)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:24.016654+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geology-and-mining-information-system-20260505-0
summary:
Information System "History of Geology and Mining" (Russian: Информационная система «История геологии и горного дела») is a scientific information system (knowledge base, bibliographic database and non-commercial website) containing biographical, bibliographical data and documents about scientists, scientific organizations, and publications related to geological and mining sciences. It is a joint project of the Geological Institute and the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It represents the first attempt to systematize and provide access to a large array of data in the field of the history of geology and mining. It was created to support and facilitate scientific research in the history of science. == History == The information system is a continuation of the printed publications in the series “Materials on the History of Geology in the USSR”. Versions of the "History of Geology and Mining" information system: Test version on the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences website (2011—2015 — scirus.benran.ru/higeo. At the Geological Institute RAS: 2015–2025 at higeo.ginras.ru. New test version at https://higeo.ru == Description and structure == The system was created based on the customizable network software complex "SciRus" developed at the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy


id: history-of-geology-and-mining-information-system-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Geology_and_Mining_(Information_System)-1.md
category: reference
title: History of Geology and Mining (Information System)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Geology_and_Mining_(Information_System)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:24.016654+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geology-and-mining-information-system-20260505-0
summary:
1961—1992 — Materials of the Commission for the Geological Study of the USSR. 1965—1973 — Biographies and bibliographies of scientists in the form of bibliographic dictionaries, edited for the first 7 issues by V. V. Tikhomirov. In 1991, the Department for the history of geology moved to the newly established Vernadsky State Geological Museum. Data collection began using Microsoft Access; by 2007, brief information on 1,700 scientists whose works were significant for the development of Earth sciences had been entered. The system was then planned to be integrated into the standard software complex "Scientific Institute of the RAS", in cooperation with the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the RAS. In 2008, the history of geology group began work under the Program of the RAS Presidium — the Electronic Library "Scientific Heritage of Russia", which united information resources of scientific institutes, archives, and libraries of the RAS. The library hosted publications of naturalists and geologists (up to 1945), their biographical essays, and portraits. A section "Natural History Collections" was created with descriptions of museum items from historical and monographic collections related to scientists. Therefore, the modern information system is integrated (links to scientific works, information about authors, etc.) with the "Scientific Heritage


id: history-of-scholarship-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scholarship-0.md
category: reference
title: History of scholarship
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scholarship
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:25.146311+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-scholarship-20260505-0
summary:
The history of scholarship is the historical study of fields of study which are not covered by the English term "science" (cf., history of science), but are covered by, for example, the German term "Wissenschaft" (i.e., all kinds of academic studies). Examples include the history of classical studies, philosophy, religion, biblical studies, historiography, music, art, and literature. It is a field which has recently undergone a complete renewal and is now a major branch of research. In 2015, the Society for the History of the Humanities was established, coinciding with the launch of the journal History of Humanities in 2016. Both developments reflect the field’s growing institutional presence and international scholarly collaboration. == Classical scholarship == Rudolph Pfeiffer (1968) describes the history of classical scholarship from its revival inspired by Petrarch to the achievements of the Italian humanists and the independent movement in Holland (including Erasmus) and the German scholar-reformers. Pfeiffer traces the development of classical scholarship in the countries of Western Europe through the next two centuries, with particular attention to sixteenth-century France and eighteenth-century England. Finally he provides an account of the new approach made by Winckelmann and his successors in Germany. == Philosophers, scholars, polymaths, and scientists


id: history-of-beliefs-about-the-human-body-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body-0.md
category: reference
title: History of beliefs about the human body
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:27.496821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-beliefs-about-the-human-body-20260505-0
summary:
The human body has been subject of much debate. How people are defined, and what defined them – be it their anatomy or their energy or both – depends on culture and time. Culture not only defines how sex is perceived but also how gender is defined. Today gender, sex, and identity continue to be of much debate and change based on what place and people are being examined. The early modern idea of the body was a cultural ideal, an understanding and approach to how the body works and what place that body has in the world. All cultural ideals of the body in the early modern period deal with deficiencies and disorders within a body, commonly told through a male ideal. Ideas of the body in the early modern period form the history of how bodies should be and how to correct the body when something has gone wrong. Therefore, early modern conceptions of the body were not biological as there was not a restrictive biological view of the human body as established by modern science. Conceptions of the body are primarily either eastern, based in China and involving practices such as Traditional chinese medicine, or western, which


id: history-of-beliefs-about-the-human-body-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body-1.md
category: reference
title: History of beliefs about the human body
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:27.496821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-beliefs-about-the-human-body-20260505-0
summary:
Greek philosophers separated the body and the energy of the body into separate but equal and interacting categories. Aristotle defined the energy which gives the body its movement as the soul. The soul and the body are therefore linked but can remain separate entities. This is in refutation of Dualists who view the body and mind as separate states and should be treated and examined differently and Materialists who view all parts of the body, even the soul as having a physical manifestation in the body. Aristotle finds the middle ground and accepts both of these views, that the soul has aspects that cannot be felt by normal methods, and physical manifestations that can be felt. "For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality" — Aristotle in De Anima Aristotle forms the idea of Hylomorphism, that the soul and the body are not capable of being split apart without destroying both in the process. Despite this idea of the body and the soul Aristotle viewed disorder in what could be seen and felt. He was a proponent of the humoral theory that classified disorder as imbalances of


id: history-of-beliefs-about-the-human-body-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body-2.md
category: reference
title: History of beliefs about the human body
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:27.496821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-beliefs-about-the-human-body-20260505-0
summary:
=== Yellow Emperors body === The Yellow Emperor's Body is a term derived from the references to the Yellow Emperor within the Ancient Chinese book, the "book of change". The Term describes the references to both the physical body that can be touched, felt, and interact with the physical world, but also the sense of person and self that the body. The dualism of the body as both the physical self and the subjective consciousness is how Chinese defined the body. The Yellow Emperor's body is a metaphor to describe a body that focuses on the individual and not the general, focusing on disorder as not just a physical malady. The yellow emperor is revered in China and was the founder of acupuncture. The yellow emperor is said to of derived his medical practices from a conversation with a community physician. The manuscript is recorded in the Yellow Emperors Inner Cannon, and it being recorded in this way represents the attention to the individuals perspective in creating therapies like acupuncture to treat body ailments. The Inner Cannon was revised by natural Philosophers of the time and the approved version of the Han Court and became a foundational text for the


id: ice-age-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-0.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
An ice age is a period of time when the lower temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere results in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. The term is applied in several different senses to very long and comparatively short periods of cooling. Colder periods are called glacials or ice ages, and warmer periods are called interglacials. Earth's climate alternates between icehouse and greenhouse periods based on whether there are glaciers on the planet, and for most of Earth's history it has been in a greenhouse period with little or no permanent ice. Over the very long term, Earth is currently in an icehouse period called the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, which started 34 million years ago. There have been colder and warmer periods within this ice age, and the term is also applied to the Quaternary glaciation, which started 2.58 million years ago. Within this period, the Last Interglacial ended 115,000 years ago, and was followed by the Last Glacial Period (LGP), which gave way to the current warm Holocene, which started 11,700 years ago. The most severe cold period of the LGP was the Last Glacial Maximum, which reached its maximum between


id: ice-age-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-1.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
Only a few years later, the Danish-Norwegian geologist Jens Esmark (1762–1839) argued for a sequence of worldwide ice ages. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in Earth's orbit. Esmark discovered the similarity between moraines near Haukalivatnet lake near sea level in Rogaland and moraines at branches of Jostedalsbreen. Esmark's discovery were later attributed to or appropriated by Theodor Kjerulf and Louis Agassiz. During the following years, Esmark's ideas were discussed and taken over in parts by Swedish, Scottish and German scientists. At the University of Edinburgh Robert Jameson (1774–1854) seemed to be relatively open to Esmark's ideas, as reviewed by Norwegian professor of glaciology Bjørn G. Andersen (1992). Jameson's remarks about ancient glaciers in Scotland were most probably prompted by Esmark. In Germany, Albrecht Reinhard Bernhardi (1797–1849), a geologist and professor of forestry at an academy in Dreissigacker (since incorporated in the southern Thuringian city of Meiningen), adopted Esmark's theory. In a paper published in 1832, Bernhardi speculated about the polar ice caps once reaching as far as the temperate zones of the globe. In Val de Bagnes, a valley


id: ice-age-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-2.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
== Evidence == There are three main types of evidence for ice ages: geological, chemical, and paleontological. Geological evidence for ice ages comes in various forms, including rock scouring and scratching, glacial moraines, drumlins, valley cutting, and the deposition of till or tillites and glacial erratics. Successive glaciations tend to distort and erase the geological evidence for earlier glaciations, making it difficult to interpret. Furthermore, this evidence was difficult to date exactly; early theories assumed that the glacials were short compared to the long interglacials. The advent of sediment and ice cores revealed the true situation: glacials are long, interglacials short. It took some time for the current theory to be worked out. The chemical evidence mainly consists of variations in the ratios of isotopes in fossils present in sediments and sedimentary rocks and ocean sediment cores. For the most recent glacial periods, ice cores provide climate proxies, both from the ice itself and from atmospheric samples provided by included bubbles of air. Because water containing lighter isotopes has a lower heat of evaporation, its proportion decreases with warmer conditions. This allows a temperature record to be constructed. This evidence can be confounded, however, by other factors recorded by isotope


id: ice-age-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-3.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
The evolution of land plants at the onset of the Devonian period caused a long term increase in planetary oxygen levels and reduction of CO2 levels, which resulted in the late Paleozoic icehouse. Its former name, the Karoo glaciation, was named after the glacial tills found in the Karoo region of South Africa. There were extensive polar ice caps at intervals from 360 to 260 million years ago in South Africa during the Carboniferous and early Permian periods. Correlatives are known from Argentina, also in the center of the ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland. Although the Mesozoic Era retained a greenhouse climate over its timespan and was previously assumed to have been entirely glaciation-free, more recent studies suggest that brief periods of glaciation occurred in both hemispheres during the Early Cretaceous. Geologic and palaeoclimatological records suggest the existence of glacial periods during the Valanginian, Hauterivian, and Aptian stages of the Early Cretaceous. Ice-rafted glacial dropstones indicate that in the Northern Hemisphere, ice sheets may have extended as far south as the Iberian Peninsula during the Hauterivian and Aptian. Although ice sheets largely disappeared from Earth for the rest of the period (potential reports from the Turonian, otherwise the warmest period of the


id: ice-age-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-4.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
=== Positive === An important form of feedback is provided by Earth's albedo, which is how much of the sun's energy is reflected rather than absorbed by Earth. Ice and snow increase Earth's albedo, while forests reduce its albedo. When the air temperature decreases, ice and snow fields grow, and they reduce forest cover. This continues until competition with a negative feedback mechanism forces the system to an equilibrium. One theory is that when glaciers form, two things happen: the ice grinds rocks into dust, and the land becomes dry and arid. This allows winds to transport iron rich dust into the open ocean, where it acts as a fertilizer that causes massive algal blooms that pulls large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere. This in turn makes it even colder and causes the glaciers to grow more. In 1956, Ewing and Donn hypothesized that an ice-free Arctic Ocean leads to increased snowfall at high latitudes. When low-temperature ice covers the Arctic Ocean there is little evaporation or sublimation and the polar regions are quite dry in terms of precipitation, comparable to the amount found in mid-latitude deserts. This low precipitation allows high-latitude snowfalls to melt during the summer.


id: ice-age-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-5.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
=== Position of the continents === The geological record appears to show that ice ages start when the continents are in positions which block or reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles and thus allow ice sheets to form. The ice sheets increase Earth's reflectivity and thus reduce the absorption of solar radiation. With less radiation absorbed the atmosphere cools; the cooling allows the ice sheets to grow, which further increases reflectivity in a positive feedback loop. The ice age continues until the reduction in weathering causes an increase in the greenhouse effect. There are three main contributors from the layout of the continents that obstruct the movement of warm water to the poles: A continent sits on top of a pole, as Antarctica does today. A polar sea is almost land-locked, as the Arctic Ocean is today. A supercontinent covers most of the equator, as Rodinia did during the Cryogenian period. Since today's Earth has a continent over the South Pole and an almost land-locked ocean over the North Pole, geologists believe that Earth will continue to experience glacial periods in the geologically near future. Some scientists believe that the Himalayas are a major


id: ice-age-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-6.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
The Milankovitch cycles are a set of cyclic variations in characteristics of Earth's orbit around the Sun. Each cycle has a different length, so at some times their effects reinforce each other and at other times they (partially) cancel each other. There is strong evidence that the Milankovitch cycles affect the occurrence of glacial and interglacial periods within an ice age. The present ice age is the most studied and best understood, particularly the last 400,000 years, since this is the period covered by ice cores that record atmospheric composition and proxies for temperature and ice volume. Within this period, the match of glacial/interglacial frequencies to the Milanković orbital forcing periods is so close that orbital forcing is generally accepted. The combined effects of the changing distance to the Sun, the precession of Earth's axis, and the changing tilt of Earth's axis redistribute the sunlight received by Earth. Of particular importance are changes in the tilt of Earth's axis, which affect the intensity of seasons. For example, the amount of solar influx in July at 65 degrees north latitude varies by as much as 22% (from 450 W/m2 to 550 W/m2). It is widely believed that ice sheets advance when


id: ice-age-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-7.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
The major glacial stages of the current ice age in North America are the Illinoian, Eemian, and Wisconsin glaciation. The use of the Nebraskan, Afton, Kansan, and Yarmouthian stages to subdivide the ice age in North America has been discontinued by Quaternary geologists and geomorphologists. These stages have all been merged into the Pre-Illinoian in the 1980s. During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 13,300 years ago), ice sheets extended to about 45th parallel north. These sheets were 3 to 4 kilometres (1.9 to 2.5 mi) thick. This Wisconsin glaciation left widespread impacts on the North American landscape. The Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes were carved by ice deepening old valleys. Most of the lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin were gouged out by glaciers and later filled with glacial meltwaters. The old Teays River drainage system was radically altered and largely reshaped into the Ohio River drainage system. Other rivers were dammed and diverted to new channels, such as Niagara Falls, which formed a dramatic waterfall and gorge, when the waterflow encountered a limestone escarpment. Another similar waterfall, at the present Clark Reservation State Park near Syracuse, New


id: ice-age-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age-8.md
category: reference
title: Ice age
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:28.674049+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ice-age-20260505-0
summary:
Based on past estimates for interglacial durations of about 10,000 years, there was some concern in the 1970s that the next glacial period would be imminent. Human impact is now seen as possibly extending what would already be an unusually long warm period. Ice ages go through cycles of about 100,000 years, but the next one may well be avoided due to human carbon dioxide emissions. According to Stephen Barker of Cardiff University, without human interference, the next glaciation of the Earth would "occur within the next 11,000 years, and it would end in 66,000 years' time." A 2015 report by the Past Global Changes Project says simulations show that a new glaciation is unlikely to happen within the next approximately 50,000 years, before the next strong drop in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation occurs "if either atmospheric CO2 concentration remains above 300 ppm or cumulative carbon emissions exceed 1000 Pg C" (i.e. 1,000 gigatonnes carbon). "Only for an atmospheric CO2 content below the preindustrial level may a glaciation occur within the next 10 ka. ... Given the continued anthropogenic CO2 emissions, glacial inception is very unlikely to occur in the next 50 ka, because the timescale for CO2 and temperature


id: ideonomy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonomy-0.md
category: reference
title: Ideonomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:29.838500+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ideonomy-20260505-0
summary:
Ideonomy is a combinatorial "science of ideas" developed by American independent scholar Patrick M. Gunkel (1947–2017). Specifically, Ideonomy is concerned with the systematic organization of ideas and the discovery of the rules behind how ideas combine, diverge, and transform. Gunkel defined ideonomy as "the science of the laws of ideas and of the application of such laws to the generation of all possible ideas in connection with any subject, idea, or thing." In his 1992 book A History of Knowledge, Charles Van Doren compared ideonomy to a "mining operation" that excavates meanings and thought to discover treasures hidden deep within language. Sources from the 1980s and 1990s demonstrate that ideonomy was useful to academic researchers in fields including biology, toxicology, and nursing/patient care. Beginning in the 2010s, academics in a wide range of fields including machine learning, marketing, computational modeling, and cybersecurity have relied on materials generated for ideonomy to provide methodological support for their research. == Etymology and definition == The word "ideonomy" combines the Greek roots ideo- (from idea, meaning pattern or form) and -nomy (from nomos, meaning law or custom). The suffix -nomy suggests the laws concerning or the totality of knowledge about a given subject, as


id: ideonomy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonomy-1.md
category: reference
title: Ideonomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:29.838500+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ideonomy-20260505-0
summary:
Edward Fredkin, former director of MIT's computer science laboratory, who praised Gunkel's "provocative ideas on artificial intelligence." Marvin Minsky, AI scientist and MIT professor, who described ideonomy as "perhaps the most extensive study of ways to generate ideas." Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University, who noted Gunkel's "encyclopedic scope" Robert C. Clark, Harvard law professor, who called Gunkel "the most intelligent person I ever met" However, skeptics questioned whether ideonomy constituted a genuine science. Fredkin himself noted that Gunkel "pours out about 60 ideas a minute, and 59 of them are bad," though he added that "even with one good idea out of 60, it's still an amazing accomplishment." Douglas Lenat observed that brainstorming with Gunkel was "a bit like being hit over the head by the muse with a sledgehammer" and that "he puts people off." Gunkel himself acknowledged that ideonomy was in its infancy and might seem "absurdly utopian." His planned magnum opus on ideonomy remained incomplete, and was posted on an MIT website thanks to faculty advisor Whitman Richards. Gunkel wrote: "Pioneering in a completely new field, yes in a new science, is almost unreal. It is heartbreaking, it is pitiable, it is almost inhuman. Honestly,


id: indigenous-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Indigenous science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:31.068012+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: indigenous-science-20260505-0
summary:
Indigenous science is the application and intersection of Indigenous knowledge and science. This field is based on careful observation of the environment, and through experimentation. It is a holistic field, informed by physical, social, mental and cultural knowledge. When applied to ecology and the environment, it can be sometimes termed traditional ecological knowledge. Indigenous science involves the knowledge systems and practices of Indigenous peoples, which are rooted in their cultural traditions and relationships to their indigenous context. There are some similar methods of Western science including (but not limited to): observation, prediction, interpretation, and questioning. There are also some areas in which Western science and Indigenous science differ. Indigenous knowledge is place and case-specific and does not attempt to label or generalize natural processes. Western science strives to find commonalities and theories that can be applied to all areas, such as Newton's Laws of Physics. This is because most Indigenous knowledge stems from the relationship humans have with their environment, which is passed down through stories or is discovered through observation. Western knowledge takes a different approach by isolating targets to study, splitting them from their surroundings and making sets of assumptions and theories. Community is a larger aspect of


id: indigenous-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Indigenous science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:31.068012+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: indigenous-science-20260505-0
summary:
== Place based sciences == Indigenous science may offer a different perspective from what is traditionally thought of as "science". In particular, Indigenous science is tied to territory, cultural practices, and experiences/teachings in explicit ways that are often absent in normal scientific discourse. Place based Indigenous science also is common outside of the academic sphere. Climatology scientists in Alaska and the Artic commonly work with traditional knowledge (Qaujimajatuqangit) among the Inuit when studying long-term changes in sea ice, along with studying other aspects of biology. In the Canadian Arctic, large data organizations like the Inuvialuit Settlement Region Online Platform, Marxan, and Nunaliit Atlas Framework inform marine and coastal management practices by using Inuit knowledge. Many times, this information is passed down in Inuit communities by generation using oral tradition and informs the communities on harvesting, hunting, traveling, and living on the land. This information may apply to decisions on conservation of harvesting sties and mating sites of various animals in the Artic. Inuit knowledge of these areas includes seasonal variations, ecological dynamics, wind direction, and ice dynamics. This knowledge has been gained through historical memories, family and community relations, place names, and open water or sea ice routes. Place names


id: indigenous-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science-2.md
category: reference
title: Indigenous science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:31.068012+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: indigenous-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Engineering === Many different Indigenous tribes in America have built homes from natural resources. One example can be found at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde, or Anasazi, in Northwestern New Mexico and Southwestern Colorado. Ancestral Puebloans built houses on the ground near the cliffs of the Colorado Plateau, and carved others into the face of the cliff, ultimately spanning almost 10,000 square miles across Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon both have more than 600 rooms each, many of which were made from sandstone that was carved into rectangular blocks, and glued together with a mix of mud and water. In addition to physically building these homes, the Ancestral Puebloans used mathematical knowledge like the golden ratio - which has been used to make the Egyptian pyramids, Ancient Greek architecture and the Notre Dame - to construct a Sun Temple. Water management was critical as well in this area, and ancestral Pueblo people had early knowledge of hydrological theory, water transport and storage. This allowed them to create four main reservoirs that helped sustain the population. The Hohokam tribe in Arizona also managed their water resources up until 1450, and created irrigation networks that were


id: institute-for-the-history-of-natural-sciences-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_History_of_Natural_Sciences-0.md
category: reference
title: Institute for the History of Natural Sciences
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_History_of_Natural_Sciences
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:32.166289+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: institute-for-the-history-of-natural-sciences-20260505-0
summary:
The Institute for the History of Natural Sciences (IHNS CAS; Chinese: 中国科学院自然科学史研究所; pinyin: Zhōngguó Kēxuéyuàn Zìrán Kēxuéshǐ Yánjiūsuǒ) is a leading research institution in China dedicated to the study of the history of science, technology, and medicine. It is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). == History == The Institute for the History of Natural Sciences was founded in 1957 with the active involvement of the renowned British biochemist and historian of science Joseph Needham (Chinese: 李约瑟, Lǐ Yuēsè) and a group of Chinese scholars. Its establishment was initiated to systematically research China's rich scientific and technological heritage and its place in world history. Initially, the institute was located in the Gulou district of Beijing. == Research Focus == The institute's primary mission is to conduct fundamental and applied research on the history of science and technology in China and the world, and to promote the development of this discipline. Key research areas include: History of Science and Technology in China: Studying traditional Chinese science, technology, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and their interaction with society and culture. History of World Science: Comparative studies, history of scientific exchanges, study of the Scientific Revolution and the development of modern science. Theoretical


id: international-conference-on-cold-fusion-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_on_Cold_Fusion-0.md
category: reference
title: International Conference on Cold Fusion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_on_Cold_Fusion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:36.944856+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: international-conference-on-cold-fusion-20260505-0
summary:
The International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF) (also referred to as Annual Conference on Cold Fusion in 1990-1991 and mostly as International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science since 2007) is an annual or biennial conference on the topic of cold fusion. An international conference on cold fusion was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA in 1989. However, the first ICCF conference (ICCF1) took place in 1990 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, under the title "First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion". Its location has since rotated between Russia, the USA, Europe, and Asia. It was held in India for the first time in 2011. The conferences have been criticized as events which attract "crackpots" and "pseudo-scientists". == Reception == The First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion was held in March 1990 in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. Robert L. Park of the American Physical Society derisively referred to it as a "seance of true believers." The conference was attended by more than 200 researchers from the United States, Italy, Japan, India and Taiwan and dozens of reporters from all over the U.S. and abroad. The Third International Conference on Cold Fusion was held in 1992 in Nagoya,


id: international-scientific-committee-on-price-history-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_scientific_committee_on_price_history-0.md
category: reference
title: International scientific committee on price history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_scientific_committee_on_price_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:38.261199+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: international-scientific-committee-on-price-history-20260505-0
summary:
The International Scientific Committee on Price History was created in 1929 by William Beveridge and Edwin Francis Gay after receiving a five-year grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The national representatives were William Beveridge for Great Britain, Moritz John Elsas for Germany, Edwin Francis Gay for the United States, Earl J. Hamilton for Spain, Henri Hauser for France and Alfred Francis Pribram for Austria; later, Franciszek Bujak for Poland and Nicolaas Wilhelmus Posthumus for the Netherlands also joined; Arthur H. Cole was in charge of finances for the whole project. == Books by the committee == Hamilton (Earl J.), American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain (1501–1650), 1934. Hamilton (Earl J.), Money, Prices and Wages in Valencia, Aragon and Navarre (1351–1500), 1936. Hauser (Henri), Recherches et documents sur l’histoire des prix en France de 1500 à 1800, 1936. Elsas (Moritz John), Umriß einer Geschichte der Preise und Löhne in Deutschland vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis zum Beginn des 19. Jarhunderts, 3 vol., 1936–1949. Přibram (Alfred Francis), Materialien zur Geschichte der Preise und Löhne in Österreich, 1938. Cole (Arthur Harrison), Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States 1700–1861, 1938. Beveridge (William H.), Prices and Wages in England from the 12th to the


id: isis-journal-1816-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)-0.md
category: reference
title: Isis (journal, 1816)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:39.448196+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isis-journal-1816-20260505-0
summary:
Isis was an encyclopedic journal that focused on articles on natural science, medicine, technology, economics as well as art and history. It also published important articles on science policy and the organization of science. Edited by Lorenz Oken and published by Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, Isis was the first interdisciplinary journal in the German-speaking world. The 41 volumes of the journal named after the Egyptian goddess Isis were nominally published from 1817 to 1848. However, the first issue appeared on August 1, 1816, while the printing of the last issue was delayed until February 1850. Until 1832, Isis bore the title Encyclopädische Zeitung. After the focus of the articles published in it had changed, Oken changed the title to Encyclopädische Zeitschrift, vorzüglich für Naturgeschichte, vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie in 1833. Initially printed in Jena, the journal was banned in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and from the summer of 1819 was produced in nearby Rudolstadt in the court printing works of the Principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. The magazine's original print run of 1,500 copies fell rapidly in the first few years of its existence and amounted to around 200 copies in the last few years. Originally conceived as a non-political journal, Oken


id: isis-journal-1816-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)-1.md
category: reference
title: Isis (journal, 1816)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:39.448196+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isis-journal-1816-20260505-0
summary:
Even before Isis was published, the classical philologist Abraham Eichstädt from Jena learned of the planned new journal. Eichstädt, who published the Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, had held an exclusive right to publish reviews in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach since 1803. As he feared for the financial security of his paper, Eichstädt turned to the President of the State Ministry in Weimar, Christian Gottlob Voigt, and obtained a renewal of this privilege on July 17, 1816. Oken saw this as a violation of the freedom of the press guaranteed in the Weimar Constitution of May 15, 1816 and sneered in the second issue of Isis: "Whether we really have freedom of the press, or whether it is to be mocked as a grimace through literary privileges and arbitrary interpretation and extension of the same, will be taught by the progress of Isis." Eichstädt filed a lawsuit against Oken and Isis on August 1, 1816. In a judgment dated August 23, Oken was ordered to refrain from publishing reviews and political articles. In the event of non-compliance, he was threatened with a fine of 50 thalers and a ban on Isis. Oken, who became aware of the verdict eight days later, protested against it to


id: isis-journal-1816-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)-2.md
category: reference
title: Isis (journal, 1816)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:39.448196+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isis-journal-1816-20260505-0
summary:
Before the end of 1816, Isis was banned in Austria. Meanwhile, Oken continued to campaign for freedom of the press and, for example, published a report on the meeting of the Dutch estates under the title "Against the Restriction of Freedom of the Press". In June 1817, the Prussian Minister of Police, Wilhelm Ludwig Georg Fürst zu Wittgenstein, complained to Carl August about a derogatory criticism of a Prussian decree of 1811 that had appeared in the Oppositions-Blatt and a small note in Isis, in which Oken complained about Prussia's presumption in wanting to interfere even in insignificant matters such as those of the Vienna Agricultural Society. Six days later, a serious warning was issued to the editor of the opposition journal Friedrich Justin Bertuch and Oken, stating "that in the event of further disregard of the sovereign's or authorities' orders, the suppression of this journal will be pursued". During the Wartburg Festival, which Oken and other professors from Jena attended, an auto-da-fé took place on the evening of October 18, 1817, during which parts of a Prussian Uhlan uniform, a Hessian soldier's braid and an Austrian corporal's baton, as well as several books by authors considered reactionary, including Karl


id: isis-journal-1816-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)-3.md
category: reference
title: Isis (journal, 1816)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:39.448196+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isis-journal-1816-20260505-0
summary:
=== Oken's dismissal === The attacks against Oken's Isis from the states of the Holy Alliance continued relentlessly. On January 29, 1819, Karl August von Hardenberg submitted a complaint to Grand Duke Karl August because of a derisive remark about the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, which was printed in the twelfth issue of 1818, but this time without consequences for Oken and Isis. At the Aachen Congress in the fall of 1818, the Russian Tsar Alexander I distributed an anonymously written memorandum by Alexander Scarlatovich Sturdsa (1791–1854) entitled Memoire sur l'état actuel de l'Allemagne, in which Sturdsa commented on the dangerous activities at German universities. Oken's replies again caused a sensation. Under pressure from the Russian envoy to the Saxon court, Vasily Vasilyevich Chanykov (1759–1829), the Weimar state treasurer Carl August Constantin Schnauss (1782–1832) was forced to file charges against Oken on April 20, 1819. On May 11, Grand Duke Carl August of Weimar and Duke August of Gotha instructed the Senate of the University of Jena to give Oken the choice of either discontinuing Isis or resigning his professorship. The Senate tried to give in, but had to present Oken with this choice eleven days later. After three


id: isis-journal-1816-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)-4.md
category: reference
title: Isis (journal, 1816)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:39.448196+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isis-journal-1816-20260505-0
summary:
== Circulation == In the initial period from August 1816 to February 1817, the circulation of Isis, which cost eight thalers a year, was 1500 copies. On March 4, 1817, Brockhaus reduced the print run to 1100 copies due to a lack of sales and reduced it by a further 100 copies a week later. When the actual sales figures were known in June 1817, there was a further drastic reduction of 650 copies. In 1825/1826, only 400 copies were printed. This was followed by a slight increase to up to 500 copies for the next few years until 1830. After that, the circulation fell continuously and was around 200 copies in the last ten years of Isis' existence. This relatively low circulation was nothing unusual. For example, the circulation of the Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, one of the most important journals for scientific reviews, was around 500 copies in the years from 1827 to 1846 and that of the Medizinische Annalen, edited by Johann Friedrich Pierer, was 500 to 700 copies. == Research == In 2001, the German historian of science Dietrich von Engelhardt characterized Isis as "a first-rate scientific and cultural-historical document from that transitional epoch from idealism


id: islamic-scientific-manuscripts-initiative-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Scientific_Manuscripts_Initiative-0.md
category: reference
title: Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Scientific_Manuscripts_Initiative
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:40.690281+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: islamic-scientific-manuscripts-initiative-20260505-0
summary:
The Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative (ISMI) (Arabic: مبادرة المخطوطات العلمية الإسلامية) is an online database that supports research on mathematics history in the Islamic world to 1350 CE. The initiative aims to provide accessible information on all Islamic manuscripts in the exact sciences, including astronomy, mathematics, theories, mathematical geography, music, mechanics, and related subjects. It is an initiative of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), which is dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge and research. == References ==


id: languages-of-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
Languages of science are vehicular languages used by one or several scientific communities for international communication. According to the science historian Michael Gordin, scientific languages are "either specific forms of a given language that are used in conducting science, or they are the set of distinct languages in which science is done." These two meanings are different, since the first describes a distinct prose in a given language (i.e., scientific writing), while the second describes which languages are used in mainstream science. Until the 19th century, classical languages—such as Latin, Classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Classical Malay and Classical Chinese—were commonly used across Afro-Eurasia for international scientific communication. A combination of structural factors, the emergence of nation-states in Europe, the Industrial Revolution, and the expansion of colonization entailed the global use of three European national languages: French, German, and English. Yet new languages of science, such as Russian and Italian, had started to emerge by the end of the 19th century—to the point that international scientific organizations began promoting the use of constructed languages such as Esperanto as a non-national global standard. After the First World War, English gradually outpaced French and German; it became the leading language of science, but not


id: languages-of-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== European and auxiliary languages (1800–1920) === The gradual disuse of Latin opened an uneasy transition period, as more and more works were accessible only in local languages. Many national European languages held the potential to become a language of science within a specific research field: some scholars "took measures to learn Swedish so they could follow the work of [the Swedish chemist] Bergman and his compatriots." Language preferences and use across scientific communities were gradually consolidated into a triumvirate or triad of dominant languages of science: French, English, and German. While each language could be expected to be understood for international scientific communication, each also followed "different functional distributions evident in various scientific fields". French had been almost acknowledged as the international standard for European science in the late 18th century, and it remained "essential" throughout the 19th century. German became a major scientific language during the 19th century, since it "covered portions of the physical sciences, particularly physics and chemistry, in addition to mathematics and medicine." English was used largely by researchers and engineers because of the seminal contribution of English technology to the Industrial Revolution. In the years preceding the First World War, the linguistic diversity of


id: languages-of-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-2.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== English, competitors, and machine translation (1920–1965) === The two world wars had a lasting impact on scientific languages. A combination of political, economic, and social factors durably weakened the triumvirate of the three main languages of science in the 19th century; this combination paved the way for the predominance of English in the latter part of the 20th century. There is ongoing debate about whether the world wars accelerated a structural tendency toward English predominance or merely created the conditions for it. Ulrich Ammon wrote that "even without the World Wars the English language community would have gained economic and, consequently, scientific superiority and, thus, preference of its language for international scientific communication." By contrast, Michael Gordin emphasizes that the privileged status of English was far from settled until the 1960s. The First World War had an immediate impact on the global use of German in academic settings. For nearly a decade after this war, international scientific events boycotted German researchers. The German scientific communities had been compromised by nationalistic propaganda in favor of German science during the war, in addition to the exploitation of scientific research for war crimes. German was no longer acknowledged as a global scientific


id: languages-of-science-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-3.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
It seems wise to assume that in the long run the number of significant contributions to scientific knowledge by different countries will be roughly proportional to their populations, and that except where populations are very small contributions will normally be published in native languages. The expansion of Russian scientific publishing became a source of recurring tension in the United States during the decade of the Cold War. Very few American researchers were able to read Russian, which contrasted with a remaining widespread familiarity with the two oldest languages of science, French and German. "In a 1958 survey, 49% of American scientific and technical personnel claimed they could read at least one foreign language, yet only 1.2% could handle Russian." Science administrators and funders had recurring concerns about their ability to efficiently track the progress of academic research in the USSR. This ongoing anxiety became an overt crisis after the successful launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1958, as the decentralized American research system seemed for a time outpaced by the efficiency of Soviet planning. Although the Sputnik crisis was relatively brief, it had far-reaching consequences for linguistic practices in science—in particular, the development of machine translation. Research in this


id: languages-of-science-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-4.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
During the 1960s and 1970s, English was no longer a majority language of science, but a scientific lingua franca instead. The transformation had more wide-ranging consequences than the replacement of two or three main languages of science by a single language: it marked "the transition from a triumvirate that valued, at least in a limited way, the expression of identity within science, to an overwhelming emphasis on communication and thus a single vehicular language." Ulrich Ammon characterizes English as an "asymmetrical lingua franca", since it is "the native tongue and the national language of the most influential segment of the global scientific community, but a foreign language for the rest of the world." This paradigm is usually associated with the globalization of American and English-speaking culture in the latter part of the 20th century. No specific event accounts for the full shift, though numerous transformations highlight an accelerated conversion to English science in the later part of the 1960s. On June 11, 1965, US President Lyndon B. Johnson stated that the English language had become a lingua franca that opened "doors to scientific and technical knowledge" and whose promotion should be a "major policy" of the United States. In 1969,


id: languages-of-science-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-5.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== English standardization === Nearly all the scientific publications indexed on the leading commercial academic search engines are in English. As of 2022, this observation covers 95.86% of the 28,142,849 references indexed on the Web of Science platform, in addition to 84.35% of the 20,600,733 references indexed in the Scopus system. The minimal coverage of non-English languages creates a feedback loop—non-English publications can be considered less valuable because they are not indexed in international rankings and fare poorly in evaluation metrics. As many as 75,000 articles, book titles, and book reviews from Germany were excluded from Biological Abstracts between 1970 and 1996. In 2009, at least 6555 journals were published in Spanish and Portuguese on a global scale, and "only a small fraction are included in the Scopus and Web of Science indices." Criteria for inclusion in commercial databases not only favor English journals but also incentivize non-English journals to discontinue their local journals. They "demand that articles be in English, have abstracts in English, or at least have their references in English". In 2012, the Web of Science was explicitly committed to the anglicization (and Romanization) of published knowledge: English is the universal language of science. For this reason,


id: languages-of-science-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-6.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Persistence of linguistic diversity === Several languages have retained a secondary status as an international language of science, due to the extent of the local scientific production or to their continued use as a vehicular language in specific contexts. These languages generally include "Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish." Local languages have remained prevalent in major scientific countries: "most scientific publications are still published in Chinese in China". Empirical studies of the languages used in scientific publications have long been constrained by structural bias in the most readily accessible sources—commercial databases such as the Web of Science. Atypical access to a large corpus not covered by global indexes showed that multilingualism remains non-negligible, although little studied; as of 2022, there are "few examples of analyses at scale" for multilingualism in science. However, a 2026 study found that the proportion of English publications in Dimensions went down from 93.86% in 1990 to 85.52% in 2023, with Indonesian, Spanish and Portuguese expanding at a faster rate than English. In seven European countries with limited international reach for each local language, one third of researchers in social sciences and the humanities publish in two or more languages; "research is international,


id: languages-of-science-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-7.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Machine translation === Scientific publication has been the first major use case for machine translation, with early experiments dating back to 1954. Development in this area slowed after 1965, because of the increasing predominance of English, limitations in computing infrastructure, and the shortcomings of the leading approach—rule-based machine translation. By design, rule-based methods favored translation between a few major languages (English, Russian, French, German, ...), since a "transfer module" needed to be developed for "each pair of languages"; this situation led to a combinatorial explosion when more languages were considered. After the 1980s, the field of machine translation was revived as it underwent a "full-scale paradigm shift": explicit rules were replaced by statistical and machine learning methods applied to a large aligned corpus. By that time, most of the demand no longer came from scientific publishing, but instead from commercial documents such as technical and engineering manuals. A second paradigm shift occurred in the 2010s, with the development of deep learning methods, which can be partially trained on a non-aligned corpus (i.e., "zero-shot translation"). Requiring few supervision inputs, deep learning models make it possible to incorporate a wider diversity of languages, but also a wider diversity of linguistic contexts


id: languages-of-science-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-8.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Open science infrastructure === The development of open science infrastructure or "community-controlled infrastructure" has become a major policy issue in the open science movement. In the 2010s, the expansion of commercial scientific infrastructure led to major acknowledgment of the fragility of open scholarly publishing and open archives. The concept of open science infrastructure emerged in 2015 with the publication of the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructures. In November 2021, a UNESCO recommendation acknowledged open science infrastructure as one of the four pillars of open science, along with open science knowledge, open engagement of societal actors, and open dialogue with other knowledge systems. UNESCO called for sustained investment and funding: "open science infrastructures are often the result of community-building efforts, which are crucial for their long-term sustainability and therefore should be not-for-profit and guarantee permanent and unrestricted access to all public to the largest extent possible." Examples of open science infrastructure include indexes, publishing platforms, shared databases, and computer grids. Open infrastructures have supported linguistic diversity in science. The leading free software for scientific publishing, Open Journal Systems, is available in 50 languages; it is widespread among non-commercial open-access journals. A landscape study was conducted by the SPARC alliance in


id: languages-of-science-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-9.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Policies in favor of multilingualism === A new scientific and policy debate over linguistic diversity emerged after 2015: "in recent years, policies for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science call for increasing access to research, interaction between science and society and public understanding of science". The debate initially stemmed from wider discussions about the evaluation of open science and the limitations of commercial metrics. In 2015, the Leiden Manifesto included ten principles to "guide research evaluation", which included a call to "protect excellence in locally relevant research". Building on empirical data showing the persistence of non-English research communities in Europe, Gunnar Sivertsen (in 2018) theorized the need for a balanced multilingualism "to consider all the communication purposes in all different areas of research, and all the languages needed to fulfil these purposes, in a holistic manner without exclusions or priorities." In 2016, Sivertsen contributed to the "Norwegian model" of scientific evaluation: he proposed a flat hierarchy among a few large international journals, along with a wide selection of journals that would not discriminate against local publications, and he encouraged journals in the social sciences and the humanities to favor Norwegian publications. These local initiatives developed into a


id: languages-of-science-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-10.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Articles & chapters === "Rapport de l'Académie des sciences sur la langue française et le rayonnement de la science française" [Report from the Academy of Sciences on the French language and the influence of French science]. Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Sciences [Reports of the sessions of the Academy of Sciences] (in French). 295: 131–146. 8 November 1982. Ammon, Ulrich (2012-10-10). "Linguistic inequality and its effects on participation in scientific discourse and on global knowledge accumulation – With a closer look at the problems of the second-rank language communities". Applied Linguistics Review. 3 (2): 333–355. doi:10.1515/applirev-2012-0016. ISSN 1868-6311. Anglaret, Anne-Sophie; Sofio, Séverine (2021-12-27). "Écrire en langues. Entre traduction automatique et hégémonie globish, le multilinguisme comme horizon réaliste pour les revues de sciences humaines et sociales". Biens Symboliques / Symbolic Goods. Revue de sciences sociales sur les arts, la culture et les idées. 9 (9). doi:10.4000/bssg.832. ISSN 2490-9424. S2CID 245925363. Retrieved 2022-01-17. Aronova, Elena (September 2017). "Russian and the Making of World Languages during the Cold War". Isis. 108 (3): 643–650. doi:10.1086/694163. ISSN 0021-1753. S2CID 148831824. Cameron-Pesant, Sarah (2018). "Usage et diffusion des revues savantes québécoises en sciences sociales et humaines : analyse des téléchargements de la plateforme


id: languages-of-science-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-11.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
9 (1): 168–174. doi:10.1002/nop2.1115. ISSN 2054-1058. PMC 8685880. PMID 34725950. Zhang, Lin; Sivertsen, Gunnar (2020-05-12). "The New Research Assessment Reform in China and Its Implementation". Scholarly Assessment Reports. 2 (1): 3. doi:10.29024/sar.15. hdl:11250/2733873. ISSN 2689-5870. Retrieved 2023-09-10.


id: languages-of-science-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-12.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Conferences === Shearer, Kathleen; Chan, Leslie; Kuchma, Iryna; Mounier, Pierre (2020-04-15). Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action. Retrieved 2020-06-17. Beigel, Fernanda (2022). Research evaluation in the southern road to open science (PDF). OSEC 2022. Paris. === Other articles === Garfield, Eugene (1967). "English – An international language for science?" (PDF). Current Contents. Huttner-Koros, Adam (2015-08-21). "Why Science's Universal Language Is a Problem for Research". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-09-24. van Weijen, Daphne (November 2012). "The Language of (Future) Scientific Communication". Research Trends. No. 31. Archived from the original on 2020-09-20. Retrieved 2020-09-24. Gordin, Michael D. "How did science come to speak only English? – Michael D Gordin | Aeon Essays". Aeon. Retrieved 2020-09-24. Taşkın, Zehra; Dogan, Guleda; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Zuccala, Alesia Ann (2020-06-18). "Science needs to inform the public. That can't be done solely in English". LSE COVID-19. Retrieved 2022-01-21. Pölönen, Janne; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Mustajoki, Henriikka; Røeggen, Vidar (2021-12-07). "Multilingualism is integral to accessibility and should be part of European research assessment reform". Impact of Social Sciences. Retrieved 2022-01-20. === Declaration === Bundy, McGeorge. "Memorandum # 332, U.S. Government Policy on English Language Teaching Abroad, 6/11/1965" (June 11, 1965). National Security Files, Series: National Security Action Memorandums,


id: leith-agcm-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leith_AGCM-0.md
category: reference
title: Leith AGCM
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leith_AGCM
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:43.327572+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leith-agcm-20260505-0
summary:
Leith AGCM is a climate model that was developed by Cecil Leith beginning in 1958; it is likely the oldest atmospheric general circulation model. Leith published videos of its model output, inspiring other scientists to do the same. Today it has been superseded by climate models developed from different base codes; as such, it is little known. == History and development == Efforts to calculate the behaviour of the weather system commenced in the 1920s with a seminal paper by Lewis Fry Richardson. By the 1950s and 1960s several groups were involved in making climate models, with major efforts taking place at several US universities that eventually gave rise to the well-known GFDL, UCLA, and NCAR models. Today climate models are an important enterprise with significant impact on public policy, where hundreds of scientists and institutions participate worldwide. The researcher Cecil E. “Chuck” Leith (1923–2016) is well-known for his research on fluid mechanics. After an initial career on the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the invention of nuclear bombs, he joined the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory after 1946 and in 1968 the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Beginning in 1958, he began to work on a climate model that was later


id: logical-positivism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-0.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism or neo-positivism, was a philosophical movement, in the empiricist tradition, that sought to formulate a scientific philosophy in which philosophical discourse would be, in the perception of its proponents, as authoritative and meaningful as empirical science. Logical positivism's central thesis was the verification principle, also known as the "verifiability criterion of meaning", according to which a statement is cognitively meaningful only if it can be verified through empirical observation or if it is a tautology (true by virtue of its own meaning or its own logical form). The verifiability criterion thus rejected statements of metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics as cognitively meaningless in terms of truth value or factual content. Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by mimicking the structure and process of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as an agenda to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it. The movement emerged in the late 1920s among philosophers, scientists and mathematicians congregated within the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle and flourished in several European centres through the 1930s. By the end of World War II, many of its members had settled in the English-speaking world and the


id: logical-positivism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-1.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Anglosphere === As the movement's first emissary to the New World, Moritz Schlick visited Stanford University in 1929, yet otherwise remained in Vienna and was murdered in 1936 at the University by a former student, Johann Nelböck, who was reportedly deranged. That year, A. J. Ayer, a British attendee at various Vienna Circle meetings since 1933, published Language, Truth and Logic, which imported logical positivism to the English-speaking world. In 1933, the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany had triggered flight of intellectuals, which accelerated upon Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938. The logical positivists, many of whom were Jewish, were targeted and continued flight throughout the pre-war period. Their philosophy thus became dominant in the English-speaking world. By the late 1930s, many in the movement had replaced phenomenalism with Neurath's physicalism, whereby material objects are not reducible to sensory stimuli but exist as publicly observable entities in the real world. Neurath settled in England, where he died in 1945. Carnap, Reichenbach and Hempel settled permanently in America. === Post-war period === Following the Second World War, logical positivism—now referred to by some as logical empiricism—turned to less radical objectives in the philosophy of science. Led by Carl


id: logical-positivism-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-2.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
In theories of justification, a priori statements are those that can be known independently of observation, contrasting with a posteriori statements, which are dependent on observation. Statements may also be categorised into analytic and synthetic: Analytic statements are true by virtue of their own meaning or their own logical form, therefore are tautologies that are true by necessity but uninformative about the world. Synthetic statements, in comparison, are contingent propositions that refer to a state of facts concerning the world. David Hume proposed an unambiguous distinction between analytic and synthetic, categorising knowledge exclusively as either "relations of ideas" (which are a priori, analytic and abstract) or "matters of fact and real existence" (a posteriori, synthetic and concrete), a classification referred to as Hume's fork. Immanuel Kant identified a further category of knowledge: Synthetic a priori statements, which are informative about the world, but known without observation. This principle is encapsulated in Kant's transcendental idealism, which attributes the mind a constructive role in phenomena whereby intuitive truths—including synthetic a priori conceptions of space and time—function as an interpretative filter for an observer's experience of the world. His thesis would serve to rescue Newton's law of universal gravitation from Hume's problem of


id: logical-positivism-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-3.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
Carl Hempel was prominent in the development of the deductive-nomological (DN) model, then the foremost model of scientific explanation defended even among critics of neo-positivism such as Popper. According to the DN model, a scientific explanation is valid only if it takes the form of a deductive inference from a set of explanatory premises (explanans) to the observation or theory to be explained (explanandum). The model stipulates that the premises must refer to at least one law, which it defines as an unrestricted generalization of the conditional form: "If A, then B". Laws therefore differ from mere regularities ("George always carries only $1 bills in his wallet") which do not necessarily support counterfactual claims. Furthermore, laws must be empirically verifiable in compliance with the verification principle. The DN model ignores causal mechanisms beyond the principle of constant conjunction ("first event A and then always event B") in accordance with the Humean empiricist postulate that, though sequences of events are observable, the underpinning causal principles are not. Hempel stated that well-formulated natural laws (empirically confirmed regularities) are satisfactory in approximating causal explanation. Hempel later proposed a probabilistic model of scientific explanation: The inductive-statistical (IS) model. Derivation of statistical laws from other


id: logical-positivism-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-4.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Norwood Hanson === In 1958, Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery characterised the concept of theory-ladenness. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn held that even direct observations are never truly neutral in that they are laden with theory, i.e. influenced by a system of theoretical presuppositions that function as an interpretative framework for the senses. Accordingly, individuals subscribed to different theories might report radically different observations even as they investigate the same phenomena. Hanson's thesis attacked the observation-theory distinction, which draws a dividing line between observational and non-observational (theoretical) language. More broadly, its findings challenged the central-most tenets of empiricism in questioning the infallibility and objectivity of empirical observation. === Thomas Kuhn === Thomas Kuhn's landmark book of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—which discussed paradigm shifts in fundamental physics—critically undermined confidence in scientific foundationalism. Kuhn proposed in its place a coherentist model of science, whereby scientific progress revolves around cores of established, coherent ideas which periodically undergo abrupt revolutionary changes. Though foundationalism was often considered a constituent doctrine of logical positivism (and Kuhn's thesis an epistemological criticism of the movement) such views were simplistic: In the 1930s, Neurath had argued for the adoption of coherentism, famously comparing the progress of science


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-0.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The materialism controversy (German: Materialismusstreit) was a public debate in the mid-19th century about how new developments in the natural sciences might affect existing worldviews. During the 1840s, a new form of materialism emerged, shaped by advances in biology and the decline of idealistic philosophy. This form of materialism sought to explain human beings and their behavior through scientific methods. The central question of the debate was whether scientific discoveries were compatible with traditional ideas such as the existence of an immaterial soul, a personal God, and human free will. The discussion also touched on deeper philosophical issues, such as what kind of knowledge a materialist or mechanical view of the world could offer. In his Physiologische Briefe from 1846, zoologist Carl Vogt argued that mental processes were entirely physical, famously stating that "thoughts stand in the same relation to the brain as bile does to the liver or urine to the kidneys." In 1854, the physiologist Rudolf Wagner criticized this view in a speech to the Göttingen Naturalists' Assembly. He argued that religious belief and science belonged to separate areas of understanding, and that natural science could not answer questions about God, the soul, or free will. Wagner’s comments


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-1.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The materialism controversy was sparked in part by the writings of physiologist Carl Vogt, beginning in 1847. His commitment to materialism was shaped by the scientific and political reform movements of the time, as well as his own personal and political development. Vogt was born in Giessen in 1817, into a family with both scientific and revolutionary traditions. His father, Philipp Friedrich Wilhelm Vogt, was a professor of medicine who moved to Bern in 1834 after facing political persecution. On his mother’s side, political activism was also a strong influence: Louise Follen’s three brothers—Adolf, Karl, and Paul Follen—were all involved in nationalist and democratic causes and eventually went into exile. In 1817 Adolf Follen drafted a proposal for a future German constitution and was later arrested for his political activities. He avoided a 10-year prison sentence by fleeing to Switzerland. Karl Follen was suspected of encouraging the assassination of conservative writer August von Kotzebue and escaped to the United States, where he became a professor at Harvard University. The youngest brother, Paul Follen, helped found the Gießener Auswanderungsgesellschaft in 1833, which aimed to establish a German republic in the U.S. Though the plan failed, Paul settled in Missouri as a


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-2.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
During the summer of 1854, the 31st Naturalists' Meeting was held in Göttingen. A major topic of discussion was the existence of the soul and its compatibility with emerging materialist views in science. During the event, physiologist Rudolf Wagner gave a prominent lecture on human creation and the nature of the soul, in which he sharply criticized materialism. He argued that denying the existence of a soul created by God—and especially the rejection of free will—would undermine the moral foundations of society. Wagner claimed that materialist theories, such as those proposed by Carl Vogt, reduced human beings to passive machines without responsibility, which conflicted with the ethical duties of scientists. Later that year, Wagner published a second paper that expanded on his criticisms. He argued that science and faith occupy separate domains, and that science alone could neither prove nor disprove religious beliefs. He explained that while physiologists can describe the structure and function of physical organs, their findings can be interpreted in different ways. Materialists use these observations to argue that mental functions are based on physical processes, while dualists believe the body interacts with an immaterial soul. Wagner maintained that physiology cannot determine which interpretation is correct. He


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-3.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
== Reactions in the 19th century == === Philosophy of neo-Kantianism === Materialism, as promoted by scientists like Carl Vogt, Jakob Moleschott, and Ludwig Büchner, was presented as a direct consequence of empirical scientific research. Following the decline of German idealism, many saw academic philosophy—especially as taught in universities—as disconnected from reality and reduced to speculative thought. Even philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, once aligned with idealist traditions, placed his trust in the natural sciences to answer longstanding philosophical questions such as the relationship between body and soul. However, a strong philosophical critique of materialism did not emerge until the 1860s, with the rise of Neo-Kantianism. In 1865, Otto Liebmann published Kant und die Epigonen (Kant and His Followers), a work that sharply criticized major post-Kantian thinkers—from German idealists to Arthur Schopenhauer. Liebmann famously ended each chapter with the refrain: "So we must go back to Kant!". The following year,Friedrich Albert Lange published Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism), in which he aligned himself with the Neo-Kantian position. Lange accused the scientific materialists of “philosophical dilettantism”, claiming that they overlooked central insights of Kantian thought. At the core of Kant’s philosophy, particularly in the Critique of Pure Reason, is the question: What


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-4.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Even Ludwig Büchner, initially one of the most prominent advocates of materialism, eventually distanced himself from the term. In a letter to Haeckel dated 1875, he wrote:I ... have therefore never used the term 'materialism', which evokes a completely one-sided idea, for my school of thought and only accepted it here and there later out of necessity because the general public knew no other word for the whole movement ... . The term 'monism' that you suggest is very good in itself, but it is very doubtful whether it will be accepted by the general public. === Political and ideological impact === Although scientific materialism gained considerable popularity among the general public in 19th-century Germany, its proponents—Carl Vogt, Jakob Moleschott, and Ludwig Büchner—faced significant political opposition. All three lost their academic positions largely because of their outspoken advocacy of materialism. Vogt’s revolutionary materialism, in particular, failed to gain traction in the reactionary political climate following the revolutions of 1848. Scientific materialism also struggled to influence broader political movements, in part due to ideological conflicts with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx disparaged Vogt as a “small-university beer bouncer and misguided Barrot of the Reich", and personal denunciations escalated between the


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-5.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Primary literature === Beiser, Frederick C. (2014). After Hegel: German philosophy 1840-1900. Princeton, NJ Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17371-9. Büchner, Ludwig (1932). Kraft und Stoff (in German) (Pocket ed.). Leipzig: Kröner Verlag. Du Bois-Reymond, Emil; Wollgast, Siegfried (1974). Vorträge über Philosophie und Gesellschaft. Philosophische Bibliothek. Hamburg: F. Meiner. ISBN 978-3-7873-0320-5. Daum, Andreas W. (2002). Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert. Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit 1848–1914 (in German) (2 ed.). Munich: Oldenbourg. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1967). Gesammelte Werke (in German). Vol. 3. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Haeckel, Ernst (1908). Die Welträthsel (in German). Leipzig: Kröner. Helmholtz, Hermann (2003). "Ueber das Sehen des Menschen". Gesammelte Schriften (in German). Vol. 1. Hildesheim: Olms. Lange, Friedrich Albert (1920) [1866]. Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (in German). J. Baedeker. Marx, Karl (1961). Herr Vogt. Marx-Engels-Werke (in German). Vol. 14. Berlin: Dietz. Vogt, Carl (1856). Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft. Eine Streitschrift gegen Hofrasth Rudolph Wagner in Göttingen (in German) (4th ed.). Gießen: Rickersche Buchhandlung. Vogt, Carl (1874). Physiologische Briefe (in German) (14 ed.). Gießen: Rickersche Buchhandlung. Wagner, Rudolf (1854a). Menschenschöpfung und Seelensubstanz. Ein anthropologischer Vortrag (in German). Göttingen: G.H. Wigand. Wagner, Rudolf (1854b). Ueber Wissen und Glauben. Mit besonderer Beziehung


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-0.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
The history of metamaterials begins with artificial dielectrics in microwave engineering as it developed just after World War II. Yet, there are seminal explorations of artificial materials for manipulating electromagnetic waves at the end of the 19th century. Hence, the history of metamaterials is essentially a history of developing certain types of manufactured materials, which interact at radio frequency, microwave, and later optical frequencies. As the science of materials has advanced, photonic materials have been developed which use the photon of light as the fundamental carrier of information. This has led to photonic crystals, and at the beginning of the new millennium, the proof of principle for functioning metamaterials with a negative index of refraction in the microwave- (at 10.5 Gigahertz) and optical range. This was followed by the first proof of principle for metamaterial cloaking (shielding an object from view), also in the microwave range, about six years later. However, a cloak that can conceal objects across the entire electromagnetic spectrum is still decades away. Many physics and engineering problems need to be solved. Nevertheless, negative refractive materials have led to the development of metamaterial antennas and metamaterial microwave lenses for miniature wireless system antennas which are more efficient


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-1.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
=== Jagadish Chandra Bose === Jagadish Chandra Bose was a scientist involved in original microwave research during the 1890s. As officiating professor of physics at Presidency College he involved himself with laboratory experiments and studies involving refraction, diffraction and polarization, as well as transmitters, receivers and various microwave components. He connected receivers to a sensitive galvanometer, and developed crystals to be used as a receiver. The crystals operated in the shortwave radio range. Crystals were also developed to detect both white and ultraviolet light. These crystals were patented in 1904 for their capability to detect electromagnetic radiation. Furthermore, it appears that his work also anticipated the existence of p-type and n-type semiconductors by 60 years. For the general public in 1895, Bose was able to remotely ring a bell and explode gunpowder with the use of electromagnetic waves. In 1896, it was reported that Bose had transmitted electromagnetic signals over almost a mile. In 1897, Bose reported on his microwave research (experiments) at the Royal Institution in London. There he demonstrated his apparatus at wavelengths that ranged from 2.5 centimeters to 5 millimeters. == Early chiral media == In 1898, Jagadish Chandra Bose conducted the first microwave experiment on twisted


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-2.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
Much of the historic research related to metamaterials is weighted from the view of antenna beam shaping within microwave engineering just after World War II. Furthermore, metamaterials appear to be historically linked to the body of research pertaining to artificial dielectrics throughout the late 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s. The most common use for artificial dielectrics throughout prior decades has been in the microwave regime for antenna beam shaping. The artificial dielectrics had been proposed as a low cost and lightweight "tool". Research on artificial dielectrics, other than metamaterials, is still ongoing for pertinent parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Pioneering works in microwave engineering on artificial dielectrics in microwave were produced by Winston E. Kock, Seymour Cohn, John Brown, and Walter Rotman. Periodic artificial structures were proposed by Kock, Rotman, and Sergei Schelkunoff. There is also an extensive reference list that is focused on the properties of artificial dielectrics in the 1991 book, Field Theory of Guided Waves by Robert E. Collin. Schelkunoff achieved notice for contributions to antenna theory and electromagnetic wave propagation. "Magnetic particles made of capacitively loaded loops were also suggested by Sergei Schelkunoff in 1952 (who was a senior colleague of Winston Kock at Bell


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-3.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
=== Invention of the metamaterial === Historically, and conventionally, the function or behavior of materials can be altered through their chemistry. This has long been known. For example, adding lead changes the color or hardness of glass. However, at the end of the 20th century this description was expanded by John Pendry, a physicist from Imperial College in London. In the 1990s he was consulting for a British company, Marconi Materials Technology, as a condensed matter physics expert. The company manufactured a stealth technology made of a radiation-absorbing carbon that was for naval vessels. However, the company did not understand the physics of the material. The company asked Pendry if he could understand how the material worked. Pendry discovered that the radiation absorption property did not come from the molecular or chemical structure of the material, i.e. the carbon per se. This property came from the long and thin, physical shape of the carbon fibers. He realized rather than conventionally altering a material through its chemistry, as lead does with glass, the behavior of a material can be altered by changing a material's internal structure on a very fine scale. The very fine scale was less than the wavelength of


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-4.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
=== The super lens === The super lens or superlens is a practical structure based on John Pendry's work describing a perfect lens that can go beyond the diffraction limit by focusing all four fourier components. Pendry's paper described a theoretical novel lens that could capture images below the diffraction limit by employing the negative refractive index behavior. The super lens is a practical realization of this theory. It is a working lens that can capture images below the diffraction limit even though limitations occur due to the inefficiencies of conventional materials. This means that although there are losses, enough of an image is returned to show this work was a successful demonstration. === Invisibility cloak === Ulf Leonhardt was born in East Germany, and presently occupies the theoretical physics chair at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and is considered one the leaders in the science of creating an invisibility cloak. Around 1999, Leonhardt began work on how to build a cloaking device with a few other colleagues. Leonhardt stated that at the time invisibility was not considered fashionable. He then wrote a theoretical study entitled "Optical Conformal Mapping". The first sentence sums up the objective: "An invisibility


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-0.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
The history of the metric system began during the Age of Enlightenment with measures of length and weight derived from nature, along with their decimal multiples and fractions. The system became the standard of France and Europe within half a century. Other measures with unity ratios were added, and the system went on to be adopted across the world. The first practical realisation of the metric system came in 1799, during the French Revolution, after the existing system of measures had become impractical for trade, and was replaced by a decimal system based on the kilogram and the metre. The basic units were taken from the natural world. The unit of length, the metre, was based on the dimensions of the Earth, and the unit of mass, the kilogram, was based on the mass of a volume of water of one litre (a cubic decimetre). Reference copies for both units were manufactured in platinum and remained the standards of measure for the next 90 years. After a period of reversion to the mesures usuelles due to unpopularity of the metric system, the metrication of France and much of Europe was complete by the 1850s. In the middle of the 19th


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-1.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
=== Clocks and pendulums === In 1656, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock, with its pendulum marking the seconds. This gave rise to proposals to use its length as a standard unit. But it became apparent that the pendulum lengths of calibrated clocks in different locations varied (due to local variations in the acceleration due to gravity), and this was not a good solution. A more uniform standard was needed. In 1670, Gabriel Mouton, a French abbot and astronomer, published the book Observationes diametrorum solis et lunae apparentium ("Observations of the apparent diameters of the Sun and Moon") in which he proposed a decimal system of measurement of length for use by scientists in international communication, to be based on the dimensions of the Earth. The milliare would be defined as a minute of arc along a meridian (such as the Paris meridian) and would be divided into 10 centuria, the centuria into 10 decuria and so on, successive units being the virga, virgula, decima, centesima, and the millesima. Mouton used Riccioli's estimate that one degree of arc was 321,185 Bolognese feet. Mouton's experiments showed that a pendulum of length one virgula would beat 3959.2 times in half


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-2.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
In 1790, a panel of five leading French scientists was appointed by the Académie des sciences to investigate weights and measures. They were Jean-Charles de Borda, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Gaspard Monge, and Nicolas de Condorcet. Over the following year, the panel, after studying various alternatives, made a series of recommendations regarding a new system of weights and measures, including that it should have a decimal radix, that the unit of length should be based on a fractional arc of a quadrant of the Earth's meridian, and that the unit of weight should be that of a cube of water whose dimension was a decimal fraction of the unit of length. The proposals were accepted by the French Assembly on 30 March 1791. Following acceptance, the Académie des sciences was instructed to implement the proposals. The Académie broke the tasks into five operations, allocating each part to a separate working group: Measuring the difference in latitude between Dunkirk and Barcelona and triangulating between them Measuring the baselines used for the survey Verifying the length of the second pendulum at 45° latitude. Verifying the weight in a vacuum of a given volume of distilled water. Publishing conversion tables relating the new


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-3.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
Delambre used a baseline of about 10 km in length along a straight road, located close to Melun. In an operation taking six weeks, the baseline was accurately measured using four platinum rods, each of length two toises (about 3.9 m). Thereafter he used, where possible, the triangulation points used by Cassini in his 1744 survey of France. Méchain's baseline, of a similar length, and also on a straight section of road was in the Perpignan area. Although Méchain's sector was half the length of Delambre, it included the Pyrenees and hitherto unsurveyed parts of Spain. After the two surveyors met, each computed the other's baseline in order to cross-check their results and they then recomputed the metre as 443.296 lignes, notably shorter than the 1795 provisional value of 443.44 lignes. On 15 November 1798, Delambre and Méchain returned to Paris with their data, having completed the survey. The final value of the mètre was defined in 1799 as the computed value from the survey. Historical note: It soon became apparent that Méchain and Delambre's result (443.296 lignes) was slightly too short for the meridional definition of the metre. Méchain had made a small error measuring the latitude of Barcelona,


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-4.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
=== The first structured metric system: CGS === In 1861, a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) including William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), James Clerk Maxwell, and James Prescott Joule among its members was tasked with investigating the "Standards of Electrical Resistance". In their first report (1862), they laid the ground rules for their work—the metric system was to be used, measures of electrical energy must have the same units as measures of mechanical energy, and two sets of electromagnetic units would have to be derived—an electromagnetic system and an electrostatic system. In the second report (1863), they introduced the concept of a coherent system of units whereby units of length, mass, and time were identified as "fundamental units" (now known as base units). All other units of measure could be derived (hence derived units) from these base units. The metre, gram, and second were chosen as base units. In 1861, before a meeting of the BAAS, Charles Bright and Latimer Clark proposed the names of ohm, volt, and farad in honour of Georg Ohm, Alessandro Volta, and Michael Faraday respectively for the practical units based on the CGS absolute system. This was supported by


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-5.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
==== Quadrant–eleventhgram–second (QES) or International System of Electrical and Magnetic Units ==== The CGS units of measure used in scientific work were not practical for engineering, leading to the development of a more applicable system of electric units especially for telegraphy. The unit of length was 107 m (the hebdometre, nominally the Earth quadrant), the unit of mass was an unnamed unit equal to 10−11 g and the unit of time was the second. The units of mass and length were scaled incongruously to yield more consistent and usable electric units in terms of mechanical measures. Informally called the "practical" system, it was properly termed the quadrant–eleventhgram–second (QES) system of units according to convention. The definitions of electrical units incorporated the magnetic constant like the EMU system, and the names of the units were carried over from that system, but scaled according to the defined mechanical units. The system was formalised as the International system late in the 19th century and its units later designated the "international ampere", "international volt", etc. ==== Heaviside–Lorentz system of units ==== The factor 4 π {\displaystyle 4\pi } that occurs in Maxwell's equations in the gaussian system (and the other CGS systems) comes from


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-6.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
Conférence générale des poids et mesures (CGPM or General Conference on Weights and Measures), an intergovernmental conference of official delegates of member nations and the supreme authority for all actions; Comité international des poids et mesures (CIPM or International Committee for Weights and Measures), consisting of selected scientists and metrologists, which prepares and executes the decisions of the CGPM and is responsible for the supervision of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; Bureau international des poids et mesures (BIPM or International Bureau of Weights and Measures), a permanent laboratory and world centre of scientific metrology, the activities of which include the establishment of the basic standards and scales of the principal physical quantities, maintenance of the international prototype standards, and oversight of regular comparisons between the international prototype and the various national standards. The international prototype of the metre and international prototype of the kilogram were both made from a 90% platinum, 10% iridium alloy which is exceptionally hard and which has good electrical and thermal conductivity properties. The prototype had a special X-shaped (Tresca) cross section to minimise the effects of torsional strain during length comparisons and the prototype kilograms were cylindrical in shape. The London firm Johnson


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-7.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
== Working draft of SI: Practical system of units == The 9th CGPM met in 1948, fifteen years after the 8th CGPM. In response to formal requests made by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and by the French government to establish a practical system of units of measure, the CGPM requested the CIPM to prepare recommendations for a single practical system of units of measurement, suitable for adoption by all countries adhering to the Metre Convention. The CIPM's draft proposal was an extensive revision and simplification of the metric unit definitions, symbols, and terminology based on the MKS system of units. Following astronomical observations, the second was set as a fraction of the year 1900. The electromagnetic base unit, as required by Giorgi, was accepted as the ampere. After negotiations with the CIS and IUPAP, two additional units—the degree kelvin and the candela—were also proposed as base units. For the first time, the CGPM made recommendations concerning derived units. At the same time, the CGPM adopted conventions for the writing and printing of unit symbols and numbers and catalogued the symbols for the most important MKS and CGS units of measure. === Time === Until the advent


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-8.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
=== New base and derived units === Over the ensuing years, the BIPM developed and maintained cross-correlations relating various measuring devices such as thermocouples, light spectra, and the like to the equivalent temperatures. The mole was originally known as a gram-atom or a gram-molecule—the amount of a substance measured in grams divided by its atomic weight. Originally chemists and physicists had differing views regarding the definition of the atomic weight—both assigned a value of 16 atomic mass units (amu) to oxygen, but physicists defined oxygen in terms of the 16O isotope whereas chemists assigned 16 amu to 16O, 17O and 18O isotopes mixed in the proportion that they occur in nature. Finally, an agreement between the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) brought this duality to an end in 1959/60, both parties agreeing to define the atomic weight of 12C as being exactly 12 amu. This agreement was confirmed by ISO and in 1969 the CIPM recommended its inclusion in SI as a base unit. This was done in 1971 at the 14th CGPM. === Start of migration to constant definitions === The second major trend in the


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-9.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
At its 23rd meeting (2007), the CGPM mandated the CIPM to investigate the use of natural constants as the basis for all units of measure rather than the artefacts that were then in use. The following year, this was endorsed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). At a meeting of the CCU held in Reading, United Kingdom, in September 2010, a resolution and draft changes to the SI brochure that were to be presented to the next meeting of the CIPM in October 2010 were agreed in principle. The CIPM meeting of October 2010 found that "the conditions set by the General Conference at its 23rd meeting have not yet been fully met. For this reason the CIPM does not propose a revision of the SI at the present time". The CIPM, however, presented a resolution for consideration at the 24th CGPM (17–21 October 2011) to agree to the new definitions in principle, but not to implement them until the details had been finalised. In the revision, four of the seven SI base units—the kilogram, ampere, kelvin, and mole—were redefined by setting exact numerical values for the Planck constant (h), the elementary electric charge (e), the


id: mihi-itch-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihi_itch-0.md
category: reference
title: Mihi itch
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihi_itch
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:53.507857+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mihi-itch-20260505-0
summary:
Mihi itch or Mihisucht is the ambition to describe new species (or other taxa: subspecies, hybrids, genera, etc.) as a means to immortalize one's name. Mihi is the dative form of the Latin word ego, thus "mihi itch" means to satisfy one's egotistical impulses. The expression appeared in print as early as 1884. A consequence of the Mihi itch may be the unwarranted description of new taxa, differing only slightly from already established taxa, leading to taxonomic inflation. A more extreme case may be termed taxonomic vandalism when a large number of species are described with limited scientific evidence. == Examples == La "nouvelle école" in malacology, led by Jules René Bourguignat, was responsible for the description of hundreds of new species of molluscs in Europe at the end of the nineteen century. Harold St. John published 440 names in the genus Pandanus, which encompasses c. 600 accepted species, and 283 names in the genus Cyrtandra, which encompasses c. 700 accepted species. Between 2000 and 2011, Raymond Hoser published 582 species names, and 340 generic names of animals (mostly reptiles). == See also == Taxonomic vandalism Taxonomic inflation == References ==


id: natural-history-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history-0.md
category: reference
title: Natural history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:54.706913+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-history-20260505-0
summary:
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is called a naturalist or natural historian. Natural history encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it. It involves the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms, so while it dates from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the medieval Arab world, through to European Renaissance naturalists working in near isolation, today's natural history is a cross-discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences; e.g., geobiology has a strong multidisciplinary nature. == Definitions == === Before 1900 === The meaning of the English term "natural history" (a calque of the Latin historia naturalis) has narrowed progressively with time, while, by contrast, the meaning of the related term "nature" has widened (see also History below). In antiquity, "natural history" covered essentially anything connected with nature, or used materials drawn from nature, such as Pliny the Elder's encyclopedia of this title, published c. 77 to 79 AD, which covers astronomy, geography, humans and their technology, medicine, and superstition, as well as animals and plants. Medieval European


id: natural-history-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history-1.md
category: reference
title: Natural history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:54.706913+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-history-20260505-0
summary:
=== Prehistory === Prior to the advent of Western science, humans were engaged and highly competent in indigenous ways of understanding the more-than-human world that are now referred to as traditional ecological knowledge. 21st century definitions of natural history are inclusive of this understanding, such as this by Thomas Fleischner of the Natural History Institute (Prescott, Arizona): Natural history – a practice of intentional focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy – is the oldest continuous human endeavor. In the evolutionary past of our species, the practice of natural history was essential for our survival, imparting critical information on habits and chronologies of plants and animals that we could eat or that could eat us. Natural history continues to be critical to human survival and thriving. It contributes to our fundamental understanding of how the world works by providing the empirical foundation of natural sciences, and it contributes directly and indirectly to human emotional and physical health, thereby fostering healthier human communities. It also serves as the basis for all conservation efforts, with natural history both informing the science and inspiring the values that drive these. === Ancient === As a precursor to Western


id: natural-history-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history-2.md
category: reference
title: Natural history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:54.706913+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-history-20260505-0
summary:
Natural history museums, which evolved from cabinets of curiosities, played an important role in the emergence of professional biological disciplines and research programs. Particularly in the 19th century, scientists began to use their natural history collections as teaching tools for advanced students and the basis for their own morphological research. == Societies == The term "natural history" alone, or sometimes together with archaeology, forms the name of many national, regional, and local natural history societies that maintain records for animals—including birds (ornithology), insects (entomology) and mammals (mammalogy)—fungi (mycology), plants (botany), and other organisms. They may also have geological and microscopical sections. Examples of these societies in Britain include the Natural History Society of Northumbria founded in 1829, London Natural History Society (1858), Birmingham Natural History Society (1859), British Entomological and Natural History Society founded in 1872, Glasgow Natural History Society, Manchester Microscopical and Natural History Society established in 1880, Whitby Naturalists' Club founded in 1913, Scarborough Field Naturalists' Society and the Sorby Natural History Society, Sheffield, founded in 1918. The growth of natural history societies was also spurred due to the growth of British colonies in tropical regions with numerous new species to be discovered. Many civil servants took an


id: natural-magic-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic-0.md
category: reference
title: Natural magic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:55.929681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-magic-20260505-0
summary:
Natural magic is a tradition concerning the manipulation and development of the occult, or hidden, mechanisms within nature. Unlike ceremonial magic, it does not rely on a relationship with summoning spirits. Natural magic sometimes makes use of physical substances from the natural world such as stones or herbs. In the Medieval era, many theologians utilized the term natural magic when referring to the properties of the natural world that would operate within the realm of divinity. Natural magic worked to expose underlying mechanisms occurring in nature that cannot be explained through rational knowledge. The lack of concrete evidence results in these mechanisms being referred to as "occult properties". Natural magic so defined includes astrology, alchemy, and certain disciplines that would today be considered fields of natural science, such as astronomy and chemistry (divergently evolved from astrology and alchemy, respectively) or botany (from herbology). Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote that "there are as many types of natural magic as there are subjects of applied sciences". Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa discusses natural magic in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533), where he calls it "nothing else but the highest power of natural sciences". The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who


id: natural-magic-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic-1.md
category: reference
title: Natural magic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:55.929681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-magic-20260505-0
summary:
During the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century, the way science was viewed started to drastically change. The role of natural magic began to shift, but it did not disappear. Specifically, the idea of “occult properties” had an important role in the developing scientific worldview. The invisible forces in nature, which were previously thought of as magical concepts, came to be known as more rational and mathematical ones. For example, phenomena such as gravity and light were once thought to be mysterious, unknown forces, but during the Scientific Revolution, scientists began to explain them as rays or forces acting across a space. This transformation of thought is shown through figures like Isaac Newton, whose theory of gravity relied on a force at a distance, similar to earlier beliefs related to natural magic. While Newton and other scientists moved away from magical explanations, theories of natural magic helped to inspire their work. Despite beliefs and reasonings changing, “occult qualities” helped to establish ideas such as force interactions, which remain a central part of modern physics today. == See also == Kitāb al-nawāmīs – Arabic book of magic Giambattista della Porta – Italian polymath (1535–1615) Magia Naturalis – Book by Giambattista della


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-0.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
Natural philosophy, philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis), or experimental philosophy, until the late modern period, was the systematic and research-based study of nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. Used since at least Aristotle (classical antiquity) until the 19th century, the term natural philosophy referred to a branch of philosophy—a broader term then, meaning all rational fields of study and contemplation—that explored topics now considered to fall under the purview of science, such as physics, biology, chemistry, and astronomy. Thus, natural philosophy served as the precursor to, and has been mostly supplanted by, modern science. The 19th century established the term science as distinct from philosophy in its rigorously empirical and experimental approach, along with its many modern sub-disciplines, plus the founding of various institutions and communities devoted to them. Isaac Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) (English: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) reflects the use of the term natural philosophy in the 17th century. Even in the 19th century, the work that helped define much of modern physics bore the title Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), authored by Lord Kelvin and Tait. In the German tradition, Naturphilosophie (philosophy of nature) persisted into the


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-1.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
Humankind's mental engagement with nature certainly predates civilization and the record of history. Philosophical, and specifically non-religious, thought about the natural world goes back to ancient Greece. These lines of thought began before Socrates, who turned his philosophical studies from speculations about nature to a consideration of man, or in other words, political philosophy. The thought of early philosophers such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Democritus centered on the natural world. In addition, three Presocratic philosophers who lived in the Ionian town of Miletus (hence the Milesian School of philosophy), Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, attempted to explain natural phenomena without recourse to creation myths involving the Greek gods. They were called the physikoi ("natural philosophers") or, as Aristotle referred to them, the physiologoi. Plato followed Socrates in concentrating on man. It was Plato's student, Aristotle, who, in basing his thought on the natural world, returned empiricism to its primary place, while leaving room in the world for man. Martin Heidegger observes that Aristotle was the originator of conception of nature that prevailed in the Middle Ages into the modern era: The Physics is a lecture in which he seeks to determine beings that arise on their own, τὰ φύσει ὄντα (ta


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-2.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
=== In ancient Greece === Early Greek philosophers studied motion and the cosmos. Figures like Hesiod regarded the natural world as offspring of the gods, whereas others like Leucippus and Democritus regarded the world as lifeless atoms in a vortex. Anaximander deduced that eclipses happen because of apertures in rings of celestial fire. Heraclitus believed that the heavenly bodies were made of fire that were contained within bowls. He thought that eclipses happen when the bowl turned away from the earth. Anaximenes is believed to have stated that an underlying element was air, and by manipulating air someone could change its thickness to create fire, water, dirt, and stones. Empedocles identified the elements that make up the world, which he termed the roots of all things, as fire, air, earth, and water. Parmenides argued that all change is a logical impossibility. He gives the example that nothing can go from nonexistence to existence. Plato argues that the world is an imperfect replica of an idea that a divine craftsman once held. He also believed that the only way to truly know something was through reason and logic. Not the study of the object itself, but that changeable matter is a


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-3.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Natural philosophy in the early modern period === The scientific method has ancient precedents, and Galileo exemplifies a mathematical understanding of nature, which is a hallmark of modern natural scientists. Galileo proposed that objects falling regardless of their mass would fall at the same rate, as long as the medium they fall in is identical. The 19th-century distinction of a scientific enterprise apart from traditional natural philosophy has its roots in prior centuries. Proposals for a more "inquisitive" and practical approach to the study of nature are notable in Francis Bacon, whose ardent convictions did much to popularize his insightful Baconian method. The Baconian method is employed throughout Thomas Browne's encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–1672), which debunks a wide range of common fallacies through empirical investigation of nature. The late-17th-century natural philosopher Robert Boyle wrote a seminal work on the distinction between physics and metaphysics called, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, as well as The Skeptical Chymist, after which the modern science of chemistry is named, (as distinct from proto-scientific studies of alchemy). These works of natural philosophy are representative of a departure from the medieval scholasticism taught in European universities, and anticipate in many


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-4.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
Environmental philosophy – Branch of philosophy Gentleman scientist – Financially independent scientistPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets History of science Natural environment – Living and non-living things on Earth Natural theology – Theology reliant on rational and empirical arguments Naturalism (philosophy) – Belief that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe Nature (philosophy) – Philosophical term Protoscience – Research field that may become a science == References == == Further reading == Adler, Mortimer J. (1993). The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-500574-X. E.A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954). Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Science. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. LCCN:2001036144 ISBN 0-19-514583-6 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1945) Simon & Schuster, 1972. Santayana, George (1923). Scepticism and Animal Faith. Dover Publications. pp. 27–41. ISBN 0-486-20236-4. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) David Snoke, Natural Philosophy: A Survey of Physics and Western Thought. Access Research Network, 2003. ISBN 1-931796-25-4.Natural Philosophy: A Survey of Physics and Western Thought


id: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories-0.md
category: reference
title: One-sex and two-sex theories
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:58.564653+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-0
summary:
The one-sex and two-sex theories (also referred to as the one-sex and two-sex models) are historiographical concepts introduced by historian Thomas Laqueur in his 1990 book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Laqueur proposed that Western medical and philosophical thought underwent a fundamental shift in the 18th century: from a "one-sex model," in which female anatomy was understood as an inverted, inferior version of male anatomy, to a "two-sex model" treating men and women as anatomically distinct and opposite. While Making Sex has been highly influential in gender studies, literary criticism, and cultural history, its thesis has attracted substantial criticism from historians of medicine and science. Critics including Helen King, Joan Cadden, Katharine Park, and Michael Stolberg have argued that Laqueur oversimplifies the historical record, misreads primary sources, and imposes an artificial chronological divide where one-sex and two-sex understandings in fact coexisted throughout Western history. The historian Monica H. Green has called on scholars to move beyond the framework entirely. == Laqueur's thesis == === The one-sex model === According to Laqueur, Western medicine from antiquity through the early modern period operated under a "one-sex model" in which women were understood as imperfect or inverted versions


id: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories-1.md
category: reference
title: One-sex and two-sex theories
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:58.564653+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-0
summary:
=== Calls to move beyond the framework === Critics have noted that Making Sex achieved widespread influence partly because its binary framework offered a conveniently simple narrative for scholars across disciplines. As historiographical surveys have observed, the neatness of Laqueur's story—one era, one model, replaced by another era, another model—made it highly exportable, even as specialists in the history of medicine increasingly found it inadequate. Monica H. Green's 2018 article in Eugesta titled "Let Go of Laqueur" called for scholars to move beyond the one-sex/two-sex framework entirely and develop more nuanced histories of how bodies have been understood as sexed across different times and cultures. === Laqueur's response === In a 2003 response to Stolberg, Laqueur argued that isolated pieces of evidence for sexual dimorphism in Renaissance anatomy do not undermine his thesis, since individual observations do not discredit prevailing worldviews. He maintained that the fundamental epistemological shift he described—from sex as reflecting metaphysical truths to sex as biological foundation for gender—remained valid regardless of when specific anatomical differences were first noted. == Influence and legacy == Despite the scholarly criticisms described above, Making Sex has remained widely cited, particularly in gender studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. The book


id: oral-history-of-british-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_History_of_British_Science-0.md
category: reference
title: Oral History of British Science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_History_of_British_Science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:59.812145+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: oral-history-of-british-science-20260505-0
summary:
An Oral History of British Science is an oral history project conducted by National Life Stories at the British Library. The project began in 2009 with funding from the Arcadia Fund, the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and a number of other private donors and focuses on audio interviews with British science and engineering figures. == Project background == The project focused on 200 video interviews lasting 8–15 hours, with four themes: Made in Britain, A Changing Planet, Cosmologies and Biomedicine. The project Advisory Committee included Jon Agar, Alec Broers, Tilly Blyth, Georgina Ferry, Dame Julia Higgins, Maja Kominko, Sir Harry Kroto, John Lynch, Chris Rapley and Simone Turchetti. An Oral History of British Science was conducted by National Life Stories (NLS) at the British Library, and formed part of a wider institutional initiative to better document contemporary history of science and technology through the addition of audio visual sources as well as written sources. == Methodology == The oral history of British science follows the biographical, or life story, oral history approach with each audio interview averaging 8 to 15 hours in length. The interviews cover the individual’s career history, education, background and family. == Access to


id: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish-0.md
category: reference
title: Parable of the Sunfish
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:01.010546+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
summary:
"The Parable of the Sunfish" is an anecdote with which Ezra Pound opens ABC of Reading, a 1934 work of literary criticism. Pound uses this anecdote to emphasize an empirical approach for learning about art, in contrast to relying on commentary rooted in abstraction. While the parable is based on students' recollections of Louis Agassiz's teaching style, Pound's retelling diverges from these sources in several respects. The parable has been used to illustrate the benefits of scientific thinking, but more recent literary criticism has split on whether the parable accurately reflects the scientific process and calls into question Pound's empirical approach to literature. == The Parable == The text of the parable below is excerpted from Pound's ABC of Reading. == Context == === ABC of Reading === Pound opens ABC of Reading with the following pronouncement: The proper METHOD for studying poetry and good letters is the method of contemporary biologists, that is careful first-hand examination of the matter, and continual COMPARISON of one 'slide' or specimen with another. No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the sunfish. In the parable, a graduate student is sent to noted biologist Louis


id: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish-1.md
category: reference
title: Parable of the Sunfish
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:01.010546+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
summary:
At length on the seventh day, came the question "Well?" and my disgorge of learning to him as he sat on the edge of my table puffing his cigar. At the end of the hour's telling, he swung off and away, saying "That is not right." Shaler concluded Agassiz was testing him to see if he was capable of "doing hard, continuous work without the support of a teacher" and redoubled his efforts, starting from scratch and, over the course of seven ten-hour days, managed to describe the specimen to Agassiz's satisfaction. === Scudder's "Look at your fish!" === Samuel Hubbard Scudder recorded a similar experience, first published in 1874 as "Look at Your Fish" in Every Saturday magazine. Agassiz again starts his new student off with a fish preserved in alcohol and instructs the student to "look at it", and promises "by and by I will ask what you have seen". As opposed to Pound's decomposing sunfish, Scudder's account emphasizes the care taken to keep the specimen in good condition: I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar ... In ten minutes I had seen


id: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish-2.md
category: reference
title: Parable of the Sunfish
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:01.010546+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
summary:
=== Pound === Pound, echoing Cooper, opens ABC of Reading by stating that the correct method for the study of poetry is "the method of contemporary biologists" and that "No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish." Commentators have summarized Pound's position with the term empiricism, but have divided over whether the parable endorses or indicts the idea. The simplest interpretations in scientific writing, history of science, and literary criticism take the parable at face value, accepting empiricism and observation as legitimate techniques. For example, when writing about stellar atmospheres, Dimitri Mihalas states that "it is specimens, not facts, that are the ultimate empirical currency that we must use if we wish to purchase a valid theory" before beginning a discussion of Pound's sunfish. Moving from acceptance of empiricism to an understanding of its limitations, Christopher Tilley emphasizes in his comments on "scientific archeology" that Pound's student "was not simply learning about 'reality', the sunfish, but a way of approaching that reality – a discourse bound up in a particular thought tradition (empiricism)". Robert Scholes reaches a similar conclusion, noting that the student "seems to be reporting about a real


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-0.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks and stripes. Early Greek philosophers studied pattern, with Plato, Pythagoras and Empedocles attempting to explain order in nature. The modern understanding of visible patterns developed gradually over time. In the 19th century, the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau examined soap films, leading him to formulate the concept of a minimal surface. The German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel painted hundreds of marine organisms to emphasise their symmetry. Scottish biologist D'Arcy Thompson pioneered the study of growth patterns in both plants and animals, showing that simple equations could explain spiral growth. In the 20th century, the English mathematician Alan Turing predicted mechanisms of morphogenesis which give rise to patterns of spots and stripes. The Hungarian biologist Aristid Lindenmayer and the French American mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot showed how the mathematics of fractals could create plant growth patterns. Mathematics, physics and chemistry can explain patterns in nature at different levels and scales. Patterns in living things are explained by the biological processes of natural selection and sexual selection.


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-1.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Living things like orchids, hummingbirds, and the peacock's tail have abstract designs with a beauty of form, pattern and colour that artists struggle to match. The beauty that people perceive in nature has causes at different levels, notably in the mathematics that governs what patterns can physically form, and among living things in the effects of natural selection, that govern how patterns evolve. Mathematics seeks to discover and explain abstract patterns or regularities of all kinds. Visual patterns in nature find explanations in chaos theory, fractals, logarithmic spirals, topology and other mathematical patterns. For example, L-systems form convincing models of different patterns of tree growth. The laws of physics apply the abstractions of mathematics to the real world, often as if it were perfect. For example, a crystal is perfect when it has no structural defects such as dislocations and is fully symmetric. Exact mathematical perfection can only approximate real objects. Visible patterns in nature are governed by physical laws; for example, meanders can be explained using fluid dynamics. In biology, natural selection can cause the development of patterns in living things for several reasons, including camouflage, sexual selection, and different kinds of signalling, including mimicry and cleaning symbiosis. In


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-2.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Spirals are common in plants and in some animals, notably molluscs. For example, in the nautilus, a cephalopod mollusc, each chamber of its shell is an approximate copy of the next one, scaled by a constant factor and arranged in a logarithmic spiral. Given a modern understanding of fractals, a growth spiral can be seen as a special case of self-similarity. Plant spirals can be seen in phyllotaxis, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, and in the arrangement (parastichy) of other parts as in composite flower heads and seed heads like the sunflower or fruit structures like the pineapple and snake fruit, as well as in the pattern of scales in pine cones, where multiple spirals run both clockwise and anticlockwise. These arrangements have explanations at different levels – mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology – each individually correct, but all necessary together. Phyllotaxis spirals can be generated from Fibonacci ratios: the Fibonacci sequence runs 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13... (each subsequent number being the sum of the two preceding ones). For example, when leaves alternate up a stem, one rotation of the spiral touches two leaves, so the pattern or ratio is 1/2. In hazel the ratio is


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-3.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
=== Bubbles, foam === A soap bubble forms a sphere, a surface with minimal area (minimal surface) — the smallest possible surface area for the volume enclosed. Two bubbles together form a more complex shape: the outer surfaces of both bubbles are spherical; these surfaces are joined by a third spherical surface as the smaller bubble bulges slightly into the larger one. A foam is a mass of bubbles; foams of different materials occur in nature. Foams composed of soap films obey Plateau's laws, which require three soap films to meet at each edge at 120° and four soap edges to meet at each vertex at the tetrahedral angle of about 109.5°. Plateau's laws further require films to be smooth and continuous, and to have a constant average curvature at every point. For example, a film may remain nearly flat on average by being curved up in one direction (say, left to right) while being curved downwards in another direction (say, front to back). Structures with minimal surfaces can be used as tents. At the scale of living cells, foam patterns are common; radiolarians, sponge spicules, silicoflagellate exoskeletons and the calcite skeleton of a sea urchin, Cidaris rugosa, all resemble


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-4.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Alan Turing, and later the mathematical biologist James Murray, described a mechanism that spontaneously creates spotted or striped patterns: a reaction–diffusion system. The cells of a young organism have genes that can be switched on by a chemical signal, a morphogen, resulting in the growth of a certain type of structure, say a darkly pigmented patch of skin. If the morphogen is present everywhere, the result is an even pigmentation, as in a black leopard. But if it is unevenly distributed, spots or stripes can result. Turing suggested that there could be feedback control of the production of the morphogen itself. This could cause continuous fluctuations in the amount of morphogen as it diffused around the body. A second mechanism is needed to create standing wave patterns (to result in spots or stripes): an inhibitor chemical that switches off production of the morphogen, and that itself diffuses through the body more quickly than the morphogen, resulting in an activator-inhibitor scheme. The Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction is a non-biological example of this kind of scheme, a chemical oscillator. Later research has managed to create convincing models of patterns as diverse as zebra stripes, giraffe blotches, jaguar spots (medium-dark patches surrounded by dark broken


id: physica-speculatio-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physica_speculatio-0.md
category: reference
title: Physica speculatio
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physica_speculatio
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:03.407258+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physica-speculatio-20260505-0
summary:
Physica speculatio is a text of scientific character written by Alonso de la Vera Cruz in 1557 in the capital of New Spain. It was the first published work in the American continent that specifically addressed the study of physics, and was written to teach the students of the Real University of Mexico. It introduced the main theoretical concepts of geocentric astronomy and references the heliocentric model. Fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz published in the capital of New Spain a Course of Arts, constituted in three volumes in Latin. The first form in 1553 under the title of Recognitio Summularum, that had like purpose help to the students of the Real University of Mexico to understand the philosophy by means of the understanding of the formal logic. A year afterwards appeared the second called Dialectica Resolutio, that was a continuation of the previous. The last was Physica speculatio. They did four editions, the last 3 of which were for use of the salmantino students and were abbreviated versions of the Mexican one. == Subjects == The Physica speculatio has by object the study or "investigation" -speculatio- and the exhibition, in general, of subjects of physics on the nature -Physica-,


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-0.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
The Physics (Ancient Greek: Φυσικής ἀκρόασις, romanized: Physikḗs akróasis, or: Φυσικής ακροάσεως, Physikḗs akroáseōs; Latin: Physica or Naturales Auscultationes, possibly meaning "Lectures on nature") is a named text, written in ancient Greek, collated from a collection of surviving manuscripts known as the Corpus Aristotelicum, attributed to the 4th-century BC philosopher Aristotle. == The meaning of physics in Aristotle == It is a collection of treatises or lessons that deals with the most general (philosophical) principles of natural or moving things, both living and non-living, rather than physical theories (in the modern sense) or investigations of the particular contents of the universe. The chief purpose of the work is to discover the principles and causes of (and not merely to describe) change, or movement, or motion (κίνησις kinesis), especially that of natural wholes (mostly living things, but also inanimate wholes like the cosmos). In the conventional Andronicean ordering of Aristotle's works, it stands at the head of, as well as being foundational to, the long series of physical, cosmological and biological treatises, whose ancient Greek title, τὰ φυσικά, means "the [writings] on nature" or "natural philosophy". == Description of the content == The Physics is composed of eight books, which are


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-1.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
The necessary in nature, then, is plainly what we call by the name of matter, and the changes in it. Both causes must be stated by the physicist, but especially the end; for that is the cause of the matter, not vice versa; and the end is 'that for the sake of which', and the beginning starts from the definition or essence… In chapter 3, Aristotle presents his theory of the four causes (material, efficient, formal, and final). Material cause explains what something is made of (for example, the wood of a house), formal cause explains the form which a thing follows to become that thing (the plans of an architect to build a house), efficient cause is the actual source of the change (the physical building of the house), and final cause is the intended purpose of the change (the final product of the house and its purpose as a shelter and home). Of particular importance is the final cause or purpose (telos). It is a common mistake to conceive of the four causes as additive or alternative forces pushing or pulling; in reality, all four are needed to explain (7.198a22-25). What we typically mean by cause in the


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-2.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
=== Book VII (Η; 241a25–250b7) === Book VII briefly deals with the relationship of the moved to his mover, which Aristotle describes in substantial divergence with Plato's theory of the soul as capable of setting itself in motion (Laws book X, Phaedrus, Phaedo). Everything which moves is moved by another. He then tries to correlate the species of motion and their speeds, with the local change (locomotion, phorà) as the most fundamental to which the others can be reduced. Book VII.1-3 also exist in an alternative version, not included in the Bekker edition. === Book VIII (Θ; 250a14–267b26) === Book VIII (which occupies almost a fourth of the entire Physics, and probably constituted originally an independent course of lessons) discusses two main topics, though with a wide deployment of arguments: the time limits of the universe, and the existence of a Prime Mover — eternal, indivisible, without parts and without magnitude. Isn't the universe eternal, has it had a beginning, will it ever end? Aristotle's response, as a Greek, could hardly be affirmative, never having been told of a creatio ex nihilo, but he also has philosophical reasons for denying that motion had not always existed, on the grounds of


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-3.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
=== Classical and medieval commentaries on the Physics === A commentary differs from a note in being a distinct work analyzing the language and subsumed concepts of some other work classically notable. A note appears within the annotated work on the same page or in a separate list. Commentaries are typically arranged by lemmas, or quotes from the notable work, followed by an analysis of the author of the commentary. The commentaries on every work of Aristotle are a vast and mainly unpublished topic. They extend continuously from the death of the philosopher, representing the entire history of Graeco-Roman philosophy. There are thousands of commentators and commentaries known wholly or more typically in fragments of manuscripts. The latter especially occupy the vaults of institutions formerly responsible for copying them, such as monasteries. The process of publishing them is slow and ongoing. Below is a brief representative bibliography of published commentaries on Aristotle's Physics available on or through the Internet. Like the topic itself, they are perforce multi-cultural, but English has been favored, as well as the original languages, ancient Greek and Latin. === Some modern commentaries, monographs and articles === == Further reading == Books Die Aristotelische Physik, W. Wieland,


