"The only time we take time to think about life too small for us to see is when we do battle with it." This statement by Wohlsen from BioPunk really stuck with me. As far as scientific concepts are concerned, DNA, germ theory, and atomic theory are all relatively knew,... Continue reading

I have read many a thing in my tenure as a student, essays which have brought me to tears, memoirs which have left me fuming with anger, rather terrible poetry because no English major would be complete without spending an afternoon or two with Wordsworth and Keats. However, in my... Continue reading

I have not finished all of the readings for this week yet, but I have just finished the introduction to Science and Religion in the Era of William James, which has left my head spinning and not specifically for the subject matter. Before I get into that, though, I would... Continue reading

For weeks I have found myself pushing back against the idea of a mechanical universe and this study of the parts of something rather than the whole, especially after the two documentaries last week, I found myself struggling with how anyone could approach science in this manner. I'm still not... Continue reading

Language is so important, that I would argue it is fundamentally everything to humans, because it shapes so much of our existence. In "The Paradox of Feminist Primatology: The Goddess's Discipline?" Linda Marie Fedigan brings up the gendered nature of Primatology (her example is of the "passive" egg and the... Continue reading

In the last week, across both this class, and in 5970, I have noticed a running theme in the struggle for definition. I do not pretend to be so naive to believe that definitions are not something which is fluid and highly susceptible to human bias, language is created by... Continue reading

I found myself intrigued by the chapter by Alison Winter about the connection between body and mind in Victorian England. Specifically, there was a section at the beginning of the chapter which discussed how women could not be trusted to find and produce knowledge because somehow their imaginations were too... Continue reading

This week, I read Mizora instead of Jekyll and Hyde, because I have read the latter 5 times before that class. In class, I can give a brief synopsis of the book, so I won't worry about doing that here. Instead, I am really interested in what the conversations about... Continue reading

I have been plowing through the Desmond and Moore biography and I have been struck by Darwin's daughters. Within the introduction of sorts, Desmond and Moore discuss the peculiarities of Darwin's views on race and gender, that he hated slavery but thought blacks inferior and that he subordinated women but... Continue reading

Within "D'Alembert's Dream", there was an interesting exchange between Bordeu and Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse on page 12 about the nature of fact and how facts are gathered. Bordeu states that a fact is obvious, however the reason for that fact is not at all obvious. He then goes on to... Continue reading