History of Science

Why we need to embrace new forms of work and stop protecting the old

A love of the jaguar helped inspire one of the world's leading proponents for saving big cats

I'll be teaching a math history class for the first time this semester. I'm excited to be teaching it, but I've noticed that preparing for this class has been very different from preparing for other classes I've taught, which have all been math content courses.

In the fall of 2005, I and a couple hundred other new students at Columbia University's journalism school walked into a lecture hall for a series of welcome speeches, and two things happened that impressed me.

As readers of this blog know, late last spring I spoke at a cool conference in England called How the Light Gets In, where I hung out with all kinds of professional reality-ponderers.

Dan Falk discusses his latest book, The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright's Universe   

Dan Falk discusses his latest book, The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright's Universe   

Last week, on the same day that McSweeney’s Books published a new, paperback edition of my book The End of War, I argued that we must and can end war and militarism, our most urgent problems.

News out of Harvard suggests that not only will climate change affect how food is grown, but it will also lower the nutrition levels of what is grown—wheat, corn and rice in particular.

A survey explores why large academic social networks have taken off to a degree that no one expected a few years ago

Germany’s Opening Gambit The German attack on Belgium and France, starting on August 4, 1914, was designed to deliver a crushing blow to the French armies before the Russians and British could mobilize; after defeating the French, the Germans planned to use their extensive railway system to rush their forces to the eastern front to [...]

The Panama Canal opened officially a century ago