Between doubts and certainties: on the place of history of science in Islamic societies within the field of history of science

I discuss my long-term observation that history of science in Islamic societies is marginalized within the general history of science community as well as in the academic world of Islamic studies, Near Eastern language and civilization programs, Middle Eastern history, or the investigation of the modern Muslim world. I ask what the possible causes for this situation are and what can be done to change the bleak situation.     

Cooperation patterns in science within Europe: the standpoint of small countries

This article is concerned with the cooperation patterns of science among European countries from the viewpoint of small countries. This is an issue, which empirical literature so far has overlooked, but which is still relevant for understanding the implications of integration processes in EU. We have replicated and expanded in sample, indicator and time dimensions the empirical analysis suggested by Frenken (Economic Systems Research 14(4):345–361, 2002) for assessing the homogeneity of cooperation patterns among European countries. We find that small states are less homogenously collaborating with all countries in the European research system and their intra-national research cooperation is also more fragmented. Our analysis reveals the outcomes of cooperation processes, and also highlights the factors such as research funding and research specialisation that can impact the results of the connectivity measurement. We also show that the results are sensitive to the size and measurement of the science system.     

Decoherence: the view from the history and philosophy of science

We present a brief history of decoherence, from its roots in the foundations of classical statistical mechanics, to the current spin bath models in condensed matter physics. We then analyse the philosophical importance of decoherence in three different foundational problems, and find that its role in their solutions is less than that commonly believed. What makes decoherence more philosophically interesting, we argue, are the methodological issues it draws attention to, and the question of the universality of quantum mechanics.     

The history and science of the artificial

This is the concluding chapter from a new book, The Evolution of Designs; Biological Analogy in Architecture and the Applied Arts, recently published by Cambridge University Press©. The book reviews the history of analogies made between the design of artefacts and the ‘design’ of organisms, since the beginnings of biology as a scientific subject around 1800. The analogies are shown to be conducive to a functionalist fallacy — the idea that the utilitarian functions of artefacts serve to define their forms in a deterministic way — and conducive to a historicist fallacy — that the ‘evolution’ of artefacts follows some necessary historical sequence of development, which is not under the control of men. The book ends by asking ‘What remains that is useful and true, in biological analogies with design?’     

Activities in vacuum science and technology in the USSR and Eastern Europe

Based on translations from Russian into English     

Ten years of science in Philosophical Transactions A: with the University Research Fellows

In this brief paper, I review my 10 years as the Editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. I look at the content of the journal over the years, relating it to a full classification of the physical sciences based on the interests of fellows and research fellows of the Royal Society. I show that the journal has performed well in terms of downloads, citations and impact factors. Innovations such as the Millennium and Christmas Issues for young scientists have stimulated a close and enjoyable interaction with the Society's research fellows. In addition to authoring papers and organizing themes, they have always been keen to help with the refereeing processes. They provided exciting demonstrations for a Summer Science exhibit that I organized to highlight the work of the journal, and five of the research fellows now sit on the Editorial Board. Looking to the future, I describe the new subject clusters that are being introduced as the journal steps up its publication rate from one issue per month to two, starting in January 2008.     

The history of science and medicine in the context of COVID-19

This spotlight issue encourages reflection on the current COVID-19 pandemic, not simply through comparisons with previous epidemics, but also by illustrating that epidemics deserve study within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts. Epidemics are not solely a function of pathogens; they are also a function of how society is structured, how political power is wielded in the name of public health, how quantitative data is collected, how diseases are categorised and modelled, and how histories of disease are narrated. Each of these activities has its own history. As historians of science and medicine have long pointed out, even the most basic methodologies that underpin scientific research—observation, trust in numbers, the use of models, even the experimental method itself—have a history. They should not be taken as a given, but understood as processes, or even strategies, that were negotiated, argued for and against, and developed within particular historical contexts and explanatory schemes. Knowing the history of something—whether of numbers, narratives, or disease—enables us to see a broader range of trajectories available to us. These varied histories also remind us that we are currently in the midst of a chaotic drama of uncertainty, within our own unstable and unfolding narrative.