Junto - a critical commentary

Well, for those of you who did not attend the 51st annual Midwest Junto for the History of Science held here at the University of Minnesota this past weekend, I can only say that you missed out on one hell of a conference. Jole Shackelford did a fantastic job organizing the conference this year (with help from Jacob Steere-Williams and supposedly from me too, but I really don't deserve any thanks since I didn't do much more than say "yea, that sounds good"). Jole made sure that there were two things present throughout the weekend: good coffee and plenty of alcohol. Even if every paper had been horrible (and that was by no means the case), I would have considered this a good weekend just for those two reasons. Oh, and banquet on Saturday night at The Bakken was incredible. Cafe 421 catered and completely outdid themselves. The food was amazing, the company was great, and atmosphere was elegant.

So far in this Junto commentary I've complimented the coffee, the alcohol, the food, and the environment. As a grad student, I'm not sure what else really matters, but luckily we had great presentations and a large turn out to boot. I believe that the final number of attendees was 71 with sessions being well attended all day on Saturday and most of Sunday. Of course, the usual faculty suspects were all there, plus a good group of graduate students from various universities. A good cohort of Iowa State students made the road trip up from Ames, many of them presenting and the rest were familiar from last year when they hosted the event. We also had a good group of University of Oklahoma students make the trip up from Norman (stipends must be good down there in Soonerville, they all flew instead making it a roadtrip). Guest appearances also occurred by grad students from University of Wisconsin, Missouri, Eastern Illinois, and Missouri University of Science and Technology. We also had great presentations from what us graduate students would call "professionals" from Linda Hall Library and Duke University. I would discuss the papers that I most enjoyed, but that would just show how prejudice I am towards the history of biology....

In general, it was a lively and successful Junto. There was even a graduate student party on Saturday night after the banquet in which our carefully manufactured home brew was unveiled. It turns out, if this grad school thing doesn't work out, a few of us in the department could have a future in the brewing industry....see our new label here.

Next year's Junto is being held at the Linda Hall library in Kansas City. I've never been to Missouri or Kansas, so I look forward to seeing familiar faces in a new place next year!

Cross-posted from FHSA: News and Views

The history of American science as a field has certainly grown by leaps and bounds since the 1970s, but how much has that history filtered into the public consciousness?  

I've been pondering this question because Isaac Newton just came to my small town as part of his latest FMA Live tour.  Who knew that "Newt" was so cool?  

His website is great fun, including a brief history of Newton's career that ends with "Thanks, Newt.  Props to you for being the Man Behind the Motion!"   This program is sponsored by Honeywell and is aimed at getting middle-schoolers excited about science.  

My question for you Minnesotans is which American scientist should be next to go on tour?  And, more importantly, which instrument should they play since Newton already has a lock on lead guitar?   Feel free to post ideas at the FHSA blog.

Colloquium Review of Brian Woodcock's "Quantum State Collapse Along a Light Cone: History and Objections"

This past Friday Brian Woodcock, a visiting professor at Carleton College in Northfield, presented his latest work "Quantum State Collapse Along a Light Cone: History and Objections." Needless to say, if you are an avid philosopher of 20th Century Physics, you missed a good one. Now, as someone whose knowledge of quantum physics probably hurt his cause more than helped it, I found Dr. Woodcock's talk to be very engaging. First of all, there were many pretty, geometrical pictures to keep my mind stimulated. Secondly, Brian also did a very nice job of giving a "prep-talk" to the quantumly-challenged in the audience that went over - pictorially even - the general ideas presented in a space-time diagram; a diagram he used extensively in the rest of his talk. This pre-lecture was very informative and it certainly set the stage for the rest of his talk. I won't go into specifics because it would basically be just restating his abstract, but I do want to talk briefly about his conclusions, particularly the type of conclusions that he, and other philosophers make in general.

Overall, Woodcock's talk did include some good historical segments, though it was primarily philosophical. He discussed 3 main attempts to understand the quantum collapse over the years, dating back to the early 1960s. For the historians in the audience, these types of descriptions and analyses are familiar. However, like many of the philosophy of science talks that occur during colloquium (including last week's talk on philosophy of race and the use of it in statistical work), the speaker's conclusions tended to be prescriptive rather than descriptive. I think this is where philosophers and historians of science really differ. There are many approaches in the history of science that utilize conceptual and intellectual approaches that touch on many of the issues that philosophers attempt to deal with. Historians, however, do not make any conclusions about how science should work now. Though I have been spending a lot of time over in the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science lately, and have been thinking much more about the philosophical aspects of biology, I realize that this descriptive/prescriptive distinction is one that will always keep me registering for HSS rather than PSA when they are having their joint meeting.

Contagion

Harvard just launched a database that might be useful or interesting for some of you. It's called "Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics" and "contains more than 500,000 pages of digitized books, serials, manuscripts, etc...designed to offer historical perspectives on epidemiology." (from ResearchBuzz.org)

The database is located at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/.

New Library Service

I thought you all might want to know about this new library service starting next week. Let me know if you have questions:

Starting March 3, 2008, requesting a book from a Twin Cities campus library will be a one-stop process for University of Minnesota faculty, staff and students. The “Get It” link in the availability page of the MNCat library catalog consolidates book requesting services currently found in 4 places:

* Recall –changing the due date of a book that has already been checked out for earlier pickup at any convenient campus library
* Point-to-Point - for delivery of books not checked out, to be picked up at a more convenient campus library than the owning library
* Libraries to U – for delivery of books to on-campus faculty/staff offices
* MLAC Paging - for MLAC deliveries

An additional service is now being offered with the “Get It” link:

* Paging – pulling books from the shelves of a library to be held for users at the Circulation Desk of that same library


Get It will also provide an additional route for users to request In Process and On Order items. These requests will be directed to Technical Services for processing.

Users will no longer have to fill out web forms, but will have user and book information pre-populated when they initiate a request after logging into their account. All the user will have to do is make a menu choice indicating where they would like the book to be sent for pickup! This will include an on-campus office for UM faculty and staff. Once a book is either returned or found on the shelf, shipping will take place within 48 hours on weekdays; most requests shipped within 24 hours.

Broomball Photos

G'day folks. I'd imagine you'd like nothing better to see pictures of us floundering about on the ice. Fortunately the IM sports department exists solely to make your wishes a reality. I was going to caption all of these with inanely flip comments, but it really mucks with the formatting and makes for about a thousand-yard post, so instead I'll let them speak for themselves (clicking on the photo will enlarge the photo, and decrease our dignity in equal proportion):

Congratulations to Sally Gregory Kohlstedt who will become director of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Department on July 1, 2008. Many thanks to Alan Shapiro for his many years of service and dedication.