history-of-science

_British Journal for the History of Philosophy_. forthcomingCrusius’ work on physics has recently become the target of well-deserved scholarly attention. In this paper, I aim to challenge a recent interpretation of Crusius’ physics as a merely probable science defended by Hein van den Berg and Boris Demarest. By inquiring into the sense of ‘probable’ in Crusius and systematizing his often-missed …

Some of Europe's most well-known historic manuscripts, including the York Gospels, have proven to be biological time capsules for uncovering the 3,500-year history of the sheeppox virus (SPPV).

Pop Art was conceived in postwar Britain before spreading to the States, continental Europe, and other parts of the world

Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line by Rory Cormac brings Britain’s shadowy Information Research Department into the light. In 1977 David Owen, then foreign secretary, closed the Information Research Department (IRD). He wanted, he said, to ‘end the grey area, which for far too long escaped proper scrutiny, falling neither in the open area of diplo…

The Secret Codes of the Mind: From Medieval Philosophy to the Enlightenment, Volume IV, Part Three (The Age of Enlightenment) examines the Enlightenment through the transformation of ideas about reason, freedom, political authority, knowledge, conscience, and human perfectibility. The volume begins with Voltaire and his defense of reason and toleration against fanaticism and inherited authority. …

The Secret Codes of the Mind: From Medieval Philosophy to the Enlightenment, Volume IV, Part Two (Philosophy of the Modern Era), examines the transformation of European philosophy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when inherited accounts of knowledge, nature, mind, political authority, and religious belief were subjected to new forms of rational and empirical inquiry. The volume be…

Around 1600, William Gilbert invented the versorium, the first electroscope, to detect static electric charges. The English physician and natural philosopher studied electricity and magnetism through experiments. His work helped separate magnetism from static electricity. He also argued that Earth is a giant magnet and used a terrella to demonstrate how magnetic behavior works.

_Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seriia 7: Filosofiia_ 48 (4):13–28. 2024Th e article discusses the latest research on the ontology of St. Maximus the Confessor, carried out in the perspective of the history of philosophy. Th e works of G. Kapriev, C. Moreschini, B. Lourié, V.V. Petroff, T.T. Tollefsen, N. Loudovikos, D. Skliris, S. Mitraleksis, J. Greig and other researchers are analyzed. We d…

This dissertation examines the Christian metaphysics of Maximus the Confessor within the philosophical and theological tradition of Late Antiquity and early Byzantium. It focuses on the doctrine of participated divine activity and its relation to the ways in which Iamblichus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite address the aporia of a transcendent first principle. The dissertation aims to recon…

Jonny Cottrell, recently of York University in Toronto, and before that, the University of Edinburgh, has taken up a position at the University of Toronto. Professor Cottrell works in the history of modern philosophy, with a focus on topics at the intersection of philosophy and psychology. You can learn more about his research here and here. He took up his new position as associate professor of p…

_Locke Studies_ 26:1-33. 2026This article examines the intersection of John Locke’s philosophy and Newtonian mechanical medicine in the writings of the early eighteenth-century apothecary John Quincy. For though Locke’s own medical interests have often been explored, the influence of his Essay concerning Human Understanding(1689) upon the new physiological theories of the early eighteenth century…

A brilliant engineer who could have become a billionaire, built a trillion-dollar company, and chased every measure of commercial success. But instead, Linus Torvalds chose something different: independence, flexibility, reliability, and the empowerment of people to build. He didn’t just create technology. He helped shape a culture where software could remain open, collaborative, and adaptable by…

_Christian Perspectives on Science and Technology_ 5:42-59. 2026Sir James Jeans, an astronomer of note in the early twentieth century, is overlooked and understudied—considering his popularity, high sales of his books, and his science communication work during the interwar period. Given his importance in the early development of both astrophysics and philosophy of science as academic disciplines …

Nature, Published online: 25 August 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02094-3 Oral historian Emmeline Ledgerwood’s PhD investigated how privatization affected civil-service scientists at the end of the twentieth century.

In The Sense of Touch: Medieval and Modern Debates in Philosophy and Science. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 103-119. 2026In pre-modern medicine, touch played a central role in assessing the nature of bodies. Physicians used the palm of the hand to diagnose a patient’s state of health or “temperament”, a concept drawn from Galenic medicine. Temperament referred to the balance of primary q…