Uncategorized

Soraya de Chadarevian (history of science, UCLA) came by this afternoon for a short and informal visit on her way to Lund and Gothenburg. Soraya went on a quick tour around the museum and afterwards we had a short chat in the meeting room — especially about collecting contemporary biomedicine. Which made me think of Robert Anderson’s […]

The social web is almost by definition centered around the hyperlink. One of the attractions with blogging is the possibility to sprinkle hyperlinks all over the text. Is there a drawback? Oh yes, says Nicholas Carr: Sometimes, they’re big distractions — we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we’ve forgotten […]

Bioephemera is (temporarily?) closing down. As Jessica says, “everything is ephemeral – including bioephemera”. She has met “many wonderful fellow bloggers and faithful readers through the blog”, but keeping it going has become “a significant investment of time that I just don’t have … I need to refocus on work, life, and art”. Hopefully Jessica […]

Here’s the introduction to a talk titled ‘Cultures of Meaning and Cultures of Presence: The use of material objects in the history of science, medicine and technology’ that I gave at the Museo da Ciencia da Universidade Lisboa two weeks ago (see flyer here and resumé in Portuguese here); the images are from the web and for […]

One of my favourite medical technology websites, Medgadget, is launching a Medical Museum Competition.   They suggest you visit your local medical museum: Chances are that no matter where you live, there is a medical museum nearby. Maybe it’s an overlooked building in the center of your city, or a hospital library. Inside, you’ll find bizarre […]

Just got an email saying that the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim has announced a postdoc position to study “the production of images of the interior of the human body on the cellular level”. See more about the background for the project here: The […]

The ongoing battle between university administrators and teaching staff is in the process of claiming another victim. The well-renowned Department of Philosophy at Middlesex University is being closed down, much to the dismay and disbelief of staff, students and philosophers across the world. You can read much more about the debacle here, here and here. Below is […]

Anette Stenslund, our new prospective Ph.D.-student, and I attended the Conference Art and Identity, hosted by the Danish Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Among the speakers were prominent names like Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Mark Johnson and Andrew Bowie – quite a line-up for a Danish conference. All in all, it was a great experience with both […]

Massimi Pigliucci’s essay ‘The Future of Philosopy of Science’ makes me think that articles (or meetings) titled ‘The future of X-logy’ may in fact be a symptom of X-logy being in a crisis. If scholars are really busy innovating, they will probably not think of their joint activities in these terms. They will practice the future, not talk about it — […]

I’m intrigued by a post by Ayusman Sen — a professor in chemistry at Penn State and a specialist in catalytically driven nanomotors (cool stuff!) — who writes that he spends most of his time in the lab “feeling fairly stupid”. He says he continually feels that either I am not asking the big questions or I am not designing the right experiments […]

Missed this, because there’s an Atlantic Ocean between me and the event: But Jessica Palmer (Bioephemera) attended and has a thoughtful comment about the science blogosphere. I will be back with a comment on her comment.

There is now a petition available online for those who wish to oppose the closure of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.