Congratulations to Mina Carson, whose biography of Ava Helen Pauling provides a long-awaited study of a crucial yet often-neglected figure in the history of science and peace activism. Among its many merits is how well the book highlights the rich collections we have at Oregon State University. Here’s the book the description. It is so [...]
Archive for the ‘Science and Politics’ Category
Mina Carson’s new book: Ava Helen Pauling
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013Linda Richards Disrupts the Technocratic Narrative
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013Congratulations to Ph.D. student Linda Richards, who has published an article in Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research! The title is “Fallout Suits and Human Rights: Disrupting the Technocratic Narrative,” and it challenges the way we think about radiation effects historically. As she writes, “the topic of radiation exposure is a disputed maze [...]
An American’s View of NPT, From Vienna
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012by Linda M. Richards* May 1 is a real Worker’s holiday all over Austria, so today the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) was closed and there were no official NPT Preparatory Committee meetings. The NPT is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Almost all the shops and businesses are closed, except for restaurants [...]
Reflection: The Republic of Science and Popper’s Open Society
Thursday, March 8th, 2012by Mahdieh Tavakol* An interesting aspect of Karl Popper’s thought was the interconnection between his political philosophy and his philosophy of science. This aspect was presented by Malachi H. Hacohen, an intellectual historian of Duke University, in his talk entitled “Karl Popper and the Liberal Imagination in Science and Politics”, part of this year’s series [...]
Reflection: And God said “No”
Friday, March 2nd, 2012by Tracy Jamison* Mark Lynas is an optimist. On February 29th, Mr. Lynas lectured here at OSU at LaSells Stewart Center on his book, The God Species. According to Mr. Lynas, humans are a God species and consequently we have to “run the planet as if we were gods”. Not the kind of Gods found [...]
Reflection: Cleaning Up Hanford’s Waste
Monday, February 27th, 2012by Jindan Chen* What’s in Hanford’s backyard? What cleanup has been accomplished, and what are the current challenges? What can you do about Hanford? These questions were presented to the Feb 23 open forum here at Oregon State University about the former plutonium production facility in Hanford, Washington. Participants in the forum included representatives from [...]
Reflection: Howkins and the Environmental History of Antarctica
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012by Peter Rumbles* One of the most fascinating aspects of studying Antarctica – at least from a historical perspective – is that humans have only been present on the continent for the last one hundred years. While other historians have argued that to study the history of a place, a human presence is needed, Adrian [...]
National Science Foundation will support Rocks and Reactors Project
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012Linda M. Richards, Ph.D. student in History of Science at Oregon State University, has been awarded a prestigious dissertation improvement grant from the National Science Foundation. She weathered the storm of a tough selection process and now is ready to take her research project on the road–literally. She’ll be traveling by bus (!) to multiple [...]
Reflection: Birth of a Scientific Community in Iran
Friday, February 17th, 2012by Mahdieh Tavakol* Not all science in Iran is nuclear. In recent years, we have heard a lot of news about Iran’s scientific growth. In 2010 the New Scientist wrote that ”scientific output has grown 11 times faster in Iran than the world average, faster than any other country” and in 2011 it announced that “Iran [...]
Reflection: How one German Geographer Saw his Science under the Third Reich
Sunday, February 12th, 2012by Jindan Chen* What were German geographers up to under the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945? What were their researching emphases in this period? How did politics and World War II influence the development of geography in Germany? With these questions in mind, I came across Carl Troll’s review article, “Geographic Science in Germany [...]
