“You don’t want to mess with Mrs. Sidgwick!”. No Victorian has ever written a statement like this, though it is certainly along the lines of what many contemporaries of Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick were thinking. Born on 11 March 1845 into one of the most politically and intellectually influential families in Britain, Nora (as she was … Read more
Hasok Chang is Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, and the current British Academy Wolfson Research Professor. A past President of the British Society for this History of Science, Hasok is the author of Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism (Springer, 2012), and Inventing Temperature: Measurement … Read more
The history of Cambridge University fundamentally challenges modern assumptions that science has disenchanted the world. As can be expected, this is also reflected in its archival and library holdings. Some of the most curious items held at Cambridge University Library are found in the collection of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), which includes old … Read more
While modern popular science still often relies on traditional claims of the inherent incompatibility of science and ‘magic’, no location in Britain, and perhaps the whole Western hemisphere, is more apt to challenge popular standard notions of the alleged disenchantment of science than Cambridge.