Garajeando: Historia de la Ciencia

"History is not a list of names and dates. It's a way of thinking that can be powerful and illuminating."

"Social interactions really do influence what scientist produce."

"How a community tells its history changes the way it thinks about itself."

"A historical perspective on science can help physicists understand what is going on when they practice their craft, and it provides numerous tools that are useful for physicists themselves."

"Physics is a social endeavor."

"Research is done by people. And people have likes and dislikes, egos and prejudices. Physicists, like everyone else get attached to their favorite ideas and hang on them perhaps long after they should let them go."

"The history of science can help dismantle the myth of the purely rational genius living outside the everyday world. It makes physics more human."

"And a more human physics is a good thing. For starters, it makes physics more accessible."

"A field in which people are aknowledged as people is much more appealing than one in which they are just calculating machines."

"Physics only work when people talk to each other and communication is not always easy."

"Everything seems obvious in retrospect."

"The history of physics can remind us how difficult is to justify ideas that now seem obvious."

"Complexity, not simplicity , has ruled the practice of science."

"Every discovery has come out of a messy mix of people, ideas, accidents and arguments."

"Students and young researchers are often heartened to learn that physics is hard work and that it is ok for their own efforts not to look like a text-boo presentation. Messiness is a standard. Mistakes are normal. The results of physics are not self-evident."

"The history of physics suggests that there are usually several ways to approach a problem."

"Turning complexity into good physics requires creativity. You can never tell what weird idea will help clarify a confusing observation or provide the key to interpreting an equation. History uncovers the strange stew of concepts that were necessary for the development of physics."

"The interplay of various approaches is what brought us a modern view."

"Strange but ultimately useful perspectives come from fields and disciplines apparently distant from the problem at hand."

"The history of science shows how important it is for scientists across different fields to talk to each other. Conversations among separate groups are healthy. Apparently isolated problems are often closedly tied together, and you never know where you will find the weird idea that solves your difficulty."

"The best strategy for encouraging diverse ideas is to cultivate a diverse community."

"Underrepresented groups that offer different ways of thingking are often the source of fresh insights and novel methods."

"Underrepresented groups are usually marginalized because of cultural inertia or deliberate decisions made long ago."

"The diversity of ideas and interpretations serves as a reminder that physics is a work in progress. Knowledge is provisional. There are always new ways to tackle a problem, and there is always more to be learned."

"Accepting uncertainty would require changes in how science is taught."

"Curiosity should be revered, and everyone should be encouraged to ask, what else?"

"If scientist are not explicit and honest about their doubts, a crisis of confidence arises when that uncertainty is revealed."

"Physics wasn't always as it is."

"The flip side of accepting physics will be different in the future is accepting that it was different in the past. Everyone has a tendency to assume that the way things are now is the norm. But history makes it clear that things were not always this way. An understanding of why people used to think differently is a powerful tool for understanding people today. By drawing attention to older, usnpoken assumptions, history shows us how to start paying attention to our own."

"A knowledge of the historic and physical background, gives the kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering" Einstein

"..they should study the history of those ideas and understand the circumstances in which they were justified and found useful."

"History trains you to think critically about received ideas. History provides evidence of roads not taken."

"Science's plurality of interpretation can make the history of science a resource for modern scientific research." Hasok Chang
"Complementary Science -> recovering forgotten and unsolved puzzles from the past."

"Putting complementary science into practice demands difficult self-examination. Thinking deeply about assumptions and accepted knowledge can be hard to do in professional scientific contexts, but history is a mode in which it's encouraged."

"The simple realization that people used to think differently can be quite powerful."

"Physics doesn't have rigid rules."

"Scientist simply don't follow a rigid, linear problem-solving system. Sometimes they start with a hypothesis, sometimes with a strange observation, sometimes with a weird anomaly in an otherwise straightforward experiment."

"... a scientist must be an "unscrupulous opportunist", adopting and adapting various approaches as new challenges arise."

"History teaches that knowledge is not fixed."

"Engaging with history will teach you to understand ideas on their own terms."

"Historical thinking makes its subject dynamic. It helps you think about science as a series of questions rather than a series of statements. Those questions will continue into the future, and it is helpful to know what has been asked so far." "In the end, history of science exposes scientists to new ways of thinking and forces them to reexamine what is already known. Such intellectual flexibility is essential for any discipline, but it's particularly important for fields as influential and authoritative as physics and other sciences."

Friday, July 22, 2016

Interesting Paper: "Why should physicists study history?"

I've just read this wonderful paper by Matthew Stanley

Why should physicists study history?

This is a gem full of wonderful ideas about diversity, group dynamics, critical thinking and the pursue of knowledge that I think are also valuable to software development and, probably, to any team or community effort.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Wallace, el otro Darwin

Y esta es otra:

20/03/2009
He disfrutado mucho leyendo el artículo que la versión española de National Geographic dedica este mes a la figura del naturalista inglés Alfred Russel Wallace.
Wallace fue codescubridor de la teoría de la evolución y fundador de la biogeografía. Mucho más joven que Darwin, viajero, aventurero, autodidacta y con un caracter novelesco tardó menos tiempo que Darwin en llegar a desarrollar la idea de la selección natural y la evolución.
No es el primer caso de la historia en que varios científicos realizan el mismo descubrimiento de forma simultánea en puntos alejados, pero en esta ocasión, no se produjeron agrias discusiones por el reconocimiento, como por ejemplo en el caso Newton-Leibniz. Esto tuvo que ver mucho con el caracter generoso de Wallace. Respetaba mucho a Darwin y le comunicó por carta sus ideas. Darwin llevaba más de una década trbajando sobre su teoría de la evolución, pero aún no la había publicado. Poco después de recibir la carta, ambos presentaron ante la Linnean Society of London un artículo común detallando sus ideas. Además, espoleado por la carta de Wallace, Darwin se decidió finalmente a publicar El origen de las especies.
Lo más curioso es que Wallace no estaba en Londres en el momento de la presentación del artículo, sino en Malasia. Ni siquiera sabía lo que había pasado. Se enteró de todo por carta. Poco después recibió por correo un ejemplar del libro de Darwin. En una situación en la que otros se hubieran molestado, Wallace se sintió muy agradecido, escribíó muchas cartas a sus amigos alabando lo bien que expresaba Darwin las ideas de la evolución. Lo importante para él eran las ideas no la fama individual. De hecho, cuando recopiló en un libro todos sus pensamientos sobre la evolución lo tituló Darwinismo.
Espero haber despertado su interés sobre Wallace.

Blas Cabrera

Estoy recuperando las entradas que más me gustan de un blog privado que tenía.
Esta es la primera de ellas:

02/10/2009
En el blog La Aldea Irreductible aparece una entrada sobre Blas Cabrera muy interesante.
Blas Cabrera fue el físico español más importante de la primera mitad del siglo XX, (me atrevería a decir que también de todo el siglo).
Formaba parte de la élite de la física mundial en la época dorada de la física en la que aparecieron la teoría de la relatividad y la cuántica. Fue un gran especialista en electromagnetismo, invitado en numerosas ocasiones a las famosas Conferencias Solvay junto a grandes científicos como Einstein, Fermi, Heisenberg, Bohr, Pauli o Curie.
El gran desconocimiento sobre su figura se debe probablemente a que, al terminar la guerra civil, como muchos otros intelectuales republicanos, tuvo que exiliarse a Méjico.