@simonflynn
Science teacher, chiefly Chemistry (and A Level Psychology). In the early stages of a History/History of Science PhD at Birkbeck - the influence of Malthus on the directions of Darwinism. Author of the 'The Curious World of Science'.
“I still find history full of wonders; I still find in the differences in past societies a way to take stock of the present—a source of sober realism, but also a source of hope.” —Natalie Zemon Davis, 1996.
Read more about why history matters & the importance of historical thinking in public life.
The Radical Act behind your local library: Celebrating 175 years of public libraries.
blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/...
20 years after first reading ‘Middlemarch’, I find I like Dorothea more and Lydgate less. There’s an awful lot in the book that’s great but I find it hard understand why it’s so loved. I enjoyed more all the other Eliot fiction I’ve read in the last year or so.
'In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.'
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Portrait of Richard Owen posing next to a reptile skull. Maull & Polyblank, Professor Richard Owen, 1855. Gernsheim Collection, 2024:0003:0001. Harry Ransom Center University of Texas at Austin
Portrait of Michael Faraday leaning against a table while holding a magnet. Maull & Polyblank, Professor Michael Faraday, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., 1854–1855, published October 1857. Gernsheim Collection, 2024.0003.0001.0007. Harry Ransom Center University of Texas at Austin
Exciting news for fans of Victorian science! @ransomcenter.bsky.social recently digitized a photo album featuring members of Maull & Polyblank's Literary & Scientific Portrait Club, including Richard Owen & Michael Faraday (seen here).
ransom.center/maull-polybl...
#histSTM #histsci #photosky 🗃️📜📷
A hundred and thirty years ago, here's one of the richest men on Earth fantasizing about colonizing Jupiter. No relevance at all to anybody's fantasies about colonizing Mars, obviously.
In his essay “Colonizing the Cosmos”, @irmorus1 joins the interplanetary safari that is John Jacob Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/colonizing-the-cosmos
Parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children this summer! My regular reminder of this thread of TOYS you can make with scrap materials you probably have lying around the house:
#OnThisDay in London's striking herstory, 1890: Sweet Victory! East End chocolate factory workers win their strike
wp.me/p74yfw-199
Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for FREE during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. You can find all of these Elements free to download and read here: cup.org/4kEgivL
#HPS #hpbio #evobio
So this week the CEO of NVIDIA said AI was as important as electricity, and this comparison always makes me think of mad Victorian products this ⬇️
AI *is* like electricity in the way grifters are trying to shove it in everything, and make dubious claims about its benefits.
A black-and-white sketch of a robust, bearded prehistoric human figure (Neanderthal), shown in profile facing left. The figure is holding a simple stone tool or club in its right hand, with heavy brows and a sloped forehead. Handwritten notes in cursive script surround the figure on the left and right sides. The sketch has a rough, expressive line style.
Today in 1864, Thomas Huxley doodled this “ancient ape-man of Gibraltar” while bored in a meeting. It was inspired by the Forbes Quarry skull—a fossil his friend was puzzling over that we’d later recognize as a Neanderthal. #OnThisDay 🏺
Excited to share that the volume Lakatos @ 100 has just been published (open access)! It’s a great collection on Lakatos’s legacy.
📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Grateful to the editors for including me!
#Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess
99p on kindle. A no-brainer, as people used to say
Steven Rose - always an interesting and provocative thinker in science and a prominent figure in the so-called 'Darwin Wars' in the late 20th Century. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Latest read. It’s easy to see how this morally complex novel lends itself well to college courses and book clubs. There’s much to shock and this happens on many levels. I did, however, find the writing clunky at time - it could have been better edited. I will read more Butler.
Latest read: This isn't Gaskell's best-known work, possibly because of the amount of dialect that features. However, it's arguably her most realistic (okay, minus the usual convenient coincidences) and the final 100 pages step things up a gear and pack an emotional punch.
Born #OnThisDay 1799 Joseph Pease, Liberal MP for Durham South 1832-41, and the first Quaker to sit in the Commons. This post looks at the difficulties he encountered in taking his seat at Westminster. victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/q...
One of our excellent Science Communication MSc students is leading a free history of science walking tour in London. Sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-wal...
If you don’t do the research yourself, you don’t know what the LLMs HASN’T told you about the data it’s analyzed. You don’t know what materials are available but not accessible to the LLM. You don’t have anything close to the information you need to make a cogent argument that stands up to scrutiny.
Edith Wharton's 'Summer' and 'Ethan Frome' are excellent and very different. You might like Gaskell's 'Cousin Phillis'. George Eliot's 'The Lifted Veil' is so, so well written.
The 1832 Reform Act received royal assent #OnThisDay 1832. This blog from our editor Philip Salmon provides an overview of the Act’s significance and legacy: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/1...
Redesigning our Year 9 curriculum to include Semmelweis and Snow, and vaccinations. Explaining through causality is part of our curricular metacontent. So these models build on a culture of explaining.
I explain metacontent here:
cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...
#iTeachBio #chatbiology
Latest reads. Baldwin’s ‘The White Man’s Guilt’ is a particularly powerful essay and the short stories often make difficult reading. Highly recommended.
Electric Fish and the First Battery daily.jstor.org/electric-fis...
@mikehobbiss.bsky.social @paulclinepsy.bsky.social I’m looking forward to reading this - I’m sure I’ll learn a lot.
Top Ten Endangered Buildings 2025
Former Marine Hotel, Penarth, Glamorgan. Grade II, perhaps Samuel Dobson, c.1865
Read more: t.co/5ehdITu4gL
#Wales
Gaskell’s short stories are certainly interesting, and Cousin Phillis has much that is redolent some of the themes in her longer works. However, if you’re thinking or reading (more) Gaskell, I would prioritise the latter.
