Abstracts Archive

The commentary complements the panel's papers and opens the floor for a more general discussion.

“I can date very precisely the moment when I conceived the idea of maintenance methylation and its use to remember patterns of DNA modification and control gene expression” wrote John Pugh, a ‘father’ of modern epigenetics, in a letter: ”This was on 14 March 1973 at 5.20 pm in the seminar ...

As recognized by a growing body of literature, most conceptual and methodological shifts in early modern mathematics cannot be accounted for in terms of internal theoretical developments. On the contrary, this literature suggests, social and institutional contexts and the social practices of arithme...

Commentary on the papers presented by Nydia Pineda De Avila, Anne Secord, and Robert-Jan Wille

Many scientists rely on distributed technologies and organizations that reach between laboratories and provide resources for groups of researchers with shared interests. These might be databases and repositories, newsletters and journals, or even libraries and seminars. They are often tightly cleave...

17th century medical science around the globe thrived on the lively exchange of information and material between centers of higher learning, such as in Europe universities and academies. Key players were not only the teaching professors of medicine themselves but students, physicians, non-affiliated...

What was the role of astronomical tables as pedagogical tools for the teaching of astrology in the medieval period? In considering the genres of texts used for teaching astrology in Islamic contexts, the introductory text (mudkhal) was a central component of study. Oftentimes these introductions mak...

While a fugitive from the Reign of Terror, the mathematician and philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet composed his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794), a brief yet sweeping account of humanity, divided into ten epochs, melding political history with the history of kn...