Natural Experiments of History

Natural Experiments of History
Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2012-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674076729

Some central questions in the natural and social sciences can't be answered by controlled laboratory experiments, often considered to be the hallmark of the scientific method. This impossibility holds for any science concerned with the past. In addition, many manipulative experiments, while possible, would be considered immoral or illegal. One has to devise other methods of observing, describing, and explaining the world. In the historical disciplines, a fruitful approach has been to use natural experiments or the comparative method. This book consists of eight comparative studies drawn from history, archeology, economics, economic history, geography, and political science. The studies cover a spectrum of approaches, ranging from a non-quantitative narrative style in the early chapters to quantitative statistical analyses in the later chapters. The studies range from a simple two-way comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, to comparisons of 81 Pacific islands and 233 areas of India. The societies discussed are contemporary ones, literate societies of recent centuries, and non-literate past societies. Geographically, they include the United States, Mexico, Brazil, western Europe, tropical Africa, India, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand, and other Pacific islands. In an Afterword, the editors discuss how to cope with methodological problems common to these and other natural experiments of history.

Experiments Past

Experiments Past
Author: Jodi Reeves Flores
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Archaeology
ISBN: 9789088902512

With Experiments Past the important role that experimental archaeology has played in the development of archaeology is finally uncovered and understood. Experimental archaeology is a method to attempt to replicate archaeological artefacts and/or processes to test certain hypotheses or discover information about those artefacts and/or processes. It has been a key part of archaeology for well over a century, but such experiments are often embedded in wider research, conducted in isolation or never published or reported. Experiments Pasts provides readers with a glimpse of experimental work and experience that was previously inaccessible due to language, geographic and documentation barriers, while establishing a historical context for the issues confronting experimental archaeology today. This volume contains formal papers on the history of experimental methodologies in archaeology, as well as personal experiences of the development of experimental archaeology from early leaders in the field, such as Hans-Ole Hansen. Also represented in these chapters are the histories of experimental approaches to taphonomy, the archaeology of boats, building structures and agricultural practices, as well as narratives on how experimental archaeology has developed on a national level in several European countries and its role in encouraging a wide-scale interest and engagement with the past.

Experiments in Rethinking History

Experiments in Rethinking History
Author: Alun Munslow
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2004
Genre: Historiography
ISBN: 9780415301466

History is a narrative discourse, full of unfinished stories. This collection of innovative and experimental pieces of historical writing shows there are fascinating and important new ways of thinking and writing about the past.

Chemical Magic

Chemical Magic
Author: Leonard A. Ford
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2012-09-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0486136736

Classic guide provides intriguing entertainment while elucidating sound scientific principles, with more than 100 unusual stunts: cold fire, dust explosions, a nylon rope trick, a disappearing beaker, much more.

Quicklet on Natural Experiments of History edited by Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson

Quicklet on Natural Experiments of History edited by Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson
Author: Nicole Silvester
Publisher: Hyperink Inc
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1614642850

Natural Experiments in History grew, in a way, out of co-editor Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In the earlier book, he spent a chapter looking at the Polynesian expansion as a near-perfect natural experiment in which a single ancestral Polynesian culture migrated to hundreds of islands in the Pacific Ocean, each with its own different geographic features. Because the culture that settled the islands was the same, any differences that developed between separate island societies could be largely attributed to the geography of the individual islands. At the conclusion of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond noted that there were many other such natural experiments in history, just waiting to be studied, and he called for historians to pick up where he left off and see what else could be learned. Of course, scholars have been using such natural experiments for a long time, especially in other disciplines like archaeology and anthropology, but they have not been as popular in historical scholarship. With Natural Experiments of History the editors and authors hope to illustrate how natural experiments can be used to bring the rigours of the hard sciences to historical scholarship, both in descriptive and statistics-based studies.

Scientific History

Scientific History
Author: Elena Aronova
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2021-04-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022676141X

Increasingly, scholars in the humanities are calling for a reengagement with the natural sciences. Taking their cues from recent breakthroughs in genetics and the neurosciences, advocates of “big history” are reassessing long-held assumptions about the very definition of history, its methods, and its evidentiary base. In Scientific History, Elena Aronova maps out historians’ continuous engagement with the methods, tools, values, and scale of the natural sciences by examining several waves of their experimentation that surged highest at perceived times of trouble, from the crisis-ridden decades of the early twentieth century to the ruptures of the Cold War. The book explores the intertwined trajectories of six intellectuals and the larger programs they set in motion: Henri Berr (1863–1954), Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938), Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943), Julian Huxley (1887–1975), and John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971). Though they held different political views, spoke different languages, and pursued different goals, these thinkers are representative of a larger motley crew who joined the techniques, approaches, and values of science with the writing of history, and who created powerful institutions and networks to support their projects. In tracing these submerged stories, Aronova reveals encounters that profoundly shaped our knowledge of the past, reminding us that it is often the forgotten parts of history that are the most revealing.

Doctors from Hell

Doctors from Hell
Author: Vivien Spitz
Publisher: Sentient Publications
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1591810329

A chilling story of human depravity and ultimate justice, told for the first time by an eyewitness court reporter for the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Nazi doctors. This is the account of 22 men and 1 woman and the torturing and killing by experiment they authorized in the name of scientific research and patriotism. Doctors from Hell includes trial transcripts that have not been easily available to the general public and previously unpublished photographs used as evidence in the trial. The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg, where she lived for two years while working on the trial. Once a Nazi sympathizer tossed bombs into the dining room of the hotel where she lived moments before she arrived for dinner. She takes us into the courtroom to hear the dramatic testimony and see the reactions of the defendants to the proceedings. This landmark trial resulted in the establishment of the Nuremberg code, which set the guidelines for medical research involving human beings. A significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend.

Michelson-morley Experiments: An Enigma For Physics And The History Of Science

Michelson-morley Experiments: An Enigma For Physics And The History Of Science
Author: Maurizio Consoli
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2018-12-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 981327820X

'The book should be an interesting read for advanced students within the field and for experts working in it.'Contemporary PhysicsIn 1887, Michelson and Morley tried to observe in laboratory the 'ether drift' by measuring a small difference in the velocity of two perpendicular light beams. The result of their measurements, however, was much smaller than the classical prediction and interpreted as a 'null result'. This was crucial to stimulate the first pioneering formulations of relativity and, as such, it represents a fundamental step in the history of science. Since then, many repetitions of that original experiment have been performed with better and better sensitivity and the standard conclusion has been always the same: no genuine ether drift has ever been detected. However, in the authors' new scheme, the small irregular residuals observed in laboratory show surprising correlations with the direct observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with satellites in space. This opens the possibility of finally linking the CMB to a fundamental reference frame for relativity, with substantial implications for the interpretation of non-locality in the quantum theory. The importance of the issue would require new dedicated experimental tests and significant improvements in the data analysis. Otherwise, without such more stringent checks, these crucial experiments will remain forever as an enigma for physics and the history of science. The book illustrates the many facets of this research together with historical accounts on some leading scientists involved in these measurements.

Experiments in Holism

Experiments in Holism
Author: Ton Otto
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-08-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1444351850

Experiments in Holism Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology presents a series of essays that critically examine the ongoing relevance of holism and its theoretical and methodological potential in today’s world. Contributions from a diverse collection of leading anthropologists reveal how recent critiques of the holistic approach have not led to its wholesale rejection, but rather to a panoply of experiments that critically reassess and reemploy holism. The essays focus on aspects of holism including its utilization in current ethnographic research, holistic considerations in cultural anthropology, the French structuralist tradition, the predominantly English tradition of social anthropology, and many others. Collectively, the essays show how holism is simultaneously central to, and problematically a part of, the theory and practice of anthropology. Experiments in Holism reveals how contemporary attempts to rescale and retool anthropology entail new ways of coming to terms with anthropology’s heritage of holism, seeking to obviate its current excesses while recapturing its critical potential to meet the challenges of our contemporary world.