The hottest Science History Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top History Topics

All Hail The Consumers of Time and Occupiers of Space

Everything Is Amazing ā€¢ 583 implied HN points ā€¢ 22 Mar 26
šŸ”¬ Science Science History
  1. The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate funny, oddball science that makes people laugh but often points to real scientific value, and the ceremony is moving from the U.S. to Zurich after 35 years.
  2. The awards mix playful inventions (like the SpeechJammer and Clocky) with sharp satire that calls out absurd or harmful behavior by politicians and corporations.
  3. Research that sounds sillyā€”such as studies on pareidolia, seeing faces in objectsā€”can still reveal important truths about how the brain works and how we form social bonds.

ā˜ž The Slow Work of Making Sense of History

Cabinet of Wonders ā€¢ 485 implied HN points ā€¢ 17 Mar 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Understanding history takes time and restraint; quick judgments often miss long-term consequences.
  2. Ongoing, reliable datasets and concise summariesā€”like the World Factbookā€”provide essential first drafts of history, and losing them makes it harder to track change.
  3. Because societies are complex systems, careful data collection, humility, and patience are needed to see how events ripple out.

Maybe there's a pattern here?

DYNOMIGHT INTERNET NEWSLETTER ā€¢ 1843 implied HN points ā€¢ 04 Mar 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Many inventions meant to improve life or reduce suffering can be repurposed as weapons, so technological progress often has powerful and harmful dual uses.
  2. Inventors frequently feel moral conflict and regret because they cannot fully control how their creations are deployed, and appeals to restraint or pacifism often fail to stop misuse.
  3. Political and military institutions tend to absorb and fund civilian innovations, accelerating weaponization despite warnings and efforts to establish international control.

Rescuing Science

Heterodox STEM ā€¢ 241 implied HN points ā€¢ 08 Mar 26
šŸ”¬ Science Science History
  1. Massive federal funding has created an entrenched system of universities, agencies, publishers, and politicians that protects funding flows rather than fostering open scientific discovery.
  2. The grant-centric culture ā€” short funding cycles, heavy administration, and productivity metrics ā€” drains creativity and sometimes drives researchers to play the funding game instead of doing bold science.
  3. Fixing this means slowly reducing federal control by reforming indirect costs, making funds portable and tied to scientists, and restoring philanthropic and institutional support so research priorities return to scientists and discovery can flourish.

David Pinsof on Evolution and Intellectuals

In My Tribe ā€¢ 364 implied HN points ā€¢ 19 Feb 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Human minds evolved adaptations for broad "types" like food, mates, groups, and status, so we apply those patterns to current "tokens." Seeing markets or status as zero-sum can be a sensible response when politics and wealth are tightly intertwined.
  2. Many intellectuals chase prestige from audiences rather than real-world problem solving, so their incentives are often disconnected from objective improvements and can even reward harmful policies.
  3. Big social and economic changes come more from shifting incentives, institutions, and material conditions than from famous ideas alone; the idea of a "commercial society" ā€” where exchange, not land or coercion, organizes life ā€” helps explain the rise of modern capitalism.
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Making the Vortex Mixer

Asimov Press ā€¢ 245 implied HN points ā€¢ 12 Feb 26
šŸ”¬ Science Science History
  1. A simple motorized device called the vortex mixer uses a rubber cup and tight orbital motion to create a vortex that quickly mixes liquids in tubes and small vessels.
  2. The inventors combined technical skill and business savvy to prototype, patent, and commercialize the mixer, then improved it with features like touch activation, speed control, and multi-tube heads.
  3. Vortex mixers made mixing faster, cleaner, and less prone to contamination, becoming a ubiquitous and essential tool in modern biology labs.

Mystery of the Head Activator

Asimov Press ā€¢ 328 implied HN points ā€¢ 18 Jan 26
šŸ”¬ Science Science History
  1. A small peptide called the ā€œhead activatorā€ was reported to trigger head regeneration in hydra and was even sequenced and sold as a synthetic compound, but many labs couldnā€™t replicate the effect and later genomic and proteomic data show that sequence isnā€™t encoded in hydra, undermining the original claim.
  2. The controversy became deeply personal and institutional, leading to accusations, a formal inquiry and fines, missed career opportunities, and lasting grudges among researchers involved.
  3. Meanwhile, hydra patterning is now better explained by established ideas like the Giererā€“Meinhardt model and Wnt signaling, illustrating how science self-corrects even though the true origin of the originally reported peptide remains an unresolved puzzle.

Inventing the Methods Section

Asimov Press ā€¢ 380 implied HN points ā€¢ 12 Jan 26
šŸ”¬ Science Science History
  1. Over time, methods went from practical, detailed recipes to short, sidelined Methods sections, and that shift makes many experiments hard or slow to reproduce.
  2. A lot of essential lab know-how is tacit and doesnā€™t fit cleanly into text, so videos, protocol repositories, and supplements help but face sustainability and credit problems and still treat methods as second-class outputs.
  3. Fixing this requires new infrastructure (versioning, executable protocols, automation, recorded workflows, cloud labs) and changing incentives so people are rewarded for sharing and improving methods, not just for novel results.

READING: John Maynard Keynes on Isaac Newton

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 338 implied HN points ā€¢ 03 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. He was a towering scientific genius who solved deep problems by long, intense intuition and mental concentration, then later put those insights into formal proofs and experiments.
  2. At the same time he was the "last of the magicians": privately devoted to alchemy, apocalyptic biblical study, and antiā€‘Trinitarian theology, much of which he kept hidden.
  3. His life ran in three phasesā€”an obsessive, solitary Cambridge period of discovery; a nervous breakdown that ended his creative peak; and a later London career as a celebrated but less productive public figure.

Radiophobia

Gordian Knot News ā€¢ 271 implied HN points ā€¢ 17 Jan 26
šŸ”¬ Science Science History
  1. Regulatory overreach and strict radiation rules helped create and amplify public fear of radiation, rather than public fear being the original cause.
  2. Energy market changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s made nuclear much more expensive and removed market limits on how hard regulators could push, contributing to the collapse of new nuclear orders.
  3. A large ecosystem of regulators, labs, health-physics professionals, cleanup contractors, and parts of industry benefited from strict rules and had incentives to perpetuate radiophobia.

On the Birth of Science as We Know It: Thinking Out Loud: Thursday Economic History

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 153 implied HN points ā€¢ 08 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Modern science grew when artisans' instruments, mathematical methods, printing, and new institutions came together to make empirical, publicly verifiable knowledge practical and rewarding.
  2. Political fragmentation and intense status competition among elites raised the payoff for being right, so innovators could gain support and influence instead of being suppressed by a single dominant authority.
  3. Religious shelters, academies, and print networks lowered the cost of checking and sharing results, letting experiments and reproducible methods scale into a lasting scientific community.

The Manhattan Project through the eyes of Fermi

Trevor Kleeā€™s Newsletter ā€¢ 671 implied HN points ā€¢ 04 Dec 24
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. The Manhattan Project was a huge scientific effort that led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. It was a mix of exciting science and a race against time, shaped by the threat of fascism.
  2. Enrico Fermi, a key figure in this project, was a brilliant yet relatable scientist. He moved from Italy to the U.S. and played a major role in nuclear research while dealing with serious issues like escaping fascism.
  3. Fermi's work led to the first successful nuclear reactor in Chicago. He showed how smart and focused scientists could change the course of history, but his story also cautions us to think about the impact of scientific advancements.

Reading List for Chapter 2: Aristotle, Plato, and Newton

Fields & Energy ā€¢ 179 implied HN points ā€¢ 24 Feb 24
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Reading about early thinkers like Aristotle and Newton can help us understand science's history better. Their ideas shaped how we think about the world today.
  2. Several recommended books provide a deeper look into the origins of science. Reading these can give you a clearer view of how scientific ideas developed over time.
  3. Exploring different scholars and podcasts can broaden your perspective on science and its history. It helps to seek out various viewpoints for a more complete understanding.

2.4 The Copernican Revolution & the ā€œHorror Vacuiā€

Fields & Energy ā€¢ 239 implied HN points ā€¢ 10 Jan 24
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Nicolaus Copernicus suggested that the Earth orbits the sun, which was a big change from the earlier belief that everything revolves around the Earth. This idea helped set the stage for modern astronomy.
  2. Competing theories like heliocentrism and geocentrism can both be useful in explaining observations. Sometimes even incorrect models are used because they make calculations easier.
  3. Galileo and other scientists built on Copernicus' ideas, leading to a deeper understanding of motion, gravity, and the nature of vacuums. This helped shift thinking from old beliefs to observations and experiments.

The book of discoveries

The Works in Progress Newsletter ā€¢ 24 implied HN points ā€¢ 05 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. By the late 1500s Europeans began to see their own time as an age of discovery and invention instead of a pale imitation of classical greatness. This new outlook planted the idea of historical progress.
  2. Artists and printmakers celebrated everyday technologies and workshops to show how specialization, division of labor, and the combination of inventions produced wealth and improved life. Those images emphasize practical, sociable work and what later economists call Smithian growth.
  3. Later reinterpretations flip that optimism into skepticism, highlighting impersonal infrastructure, invisible labor, and environmental and social costs. Modern views often question unqualified praise of science and technological progress.

Pre-Class Assignment for Next Tuesday: 2026-01-27 :: Econ 196 :: Population, Photons, & Prosperity

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 7 implied HN points ā€¢ 21 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Humanity escaped the Malthusian trap that once kept population growth tied to subsistence living, allowing sustained rises in living standards.
  2. Measuring light by its useful output (photons or lumens) instead of by the number of lamps changes how we see technological progress and actual human welfare gains.
  3. Putting the escape from Malthus together with better measures of energy and technology links population dynamics, energy use, and innovation to explain longā€‘run prosperity and frames the course's discussion.

How did the Babylonians know āˆš2 up to six digits?

The Palindrome ā€¢ 1 implied HN point ā€¢ 21 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. Ancient Babylonians recorded the square root of 2 to about six decimal places, achieving roughly 99.9999% accuracy for their time.
  2. Researchers can reconstruct the computational methods they likely used, showing how simple iterative algorithms produce very high-precision square roots.
  3. There is a modern, practical workshop that digs into the math behind machine learningā€”especially building linear regression from scratchā€”with vector/matrix theory, optimization, code notebooks, bonus materials, and a limited-time discount.

Swindling Geologist - Part 1 (of 2)

Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind ā€¢ 1 HN point ā€¢ 18 Jul 24
šŸ’¾ History Science History
  1. A con artist pretended to be famous geologists in the late 1800s, tricking people into giving him money and valuable items.
  2. He used different names and stories to fool people, claiming to be with renowned geological surveys and even faking injuries.
  3. The swindler's tricks worked for many years, but he kept changing his identity to avoid getting caught.