Shells and Pebbles
Interesting finds on the shores of the history of science and the humanities
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A Genealogy of Freudenthal’s Lincos, Part II: Intuitionistic Footprints Amongst the Stars
Header image: Portrait of H. Freudenthal, 1957. Sourced from Utrecht Archives. This article is the second part of a two-part series (the first one is to be found here), aiming to provide a short introduction to the intellectual history and genealogy of Hans Freudenthal’s Lingua Cosmica. This second part aims to show the subtle, yet fundamental influence played by the mathematical and…
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Het kernwapen: geheime wetenschap en verborgen technologie
Afbeelding: Los Alamos, de stad die officieel niet bestond. Als centrum van ontwerp en eindassemblage van de eerste atoombommen was Los Alamos volledig geïsoleerd van de rest van New Mexico (Foto: Mike McBey, 2 oktober 2013. Creative Commons 2.0.) Het is niet ongewoon om de twee wereldoorlogen in de twintigste eeuw te duiden met de…
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On Trying: An Interview with Peter Galison
Peter Galison: I’m Peter Galison. I am a professor at Harvard University, where I’ve been for quite a while, and before that I taught at Stanford for about ten years. I grew up in New York City, and spent a year at École Polytechnique in Paris in a physics lab before I went to college.…
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A Genealogy of Freudenthal’s Lincos, Part I: Looking up from the ruins of Babel
This article is the first part of a two-part series, aiming to provide a short introduction to the intellectual history and genealogy of Hans Freudenthal’s Lingua Cosmica. This first part aims to describe the many predecessors to Lincos, from the various attempts to create a “philosophical language” in the 17th century to the rise of…
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Curating for the Curious: An Interview with Prof. Manon Parry
Dr. Manon S. Parry is Professor of Medical and Nursing History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (VU), and Associate Professor of American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In September 2025, Bianca Angelien Claveria, a PhD candidate from the Institute for History, Leiden University, and proud Shells and Pebbles editor, interviewed…
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Living Pasts: Exploring Futures
An innovative course connecting students to history, and history to the world of endless possibilities. The first thing students learn in the Living Pasts: Exploring Futures course is nothing will unfold quite the way they expect. On day one, no detailed overview of the course exists… yet. Students are told that the finer details take…
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Verslag najaars-bijeenkomst Gewina 2025
Anonieme kennis in de premoderne periode. Anonieme kennis zorgt voor heel wat uitdagingen binnen het historisch onderzoek. Dit gaat van praktische problemen, zoals het opslaan van de informatie in een database geordend volgens auteur, tot epistemologische vragen over de betrouwbaarheid van een anonieme bron. Bovendien worden er in een bron soms mensen verzwegen die bijdroegen…
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Het kosmische perspectief: honderd jaar extragalactische sterrenkunde
Afbeelding: ESO/Juan Carlos Muñoz. We zijn eraan gewend geraakt om velerlei fraaie en fascinerende plaatjes van hemelobjecten langs te zien komen in kranten en tijdschriften, op televisie en internet. Een eeuw geleden lag dat nog heel anders. Naast dat waarnemingsinstrumenten zeer veel geavanceerder zijn geworden en korrelige zwart-wit foto’s vervangen zijn door kleurrijke electronische beelden,…
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Education for a green future? A plea for historical perspectives in sustainability education
I am not a historian. Yet, as a sustainability education researcher, I know how important a historical perspective can be when dealing with sustainability issues. In this text, I show some of the clearest links between history and sustainability issues through the lens of sustainability education. Many issues that plague society are related to sustainability.…
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The Discovery of Fission and Katharine Way, “Dear to the Community of Nuclear Physicists”
Tell me where all times past are. – John Donne 1. Introduction: a missed epoch-making discovery? As the century that saw the dawn of the nuclear age was drawing to a close, John A. Wheeler (1911-2008), approaching his ninetieth year, committed the memories of his long life and career to an autobiographical volume. An eminent…
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A Chat with ChatGPT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been increasingly present in columns of magazines and newspapers, in posts shared thousands of times on social media, and in the preoccupied voices of politicians, teachers, parents, and authorities of various degrees and provenance. The possibility of AI becoming a peril in the future is reflected in the doubts of many…
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Mapalad: Fieldwork Notes from Culion
“Godzilla vs. Kong. Why was this movie chosen to entertain the ferry passengers? Was the movie a personal favorite, or was it the only movie available?” I asked myself, as I craned my neck and shifted uncomfortably on my seat to get a better view of the medium-sized television screen mounted on the wall several…
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Shells and Pebbles Summer Travel Tips
“It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.” – Henry James As this academic year comes to a close, our team of editors wanted to cultivate a tradition started last year of sending our readers off into the summer with something more personal. Last year, we offered recommendations for your…
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‘Kennis die is opgedaan in koloniale context wordt overgedragen op studenten zonder stil te staan bij de historie ervan’
Elian Schure is promovenda bij de Universiteit Utrecht, waar ze onderzoek doet naar menselijke categorisatie in biologisch onderzoek. Tijdens haar Master in History and Philosophy of Science aan de UU deed ze onderzoek naar de rol van Nederlandse wetenschappers in de voormalige koloniën. In december 2024 heeft Yavanne van Tiggelen haar hierover geïnterviewd voor de…
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‘Knowledge gathered in a colonial context is transferred to students without regard to its history’
Elian Schure is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University (UU). She is currently working on her research on human categorization in biological research. During her master’s degree in History and Philosophy of Science at the UU, she studied the actions of Dutch scientists in the former Dutch colonies. In December 2024, Yavanne van Tiggelen interviewed…
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Is writing context-laden intellectual histories possible?
This essay compares two relatively recent works of intellectual history centred on the 18th century, both with an ambitious scope, and both written by established historians of science and medicine: Stephen Gaukroger’s The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841 and Suman Seth’s Difference and Disease: medicine, race, and the eighteenth-century…
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Final Report: ‘Beyond Switching Plastic Straws’
Tenth Belgian-Dutch PhD Conference in the History of Science, Medicine, and the Humanities Eibergen, 8-10 April 2025 The PhD conference ‘Beyond Switching Plastic Straws’ was a success. There were 24 people: (a) 15 were women, (b) at least 5 were foreigners, (c) many talked about recovering the agency of historical actors, (d) several had car-shared,…
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Mind the Gap
De laatste decennia van de twintigste eeuw werden gekenmerkt door een geglobaliseerde wereld. Nu, in de jaren twintig van de eenentwintigste eeuw zien we de terugkeer van machtsblokken. Drie wel te verstaan: de Verenigde Staten, Rusland en China. Met een vierde blok dat alle moeite doet om op het wereldtoneel voor vol mee te tellen:…
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Das Kapital? The Cambridge Capital Controversy
What is capital? The concept is central to theoretical economics, but also to applications of economic theory in industry and policy. One would thus assume that there is at least a tentative agreement regarding the meaning of the word, whether it be Karl Marx’s das Kapital or something else. However, the history of theoretical economics…
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A Weaver Becomes a Historian: Reproduction as a Historical Method
I was sitting in a lab wearing a white coat, while getting introduced to the process of making ink. At first, just like anyone would, I found myself being transported back to when I was sixteen, in a random chemistry class at high school. But then, all of a sudden, a different memory got triggered,…
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MEISJE! DENK AAN JE TOEKOMST: Van wetenschappelijk onderzoek tot podcast
“Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent.” Deze woorden zijn afkomstig van Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), de Amerikaanse pionier op het gebied van anticonceptie. Door anticonceptiemiddelen en informatie hierover te verspreiden, probeerde Sanger het aantal abortussen in de Verenigde Staten terug te dringen. Abortus bleef namelijk in de twintigste eeuw in de Verenigde Staten,…
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CERN: the foundational myth of European science diplomacy
In 2010, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Royal Society published a report entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy. The report argued for a greater use of science in the conduct of international relations between different countries and led to a greater emphasis on science diplomacy in policy circles throughout…
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Een Interview met Gemma Blok: Over maatschappelijke betrokkenheid in wetenschapsgeschiedenis
Gemma Blok, foto door Peter Strelitski Welkom bij het vierde interview in deze serie waarin we toonaangevende stemmen uit de wetenschapsgeschiedenis aan het woord laten. Onze gasten worden gevraagd na te denken over de huidige status van het vakgebied en hoe wetenschapshistorici kunnen bijdragen aan hedendaagse debatten. Ook vragen we hen naar hun eigen onderzoeksinteresses…
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Edgar Allan Poe and Plagiarism
Edgar Allan Poe lived from 1809 to 1849 and made a narrow living with his writing career in the eastern cities of the United States of America. Most who know of Edgar Allan Poe know of his eerie poetry and gothic short stories, macabre and mysterious: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of…