“Theory can be very useful as a way of piecing together what is unusual … It can help us interpret what we are finding. It can also lead to dead ends and wasted time and resources.” https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/2025/04/14/making-bog-bodies-dull/ Two Catholic scientists from the 1400’s spent their lives working on a celestial problem using theories based upon [...]
Years ago our local public high school had a teacher who regularly told students that it was impossible for Christians to be scientists. Of course, the simplest way to show what nonsense that teacher was spouting was simply to point out all the scientists who had been serious Christians. I thought I would make a [...]
Last Monday I was sitting at the kitchen table writing away, when I happened to look up and saw the top of a tree moving at high speed from the left of the window to the right. For a shocked moment I wondered if I was seeing a tree fall. As the tree flipped to [...]
Tuesday I wrote about a book by Dava Sobel from 2016. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Dava Sobel. Viking. 2016. I’ve been rereading it. Sobel is a remarkable writer, able to explain scientific concepts clearly. This can deceive the reader into thinking a topic [...]
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Dava Sobel. Viking. 2016. The ladies in question started working at Harvard Observatory in the late 1800’s and some of them continued their work until the 1930’s and 1940’s. These women were not students at Harvard; they were employees [...]
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