Glory or Gravity?
John Hutchinson and Isaac Newton were both devout scholars who believed that the natural world and God were inextricably linked. The similarities ended there.
Patricia Fara
Genes‘R’Us: Science and Ideology in the Lysenko Controversies
The debate over whether nature or nurture guides who we are is as dependent on politics and ideology as it is on scientific research.
The Computer in the Aegean
The Antikythera Mechanism is ingenious, intricate and highly sophisticated. But what is it?
Knobs or Points?
Is lightning natural or divine? Opinion split royalists and republicans.
Professor Ptthmllnsprts Versus Old Bones
The Water-Babies was a fairytale that straddled religion and science, railing against logical rationality in the face of nature’s mysteries.
Weighing up Galileo’s Evidence
What does it take to establish a new scientific truth? In the case of Galileo and heliocentrism, the death of its sceptics.
The Battle of the Gauges
The railway revolutionised Victorian Britain, but were its trains on the right track? It was difficult to gauge.
The Original Anti-Vaxxers
When widespread vaccination was introduced there were objections – some justified, some not.
Doctor Who?
A search for the first doctor.
The First Blind Medical Trials
Cures and treatments have always offered potential riches to their inventors. But how was one supposed to know what worked and what didn’t?