Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education

Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499679
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
These essays draw on recent and versatile work by museum staff, science educators, and teachers, showing what can be done with historical scientific instruments or replicas. Varied audiences - with members just like you - can be made aware of exciting aspects of history, observation, problem-solving, restoration, and scientific understanding, by the projects outlined here by professional practitioners. These interdisciplinary case studies, ranging from the cinematic to the hands-on, show how inspiration concerning science and the past can give intellectual pleasure as well as authentic learning to new participants, who might include people like you: students, teachers, curators, and the interested and engaged public. Contributors are Dominique Bernard, Paolo Brenni, Roland Carchon, Elizabeth Cavicchi, Stéphane Fischer, Peter Heering, J.W. Huisman, Françoise Khantine-Langlois, Alistair M. Kwan, Janet Laidla, Pierre Lauginie, Panagiotis Lazos, Pietro Milici, Flora Paparou, Frédérique Plantevin, Julie Priser, Alfonso San-Miguel, Danny Segers, Constantine (Kostas) Skordoulis, Trienke M. van der Spek, Constantina Stefanidou, and Giorgio Strano.

Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education

Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499679
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
These essays draw on recent and versatile work by museum staff, science educators, and teachers, showing what can be done with historical scientific instruments or replicas. Varied audiences - with members just like you - can be made aware of exciting aspects of history, observation, problem-solving, restoration, and scientific understanding, by the projects outlined here by professional practitioners. These interdisciplinary case studies, ranging from the cinematic to the hands-on, show how inspiration concerning science and the past can give intellectual pleasure as well as authentic learning to new participants, who might include people like you: students, teachers, curators, and the interested and engaged public. Contributors are Dominique Bernard, Paolo Brenni, Roland Carchon, Elizabeth Cavicchi, Stéphane Fischer, Peter Heering, J.W. Huisman, Françoise Khantine-Langlois, Alistair M. Kwan, Janet Laidla, Pierre Lauginie, Panagiotis Lazos, Pietro Milici, Flora Paparou, Frédérique Plantevin, Julie Priser, Alfonso San-Miguel, Danny Segers, Constantine (Kostas) Skordoulis, Trienke M. van der Spek, Constantina Stefanidou, and Giorgio Strano.

Instruments of Science

Instruments of Science PDF Author: Robert Bud
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815315612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 740

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Book Description
With over 300 entries from the ancient abacus to X-ray diffraction, as represented by a ca. 1900 photo of an X- ray machine as well as the latest research into filmless x- ray systems, this tour of the history of scientific instruments in multiple disciplines provides context and a bibliography for each entry. Newer conceptions of "instrument" include organisms widely used in research: e.g. the mouse, drosophila, and E. coli. Bandw photographs and diagrams showcase more traditional instruments from The Science Museum, London, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Tangible Things

Tangible Things PDF Author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199382298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In a world obsessed with the virtual, tangible things are once again making history. Tangible Things invites readers to look closely at the things around them, ordinary things like the food on their plate and extraordinary things like the transit of planets across the sky. It argues that almost any material thing, when examined closely, can be a link between present and past. The authors of this book pulled an astonishing array of materials out of storage--from a pencil manufactured by Henry David Thoreau to a bracelet made from iridescent beetles--in a wide range of Harvard University collections to mount an innovative exhibition alongside a new general education course. The exhibition challenged the rigid distinctions between history, anthropology, science, and the arts. It showed that object-centered inquiry inevitably leads to a questioning of categories within and beyond history. Tangible Things is both an introduction to the range and scope of Harvard's remarkable collections and an invitation to reassess collections of all sorts, including those that reside in the bottom drawers or attics of people's houses. It interrogates the nineteenth-century categories that still divide art museums from science museums and historical collections from anthropological displays and that assume history is made only from written documents. Although it builds on a larger discussion among specialists, it makes its arguments through case studies, hoping to simultaneously entertain and inspire. The twenty case studies take us from the Galapagos Islands to India and from a third-century Egyptian papyrus fragment to a board game based on the twentieth-century comic strip "Dagwood and Blondie." A companion website catalogs the more than two hundred objects in the original exhibition and suggests ways in which the principles outlined in the book might change the way people understand the tangible things that surround them.

Early Scientific Instruments

Early Scientific Instruments PDF Author: Anthony John Turner
Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers, Limited
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


Scientific Instruments on Display

Scientific Instruments on Display PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900426440X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
During their active lives, scientific instruments generally inhabit the laboratory, observatory, classroom or the field. But instruments have also lived in a wider set of venues, as objects on display. As such, they acquire new levels of meaning; their cultural functions expand. This book offers selected studies of instruments on display in museums, national fairs, universal exhibitions, patent offices, book frontispieces, theatrical stages, movie sets, and on-line collections. The authors argue that these displays, as they have changed with time, reflect changing social attitudes towards the objects themselves and toward science and its heritage. By bringing display to the center of analysis, the collection offers a new and ambitious framework for the study of scientific instruments and the material culture of science. Contributors are: Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, Silke Ackermann, Marco Beretta, Laurence Bobis, Alison Boyle, Fausto Casi, Ileana Chinnici, Suzanne Débarbat, Richard Dunn, Inga Elmqvist-Söderlund, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Peggy A. Kidwell, Richard Kremer, Mara Miniati, Richard A. Paselk, Donata Randazzo, Steven Turner.

Thing Knowledge

Thing Knowledge PDF Author: Davis Baird
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520928202
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, Thing Knowledge demands that we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more.

The Museums and Collections of Higher Education

The Museums and Collections of Higher Education PDF Author: Andrew Simpson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000812499
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
The Museums and Collections of Higher Education provides an analysis of the historic connections between materiality and higher education, developed through diverse examples of global practice. Outlining the different value propositions that museums and collections bring to higher education, the historic link between objects, evidence and academic knowledge is examined with reference to the origin point of both types of organisation. Museums and collections bring institutional reflection, cross-disciplinary bridges, digital extension options and participatory potential. Given the two primary sources of text and object, a singular source type predisposes a knowledge system to epistemic stasis, whereas mixed sources develop the potential for epistemic disruption and possible change. Museums and collections, therefore, are essential in the academies of higher learning. With the many challenges confronting humanity, it is argued that connecting intellect with social action for societal change through university museums should be a contemporary manifestation of the social contract of universities. Much has been written about museums and universities, but there is little about university museums and collections. This book will interest museum scholars and practitioners especially those unaware that university museums are at the forefront of museological creativity. It will also be of interest to academics and the growing number of leaders and managers in the modern university.

Instruments of Knowledge

Instruments of Knowledge PDF Author: Jean-François Gauvin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004504613
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
In a bid to claim ‘scientific objects’ as requiring a significant amount of conceptual labor, this book looks sequentially at instruments, habits, and museums. The goal is to uncover how, together, these material and immaterial activities, rules, and commitments form one meaningful and credible blueprint revealing the building blocks of knowledge production. They serve to conceptualize and examine the entire life of an instrument: from its ideation and craft to its use, reuse, circulation, recycling, and (if not obliterated) its final entry into a museum. It is such an epistemological triptych that guides this investigation.

How Scientific Instruments Have Changed Hands

How Scientific Instruments Have Changed Hands PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004324933
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This collection of essays discusses the marketing of scientific and medical instruments from the eighteenth century to the First World War. The evidence presented here is derived from sources as diverse as contemporary trade literature, through newspaper advertisements, to rarely-surviving inventories, and from the instruments themselves. The picture may not yet be complete, but it has been acknowledged that it is more complex than sketched out twenty-five or even fifty years ago. Here is a collection of case-studies from the United Kingdom, the Americas and Europe showing instruments moving from maker to market-place, and, to some extent, what happened next. Contributors are: Alexi Baker, Paolo Brenni, Laura Cházaro, Gloria Clifton, Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Richard L. Kremer, A.D. Morrison-Low, Joshua Nall, Sara J. Schechner, and Liba Taub.

Time for Science Education

Time for Science Education PDF Author: Michael Matthews
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401139946
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
The book's argument depends, as do most proposals in education, upon cer tain positions in the philosophy of education. I believe that education should be primarily concerned with developing understanding, with initiation into worth while traditions of intellectual achievement, and with developing capacities for clear, analytic and critical thought. These have been the long-accepted goals of liberal education. In a liberal education, students should come to know and appre ciate a variety of disciplines, know them at an appropriate depth, see the interconnectedness of the disciplines, or the modes of thought, and finally have some critical disposition toward what is being learned, to be genuinely open minded about intellectual things. These liberal goals are contrasted with goals such as professional training, job preparation, promotion of self-esteem, social engineering, entertainment, or countless other putative purposes of schooling that are enunciated by politicians, administrators, and educators. The book's argument might be consistent with other views of education especially ones about the training of specialists (sometimes called a professional view of education)-but the argument fits best with a liberal view of education. The liberal hope has always been that if education is done well, then other per sonal and social goods will follow. The development of informed, critical, and moral capacities is the cornerstone for personal and social achievements.