new books, articles etc

I just finished reading the contributions in Devices and Designs: Medical Technologies in Historical Perspective, collected by Julie Anderson and Carsten Timmermann, both at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester. The articles present very interesting and carefully researched case stories, that testify to the continuing relevance […]

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us […]

The Annual Report of Medical Museion (Årsskrift for Medicinsk Museion) has just been published and is about to be distributed. This post has been created for readers’ comments. You can choose to air your ire or stimulate our vanity receptors. (You can write in English or in any Scandinavian language.) If you are not on our snail mail distribution list (which […]

Two years ago the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) at the University of Manchester organised a very good meeting on the material history of science, technology and medicine. Now some of the papers have been re-worked into a volume titled Devices and Designs: Medical Technologies in Historical Perspective, edited by CHSTM […]

In a chapter titled “Primary suspects: reflections on autobiography and life stories in the history of molecular biology”, Rena Selya, lecturer in the Dept of History, UCLA, describes some of the challenges of writing biographies of contemporary scientists who have “a strong received history, complete with heroes, occasional villains and victims”. The chapter appears in The History and […]

I promised to come back to Michael Crichton’s Next. I didn’t expect much — but was nevertheless sort of positively surprised. Not because of Crichton’s writing skills. I’ve always been ambiguous about his books (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Prey, etc.) because their literary value is, in my humble mind, not overwhelming. His characters only seem to have one emotion (in Next they invariably “frown” […]

Progress in biomedicine is not all about new methodologies, new empirical findings and new patents. It is also about new metaphors that guide and connect research efforts, technological innovation, investment activities, public opinion, and health political initiatives. Some metaphors are pushed over and over again, but never seem to take off — like the notion of “biosemiotics” which continuous […]

I’ve just bought Michael Crichton’s new bioengineering thriller Next — about venture capitalists and biotech companies. The flap promises a blend of “fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS”; a genetic world which is “fast, furious, and out of control”. I’m not a Crichton fan […]

The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology and Medicine: Writing Recent Science, edited by Ron Doel and myself has now been published by Routledge; see Amazon’s website and Routledge’s website. We are also setting up a special website for the book, which will hopefully be operating in a few weeks. See contents here:

Remember Michael Crichton’s science fiction thriller Prey (2002)? In which the bad guys created swarms of nanorobots, and the good guy lost his wife (but saved his kids) in his struggle to counter the swarms that left their secret lab environment somewhere in the Nevada desert to start replicating in a Darwinian fashion and thus […]

I’ve just finished reading (or rather struggling my way through) Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, The Possibility of an Island (originally published as La possibilité d’une île). It’s crafted as the autobiographical story of a few years in the life of a successful stand-up comedian David who, after being co-opted by a religious sect and disbandoned […]

The NSU Press is planning to publish an anthology about “Things” — not about “things” in general, but about “the pursuit of filtering away human experience from the thing — possibly to give it back to the world, or to let it speak for itself”, or, in other words, “all attempts at omitting human experience […]