RIP William Provine

[Lionel Mandrake]

William B. Provine has died. He had been a professor of history and of biology at Cornell University. The website of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) includes the following statement about Provine:

In a memoir published in Isis in 1999, he explained that in his view, a student working on the history of biology "should be as familiar with the science as any doctoral student"; for his own part, he added, "I am very happy to move between history and science."

Read more: http://ncse.com/news/2015/09/william-b-provine-dies-0016624

Provine was no mere "externalist" historian of science. He wrote the kind of history that interests scientists as well as historians. Would that there were more like him.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I hope that there are some historians of science ready to step into his shoes...

[denbot]

2. I've read natural history (Gould), but never a science history book.

Any that you would recommend?

[Lionel Mandrake]

3. I think I already answered this, but

I can't find my previous answer, either as a post or DU mail. Maybe I didn't succeed in sending it. I meant to suggest you start with a book on the history of astronomy, such as any book by John North. Alternatively you might prefer the new book by Steven Weinberg:

To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science.

This book emphasizes the 17th century scientific revolution in astronomy, physics, and mathematics. The heroes of this story are Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.

Weinberg's history is Whiggish, i.e., it judges past contributions by the standards of the present. Some of us like it that way.

[denbot]

4. Thanks LM

Now hopefully they will have one of the titles in audio format so I can listen while driving.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. Somehow I neglected one of the heroes of the Copernican revolution.

Besides Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, I should have mentioned Tycho Brahe, without whose observations Kepler would never have discovered that planetary orbits are (approximately) elliptical. I must be getting old or something.