Wired has a nice writeup about some old scientific publications in Ground-Breaking Science: Very Old Papers Are Both Awesome and Hilarious. "...history-making papers published by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society [are] released in their entirety to celebrate the 350th birthday of the world’s oldest scientific body. The 60 papers are a testament to human curiosity, and the power of ingenuity and rigorous observation to overcome ignorance." Some examples:
Hilarity:
1666: Tryals Proposed by Mr. Boyle to Dr.
Lower, to be Made by Him, for the Improvement of Transfusing Blood out
of One Live Animal into Another. "...this suggested that the nature of organismal character might be revealed by swapping blood between dogs. [Wondering] if 'a fierce Dog, by being often quite new stocked with the blood of a cowardly
Dog, may not become more tame'?" (For the record, my incredibly good-natured boy Petey is not amused by this discussion.)
Awesomeness:
1965: The Fit of the Continents Around the Atlantic.
"Even though man was about to walk on the moon, the idea that continents
drifted across Earth’s surface was still controversial. In this paper,
Edward Bullard showed how neatly the continents fit together, from their shape to common properties of rocks and fossils. Plate tectonics is now widely accepted, and an instructive reminder of how human knowledge is continually under construction."
Comments