Disciplines natural history

The Center for Occupational Hazards (New York) publishes a range of literature on hazards and their control in several branches of the arts and crafts as well as on museum disciplines such as conservation, fire safety and natural history. 

Paper, presented at the first Virtual Histories Symposium held at the State Library of New South Wales on 9 July 1999, examining the nature of online teaching in the real world. The author is a historian engaged in online teaching in a school of nursing and is disturbed by the failure of humanities scholars to involve themselves in technology, possibly to the detriment of their disciplines. Compares illusions about the power of online courses to transform students to the alchemist s faith in the philosopher s stone and discusses issues which need to be faced to deal with reality whether it is proposed to... 

Matters are complicated further when we try to expand inter(trans)disciplinary work beyond natural sciences, including social sciences such as sociology, history, philosophy etc. This inevitably springs the trap of statistical debates and the factuali-zation of the research work of all the included disciplines. This is of course a dead end and will never ever lead to solutions with a broad consensus, which will also become politically important. 

It is hard to imagine a scientific discipline older than the study of dynamical systems. The remarkable history of the field testifies to nature s inexhaustible store of subtlety and ability to surprise. Ever since Galileo, remarkable experiments, deep theoretical insights, and powerful calculational tools have all contributed to creating the rich panorama that the field presents today. 

I originally conceived this book as a study of epistemological questions about differences between chemistry and physics, namely, how chemists aims and methods in scientific explanation have been different from physicists and how these aims and methods have overlapped. This problem remains a principal focus of the book is there a way of seeing and describing the natural world that has been consistently "chemical" If so, how has it compared to a "physical" way of understanding the natural world Have chemistry and physics been commensurable or incommensurable sciences Answering these questions historically leads to sets of answers that are specific to time and place to distinct texts, individuals, schools, and traditions to disciplines and disciplinary histories. 

Dynamics, namely, the mechanism of chemical reactivity, was not the only conceptual core to chemistry. We might focus as well on the concepts of chemical "species" and chemical "constitution," and indeed these concepts figure in the history that follows. However, the dynamics of matter was a kernel at the heart of chemistry, with varying paces of growth. It constituted both disputed and common territory for practitioners of chemical philosophy and natural philosophy. More recently, it provided a point of controversy and an area of compromise for practitioners of the disciplines of physics and chemistry. Thus, the dynamics of matter is a theme providing especially important insights into the relations between chemistry and physics as intellectual systems, at the same time that the social dynamics of individuals and groups also helps to explain disciplinary development.8... 

Indeed, with respect to the meaning of natural philosophy, we must look at Lavoisier s role in the history of physics and chemistry in a new light. Whereas Melhado and others have suggested that Lavoisier was really a physicist, I see it differently. In reconstituting the foundations, language, and boundaries of the chemical discipline toward the end of the eighteenth century, Lavoisier broke decisively with the view that chemistry was apart of physics. Lavoisier and his colleagues helped establish a clearer distinction between "chimie" and "physique" (e.g., in the Opuscules physiques et chimiques). For Lavoisier,... 

Given that this chapter shows how important NPs have been throughout history, the chapter has tried to bridge the sad gulf between the study of science and other disciplines. How many students of science appreciate the importance of NPs How many students of history appreciate the role that a human obsession with NPs has played throughout history Science is about rmderstanding the natural world and surely the role of NPs in evolution and in human affairs must be part of science. 

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