Genes‘R’Us: Science and Ideology in the Lysenko Controversies
The debate over whether nature or nurture guides who we are is as dependent on politics and ideology as it is on scientific research.
Great Debates
The Ancient Greek Computer in the Aegean
The Antikythera Mechanism is ingenious, intricate and highly sophisticated. But what is it?
Knobs or Points?
Is lightning natural or divine? Opinion split royalists and republicans.
The Water-Babies Between God and Darwin
Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies was a Victorian fairytale that straddled religion and science, railing against Darwinism in the face of nature’s mysteries.
Weighing up Galileo’s Evidence
What does it take to establish a new scientific truth? In the case of Galileo and heliocentrism, the death of its sceptics.
The Battle of the Gauges
The railway revolutionised Victorian Britain, but were its trains on the right track? It was difficult to gauge.