Science & Technology

An enfant terrible shook up Renaissance medicine by denouncing experts and debunking accepted wisdom. Was Paracelsus as radical as he seemed?

In the 18th century the existence of extraterrestrial life went from debatable hypothesis to fundamental tenet of Enlightenment thought.

The Literary and Philosophical Society was once ubiquitous, allowing minds to meet and views to collide. Their disappearance has left more questions than answers.

The people of late medieval and early modern England were almost universally numerate. Is our ability to count the thing that makes us human?

What are stars made of? When a young astronomer upset standard explanations for the formation of the solar system, the establishment told her she was wrong – then stole her findings.

Solomon Shereshevsky died on 1 May 1958. He dreamt of being a hero but achieved greatness of another kind.

Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor revels in the tangles of Victorian thought.

Was the Earth flatter around the poles or the Equator? In 1735 two expeditions set out to settle a matter of national pride.

An earthquake in Chile and the observations of eye-witness Maria Graham caused open hostility among 19th-century geologists.

Where does new life come from? According to one theory that held sway until the 18th century, it’s all been there from the very beginning.