‘Science and Technology’ Archives
Neo-Darwinism
Neo-Darwinism Charles Darwin knew nothing of the mechanism of heredity when he proposed his theory of evolution, even though this was some forty years after Mendel had initiated the study of genetics through his work on pea heredity. Neo-Darwinism is the assimilation of genetics into Darwinian evolutionary theory; the term is given to the [...]
Reverse Engineering
Reverse Engineering Back in the days of mechanical clocks, curious kids would sometimes take a clock apart to try to figure out how it worked. A few were even able to reassemble the clock correctly— these youngsters were likely to become engineers! With software, reverse engineering is the process of “taking apart” software and analyzing [...]
Codec
Codec Short for “coder/decoder,” a codec is essentially an algorithm for encoding (and compressing) a stream of data for transmission, and then decoding and decompressing it at the receiving end. Usually the data involved represents audio or video content. Typically the data is being downloaded from a Web site to be played on a personal [...]
IBM PC
IBM PC By 1981, a small but vigorous personal computer (PC) industry was offering complete desktop computer systems. Apple’s Apple II offered color graphics and expandability through an “open architecture”—slots into which cards designed by third-party vendors could be plugged. While the Apple II had its own DOS (disk operating system) [...]
Electronic Voting Systems
Electronic Voting Systems There are a variety of ways to electronically register, store, and process votes. In recent years older manual systems (paper ballots or mechanical voting machines) have been replaced in many areas with systems ranging from purely digital (touch screens) to hybrid systems where marked paper ballots are scanned and [...]
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism Pythagoras (fl. sixth century B.C.E.) was a shadowy figure even to Plato (428–348 B.C.E.) and Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), who knew him only through the works of his spiritual heirs, because none of his own works survived. Tradition linked Pythagoras to the foundation of a religio-ethical society that taught metempsychosis [...]
John Dee
John Dee (1527–1608) This Elizabethan polymath built one of the largest personal libraries of the time. It was rich in mathematics, sciences of all sorts, and philosophy, not only in the ancient texts prized in the Renaissance, but also in unusually large numbers of medieval texts. Dee mined this material in a number of ways. He translated it [...]
Thomas Digges
Thomas Digges (ca. 1546–1595) An English mathematician and politician known for his Copernicanism. Educated by his father, Leonard, and by John Dee (1527–1608), he edited and expanded his father’s mathematical works after the elder Digges’s death in 1559. These included a work concerning the geometry of surveying—his Pantometria of [...]
Lazarus Ercker
Lazarus Ercker (ca. 1530–1594) This skilled metallurgist and overseer of mining and mint operations in the German territories also wrote books on mining and metallurgy. He published his masterpiece, a treatise on ores and assaying, Beschreibung der allervornebmsten mineralischen Erze und Bergwerksarten, in 1574. Born in central Europe in an [...]
Dynamics
Dynamics Dynamica is a term coined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) in 1689 during his Italian journey, referring to his doctrine of forces. In that year, he composed an extensive work called Dynamica, which remained unpublished at the time. His major publication on the subject is “Specimen Dynamicum,” which appeared in the Acta [...]
