The Cure Was the Disease
In 1847 Vienna, the doctors’ maternity ward killed far more mothers than the midwives’. Ignaz Semmelweis found the cause, and it was the one thing the profession could not afford to believe: their own hands.
history of science
3essays tagged "history of science"
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Gravity Was Never a Force
Newton knew action at a distance was absurd, then used it anyway. Einstein's revolution was refusing to keep the assumption in brackets, gravity is not a force but the shape of spacetime.
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Einstein and the Assumption of Absolute Time
There is no universal now. Einstein didn't merely solve a physics problem, he refused the assumption that everyone, everywhere, shares the same moment.