Excited to learn I won the Forkosch prize for the best article last year in the Journal of the History of Ideas! “Charles Darwin’s Theory of Moral Sentiments: What Darwin’s Ethics Really Owes to Adam Smith.” Here’s a link to a blog post (free) about it

OTD in 1905, Henry Fairfield Osborn named Tyrranosaurus Rex, the king of the tyrant lizards. The specimen was collected by Barnum Brown in the Hell Creek formation in Montana. Below, the first published image of T. rex and a photo of the fossil exiting the quarry. #histsci

OTD in 1967, also the first Monday in October, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

OTD in 1836, HMS Beagle docked at Falmouth after a 5 year voyage. Charles Darwin wrote in his diary, “To my surprise and shame, I confess the first sight of the shores of England inspired me with no warmer feelings, than if it had been a miserable Portuguese settlement.”#HistSci

OTD in 1838, Charles Darwin read Malthus’s Principles of Population “for amusement.”. The idea of a “war of nature” was venerable, but D realized that such a “war” would tend to remove deleterious variations from populations. Natural selection would necessarily follow. #histsci

RT @EcoInvasions: @greg_m_priest After having read an advance copy of Silent Spring, the great British ecologist Charles Elton wrote to Rac….

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published OTD in 1962. “[W]e have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”. #Histsci #philsci

Here's a no-paywall link to my review: #histsci #complexity #philsci.

The latest issue of @HPLSjournal is now out in print. It includes my review of Ben Bradley's wonderful new book, Darwin's Psychology. Read the review, then read the book!. #histsci #complexity #philsci.

Will you be in the Bay Area in the next six months? Interested in #WomeninSTEM?. Check out the Embodied Knowledge Exhibit at Stanford, curated by the inimitable Paula Findlen. #histsci #STS.

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born OTD in 1866. If you're ever feeling that your work is uending and unedifying, remember that he once said this: "Two years work wasted, I have been breeding those flies for all that time and I've got nothing out of it.". #histsci

“We must therefore try to establish a new standpoint which … takes account of organic wholeness, but … treats it in a manner which admits of scientific investigation.” 2/2. #complexity #histsci #STS.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the architect of “General Systems Theory,” was born OTD in 1901. Mechanism “provides us with no grasp of … organic 'wholeness,’ … of organic 'teleology,’ or of the historical character of organisms.…” 1/2. #complexity #histsci #STS

Are you interested in #PhilSci, #HistSci or the sciences of #complexity?. Have you thought about joining the other site? 🟦 We’re building an active, open, constructive community there. I have some invite codes. Hit me up!

Samuel Johnson was born OTD in 1709. Selecting one quote from my notes was a challenge, but here goes: “Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.”

“[N]o gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole.". "If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs." 2/2. #complexity #histsci.

Murray Gell-Mann was born OTD in 1929. “[T]he network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. ” 1/2. #complexity #histsci

OTD in 1835, HMS Beagle, carrying Charles Darwin, reached the Galapagos. “I frequently got on their [tortoise’s] backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder parts of their shells, they would rise up and walk away; – but I found it very difficult to keep my balance.”. #histsci

Alexander von Humboldt was born OTD in 1769. “[My] principal impulse … was … to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces.”. #complexity #histsci #philsci

Humberto Maturana was born OTD 1928. M & Varela conceived the Santiago theory: “Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.”. #complexity #philsci #histsci

OTD in 1854, Charles #Darwin began sorting his notes in preparation for writing a treatise with the working title “Natural Selection.”. He would never publish the book, instead publishing a short “abstract”—titled “On the Origin of Species”—in 1859. #histsci #evolbio