Slashdot Mirror
Relics of Science History For Sale At Christie's
circletimessquare writes "Dennis Overbye at the New York Times has some ruminations on some of the historical totems of science going up for auction at Christie's next week. There is the 1543 copy of 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' by Copernicus, which you can have for $900,000 to $1.2 million. If you have some cash left over, maybe you can pick up an original work by Galileo, Darwin, Descartes, Newton, Freud, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or Malthus. And then there is the 1878 copy of the world's first phone book: 'a shock of recognition — that people were already talking on the phone a year before Einstein was born. In fact, just two years later Einstein's father went into the nascent business himself. Einstein grew up among the rudiments of phones and other electrical devices like magnets and coils, from which he drew part of the inspiration for relativity. It would not be until 1897, after people had already made fortunes exploiting electricity, that the English scientist J. J. Thomson discovered what it actually was ...'"
In a lot of respects, the man was nothing more than a cokehead with a penchant for strange sexually oriented neurosis.
He may have had a degree as a physician but I don't recall anything scientific about his work or any contributions to our understanding of the relationship between our psyche and flesh.
My work here is dung.
Am I the only one who finds it somewhat disgusting that rather then going into a museum these things are being sold to some private collector who will keep it locked up from the rest of the world?
At least in the modern usage, a "psychologist" doesn't have a degree in medicine at all. a "psychiatrist" does.
Other than that, I agree, Freud should not be on a list of scientists.
Then again, Tycho Brahe took Copernicus' heliocentric model and tried to revert us back to a geocentric model to appease the church, so I don't think he deserves the title either.
Why not? Seemed to work out alright for The Beatles.My work here is dung.
i knew i should have included a link to christie's site for the auction:
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=21644#intSaleID=21644
some of this stuff is (relatively) cheap, if you stray away from the really big names. i'm talking names like angstrom, fahrenheit, ampere, babbage, von neumann, can be had for a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand bucks
some of you may wonder what the fuss is all about, but to me, this stuff is awesome. its the fruits of the enlightment, the intellectual explosion of mankind, solid proof of the greatness of mankind, that you can buy and hold in your hands
a lot of us here work in computer science. well, for $2500 you can own the first edition book of something that pretty much started the entire computer field, boolean logic:
BOOLE, George (1815-1864). An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. London: Macmillan and Co., 1854.
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=5084071
well, maybe not $2500 after i just hyped the dang thing
christie's should be paying me a dang commission!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Recently found an old newspaper ad, circa mid-1890s, for my great-grandfather's grocery store. Despite living in semi-rural Indiana, they apparently had one of the newfangled phones, as the ad listed their phone number. It was "12".
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Just a weird thought, what's to stop a kook from buying this, burning it and to call any pictures/copies a fake ?
scratch that, even if he/she doesn't call it a fake but just burns it out of spite, can anybody keep this from happening ?
Isn't there a 'Library of humanity' (sponsored by us all) to which pieces like this should go ?
I will work to elevate you, just enough to bring you down
Hey now, cocaine has given us lots of great things... Lindsey Lohan, Stephen King, Robert Loius Stevenson. Do you really think that Jules Verne would have made it around the world in 80 days with out a little bump now and then? Come now people, don't knock Freud because of his cocaine habits, knock him because he made you remember that weird night when you were four when you walked in on your parents.
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
No way! Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity flying his kite, with a key attached...
http://clightnirish.wordpress.com/
freudian psychology is of course bulls***, exactly as you say
it's like other pseudoscientific, yet highly influential lines of thought that have been thoroughly debunked like lamarckism, phlogiston, phrenology, etc.
however, in the historical context, these topics are vitally important. modern psychology resembles freudian psychology like a modern ICBM resembles fireworks
however, if it weren't for fireworks, you can be sure everything that came after would have never happened
like alchemy: these guys were trying to make gold from lead. i think its kind of funny and ironic that centuries later, after refinements to chemistry, physics, etc., as a joke, some guys with some extra time at a heavy ion collider, did exactly that, convert lead into gold, as an afterthought. but they thereby reaffirmed the original goal of alchemists centuries before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_physics#History
so my bet is that centuries from now, deep in the cognitive research and brain engineering advances still centuries from us, someone will come across a rather nifty bit of freudian psychology as a major truth about how our brains work. and it will be funny, and everyone will have a bit of a laugh about it
so don't belittle where you came from son. your great grandchildren will certainly laugh at your petty pursuits, but their pursuits are built on your shoulders. show some respect to freud and his silliness, it trailblazed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
-- Remember, we're not happy until you're not happy. -- Local FAA Inspector --
This is not obvious because of the way science history is taught. We learn about the geniuses and a few of the classic blunders. We don't spend much time on the work that was merely not great. Consider the development of quantum mechanics and atomic structure. There were accurate atomic spectra, correct mathematical descriptions of the line spacing, and innumerable incorrect theories about the mechanism before there was a correct description. The spectral observations eventually led to a usable theory, even though they may have been used on the way to support ideas that turned out to be bunk.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Freud was more of a theorist than an empiricist. He formulated hypotheses based on observations and case studies. Others tested his theories, and found many of them wrong or a little off. But not all of them: the idea of an unconscious mind (which is vital to current psychological theory), and of stress causing physical symptoms, are basically sound. Of course he didn't understand exactly why -- psychology was still in its infancy.
Psychology generally doesn't work in terms of "universal laws" - it's the science of individual differences. Some discovery might be true in 30% of the population, have some bearing on about 40%, and be completely wrong for the other 30%. That doesn't mean it isn't true in 30%.
Some people like the smell of tar and some hate it. There cannot be a universal law that says "tar smells bad." And just because an observation can't be explained correctly with the current state of knowledge doesn't mean it isn't science.
I don't really like Freud either, and I think he was mostly a bad philosopher, but to say he didn't contribute anything to the modern understanding of the mind is just wrong.
First of all, Freud was a superb neurologist before he moved into the area of psychology. Second, you may disagree with his basic ideas, be believe me, it is basically impossible to have a discussion about Freud, about the mind, about even the validity of his ideas without using terms he invented. Giving us a solid linguistic foundation for being able to debate the validity of these ideas is a superb step towards true scientific understanding. Pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the all matter was composed of small particles of earth (and, later, fire). This is clearly nonsense, and not at all 'scientific', but without it, we would not have an idea to work against in order to move towards ideas of atomism and the makeup of matter. This is absolutely a contribution to science and the basis of scientific progress. Last: try reading Freud sometime instead of the terrible wikipedia pages on him, you will find a very modest writer who continually prefaced his essays with assertions that he was only beginning a study of the mind, one that he hoped would keep a close link to neuroscience, and the he was more than prepared to have all of his ideas overturned once more was discovered of the mysteries of the brain. He was wrong, no doubt, but so were many great scientists that paved the way for our current understanding of scientific 'truth'. thanks.
I said "explain correctly." Freud did provide explanations. They were hypothetical. He didn't test them all. Others did, and disproved them, or found better explanations for them. He was only doing part of the scientific process himself, but he was still taking part in it.
For an example, from Wikipedia:
"Freud originally posited childhood sexual abuse as a general explanation for the origin of neuroses, but he abandoned this so-called "seduction theory" as insufficiently explanatory, noting that he had found many cases in which apparent memories of childhood sexual abuse were based more on imagination than on real events."
Observation made, explanation given, explanation tested, explanation disproved. All by Freud himself.
If a scientist said "I have observed X about light, therefore I propose that light is composed of particles," whether they are being scientific does not depend if they are right or not.
Rick James, bitch!
No sig for you!!