https://johnstewart.me/history/Recent content in History of Science on John StewartHugoen-usMon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500https://johnstewart.me/history/transcribing-historical-documents-with-ai/Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500https://johnstewart.me/history/transcribing-historical-documents-with-ai/A handwritten page from an eighteenth-century chemistry lecture set shows how quickly AI transcription is changing what historians can do with manuscript archives.https://johnstewart.me/history/chemistry-and-slavery-in-the-scottish-enlightenment/Wed, 27 May 2020 12:40:27 -0500https://johnstewart.me/history/chemistry-and-slavery-in-the-scottish-enlightenment/Scottish people don’t figure prominently in most histories of slave trade. When Scots are mentioned, people usually point to the writings of Adam Smith andhttps://johnstewart.me/history/the-gods-of-norman/Mon, 06 Nov 2017 22:19:05 +0000https://johnstewart.me/history/the-gods-of-norman/In my history of science survey, we talk about how ancient cosmologies reflect the geography of the people. Thus the Nile River civilizations believe in mostly benevolent gods that bring annual, pr…https://johnstewart.me/history/time-for-r/Fri, 03 Nov 2017 15:17:53 +0000https://johnstewart.me/history/time-for-r/Here at OU, there are at least 4 or 5 that teach introductory R. You can take a statistics class, an economics class, a biological stats class, or a class just on R as a programming language. R has…https://johnstewart.me/history/i-am-open-and-so-can-you/Wed, 12 Jul 2017 01:14:35 -0500https://johnstewart.me/history/i-am-open-and-so-can-you/For the next few weeks, I will be taking a history course, something I thought I would never do again after I finished my dissertation. Shawn Graham ishttps://johnstewart.me/history/a-brief-history-of-alchemy/Wed, 01 Feb 2017 10:33:18 -0600https://johnstewart.me/history/a-brief-history-of-alchemy/Alchemy, as a field of study, was thought to answer several different questions making it hard to define. Alchemy was used to study ontology; that is,https://johnstewart.me/history/situating-chemistry-creating-a-database-of-18th-c-chemists/Wed, 21 Sep 2016 13:14:02 +0000https://johnstewart.me/history/situating-chemistry-creating-a-database-of-18th-c-chemists/*This post is the first section of a talk I gave at the 7th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. In 1756, fifty-nine students attended William Cullen’s (1710…https://johnstewart.me/history/recap-of-the-3rd-digital-humanities-day-at-ou/Fri, 09 Sep 2016 18:44:01 +0000https://johnstewart.me/history/recap-of-the-3rd-digital-humanities-day-at-ou/Today I attended the 3rd Digital Humanities Day at OU. Below I’ve identified a couple of the emergent themes and given my thoughts. Below that, I included notes on each talk. Making as a Mean…https://johnstewart.me/history/open-notes-for-deep-maps/Thu, 09 Jun 2016 20:39:22 +0000https://johnstewart.me/history/open-notes-for-deep-maps/For the last couple of years, I have been working with my colleague John Perkins on building a database called Situating Chemistry. With this database we have been collecting information about the …https://johnstewart.me/history/transcribing-joseph-blacks-chemistry-lectures/Mon, 04 Aug 2014 15:00:35 +0000https://johnstewart.me/history/transcribing-joseph-blacks-chemistry-lectures/Joseph Black (1728-1799) was one of the best known and most influential chemists during the second half of the eighteenth century. Black’s correspondence, recently published by Jean Jones an…