First off, sorry for no posting the last couple of weeks. Travel and work-related things have kept me well occupied. New posts are in the works.
Second, for those who follow this blog’s occasional posts on the chymistry historiography, have a look at The Economist’s write-up of Lawrence Principe’s presentation at the AAAS meeting. Also, a cbsnews.com Tech Talk post about the Economist write-up links to EWP for more information on current professional thought on the issue. The spotlight, it blinds me! (I got 60-70 hits off of it, which for EWP constitutes a flood.)
On this note, I’ve started to worry a little bit about the fact that there are certain topics where you can just put up a reasonably well-informed post about something, and suddenly you become an authority. This issue comes up with my old Schaffer Oeuvre series — which may one day return — wherein by virtue of simply talking about his work at all, people know me as the guy whose comments pop up when you search for information about his writings. I’ve received enough nice comments from people about that series that I guess I’ve gotten things right enough that I’m not too worried about it, but I do wish people who are actually well-versed in 18th and 19th-century studies would displace by some means my hobby-like interest in the subject.
Finally, speaking of nice things being said, we had Paul Lucier in to speak with us a couple of days ago. I don’t receive a lot of feedback on how this blog is actually read and talked about, and by whom, so it was gratifying to hear from him that my post on his terrific Isis article on men of science vs. professionals in 19th-century America succeeded in generating some extra interest in that work.
My concern is that there are people out there not speaking up who have good ideas about deleterious side-effects to blogging activity. Long story short, I think it’s time the profession as a whole started thinking quite seriously about how blogs ought to be used to talk about scholarship in a serious, responsible, and public, but short-form way.