分类：Selected

Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem

Yesterday’s comments still weren’t finished. What I wrote yesterday was that research in the history of scientific instruments can be positioned as “artifact biographies,” in which meaning is formed around the artifact itself. But that does not mean that, beyond this intrinsic meaning, research in the history of instruments has no other benefits. We can also make an analogy with biographical research. Unlike general academic research, biographical works as the outcome of research on individuals often lie somewhere between scholarship and popularization. Apart from non-academic biographical literature, research-based biographies also tend to have a popularizing dimension, making them easier for general readers to read. Between intervening in academic issues and…