Relics of Science History For Sale At Christie's 142
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 ...'"
If Freud Was a Scientist, Fire Up My Crack Pipe! (Score:4, Insightful)
In a lot of respects, the man was nothing more than a cokehead [wikipedia.org] with a penchant for strange sexually oriented neurosis [wikipedia.org].
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.
Ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Private collectors regularly donate or lease their collections to museums for display. And what's to stop a private collector from making their own exhibit to show for a fee? If you would like to help support a museum, feel free to donate, but don't tell everyone that they must give up a portion of their income to support your own cause.
Re:phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, I'm not wearing anything Alumini?um (Score:3, Insightful)
Why exactly would we want to fund (read 'have to pay taxes for') a "Library of humanity". How many people are interested in traveling hundreds of miles to see an old book whose contents they cannot even understand?
freud is historically important (Score:4, Insightful)
it's like other pseudoscientific, yet highly influential lines of thought that have been thoroughly debunked like lamarckism [wikipedia.org], phlogiston [wikipedia.org], phrenology [wikipedia.org], 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 [wikipedia.org]
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
Re:Ugh... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ugh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ugh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Take Tutankhamun. That entire excavation was the result of a private collectors interest in the subject.
In the past they were frequently donated, such as on the death of the (typically extremely rich) owner, but nowadays many collections are worth serious money, so that's not an option that most would consider.
My local museum has a set of 15th century Apprentice Indentures and land deeds that I donated to them 25 years ago. Had I realised what they were worth I'd have made it a loan. Semi permanently perhaps, but I shouldn't really have handed over what turned out to be many thousands of pounds worth of documentation.
I don't feel too bad though, after all, they are particularly lovely documents, I doubt I could feel comfortable with them being anywhere but in a museum.
Re:If Freud Was a Scientist, Fire Up My Crack Pipe (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:If Freud Was a Scientist, Fire Up My Crack Pipe (Score:4, Insightful)
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.