Simon Flynn
@simonflynn.bsky.social
Science teacher, chiefly Chemistry (and A Level Psychology). In the early stages of a History/History of Science PhD at Birkbeck - the influence of Malthus on the directions of Darwinism. Author of the 'The Curious World of Science'.
The Radical Act behind your local library: Celebrating 175 years of public libraries.
blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/...
blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/...
The Radical Act behind your local library: Celebrating 175 years of public libraries
This post was written by Jenny Pearce, Senior Marketing Manager for LibraryOn at the British Library. 2025 sees the 175th anniversary of the Public Library Act 1850. The Act was an initial step in pro...
blogs.bl.uk
August 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
The Radical Act behind your local library: Celebrating 175 years of public libraries.
blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/...
blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/...
20 years after first reading ‘Middlemarch’, I find I like Dorothea more and Lydgate less. There’s an awful lot in the book that’s great but I find it hard understand why it’s so loved. I enjoyed more all the other Eliot fiction I’ve read in the last year or so.
August 10, 2025 at 7:00 PM
20 years after first reading ‘Middlemarch’, I find I like Dorothea more and Lydgate less. There’s an awful lot in the book that’s great but I find it hard understand why it’s so loved. I enjoyed more all the other Eliot fiction I’ve read in the last year or so.
'In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.'
George Eliot, Middlemarch
George Eliot, Middlemarch
August 7, 2025 at 10:17 AM
'In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.'
George Eliot, Middlemarch
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Exciting news for fans of Victorian science! @ransomcenter.bsky.social recently digitized a photo album featuring members of Maull & Polyblank's Literary & Scientific Portrait Club, including Richard Owen & Michael Faraday (seen here).
ransom.center/maull-polybl...
#histSTM #histsci #photosky 🗃️📜📷
ransom.center/maull-polybl...
#histSTM #histsci #photosky 🗃️📜📷
August 1, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Exciting news for fans of Victorian science! @ransomcenter.bsky.social recently digitized a photo album featuring members of Maull & Polyblank's Literary & Scientific Portrait Club, including Richard Owen & Michael Faraday (seen here).
ransom.center/maull-polybl...
#histSTM #histsci #photosky 🗃️📜📷
ransom.center/maull-polybl...
#histSTM #histsci #photosky 🗃️📜📷
Reposted by Simon Flynn
A hundred and thirty years ago, here's one of the richest men on Earth fantasizing about colonizing Jupiter. No relevance at all to anybody's fantasies about colonizing Mars, obviously.
In his essay “Colonizing the Cosmos”, @irmorus1 joins the interplanetary safari that is John Jacob Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/colonizing-the-cosmos
July 28, 2025 at 4:58 PM
A hundred and thirty years ago, here's one of the richest men on Earth fantasizing about colonizing Jupiter. No relevance at all to anybody's fantasies about colonizing Mars, obviously.
Reposted by Simon Flynn
In his essay “Colonizing the Cosmos”, @irmorus1 joins the interplanetary safari that is John Jacob Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/colonizing-the-cosmos
July 28, 2025 at 4:45 PM
In his essay “Colonizing the Cosmos”, @irmorus1 joins the interplanetary safari that is John Jacob Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/colonizing-the-cosmos
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children this summer! My regular reminder of this thread of TOYS you can make with scrap materials you probably have lying around the house:
Fellow parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children over half-term! Here is a thread of videos showing TOYS you can MAKE at home from scrap stuff you probably have lying around. First, the utterly delightful "balancing bird" alomshaha.com/balancing-bi...
July 26, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children this summer! My regular reminder of this thread of TOYS you can make with scrap materials you probably have lying around the house:
Reposted by Simon Flynn
#OnThisDay in London's striking herstory, 1890: Sweet Victory! East End chocolate factory workers win their strike
wp.me/p74yfw-199
wp.me/p74yfw-199
Today in London’s striking herstory, 1890: Sweet Victory! East End chocolate factory workers win strike
In 1890, women working in a Mile End chocolate factory went on strike. The chocolate workers’ strike boosted the growth of women’s trade unionism in late Victorian England. In the aftermath of the …
wp.me
July 22, 2025 at 7:08 AM
#OnThisDay in London's striking herstory, 1890: Sweet Victory! East End chocolate factory workers win their strike
wp.me/p74yfw-199
wp.me/p74yfw-199
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for FREE during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. You can find all of these Elements free to download and read here: cup.org/4kEgivL
Philosophy of Biology
Welcome to Cambridge Core
cup.org
July 20, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for FREE during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. You can find all of these Elements free to download and read here: cup.org/4kEgivL
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for FREE during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. You can find all of these Elements free to download and read here: cup.org/4kEgivL
Philosophy of Biology
Welcome to Cambridge Core
cup.org
July 20, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Simon Flynn
So this week the CEO of NVIDIA said AI was as important as electricity, and this comparison always makes me think of mad Victorian products this ⬇️
AI *is* like electricity in the way grifters are trying to shove it in everything, and make dubious claims about its benefits.
AI *is* like electricity in the way grifters are trying to shove it in everything, and make dubious claims about its benefits.
Jul 1881: Electric Hair Brush ad from Dr. Scott's
«DR. SCOTT'S ELECTRIC HAIR BRUSH»
«DR. SCOTT'S ELECTRIC HAIR BRUSH»
July 20, 2025 at 8:10 AM
So this week the CEO of NVIDIA said AI was as important as electricity, and this comparison always makes me think of mad Victorian products this ⬇️
AI *is* like electricity in the way grifters are trying to shove it in everything, and make dubious claims about its benefits.
AI *is* like electricity in the way grifters are trying to shove it in everything, and make dubious claims about its benefits.
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Today in 1864, Thomas Huxley doodled this “ancient ape-man of Gibraltar” while bored in a meeting. It was inspired by the Forbes Quarry skull—a fossil his friend was puzzling over that we’d later recognize as a Neanderthal. #OnThisDay 🏺
July 19, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Today in 1864, Thomas Huxley doodled this “ancient ape-man of Gibraltar” while bored in a meeting. It was inspired by the Forbes Quarry skull—a fossil his friend was puzzling over that we’d later recognize as a Neanderthal. #OnThisDay 🏺
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Excited to share that the volume Lakatos @ 100 has just been published (open access)! It’s a great collection on Lakatos’s legacy.
📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Grateful to the editors for including me!
#Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess
📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Grateful to the editors for including me!
#Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess
Proofs and Research Programmes: Lakatos at 100
This open access book offers new insights into issues raised in philosophy of mathematics and in philosophy of science by Imre Lakatos.
link.springer.com
July 19, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Excited to share that the volume Lakatos @ 100 has just been published (open access)! It’s a great collection on Lakatos’s legacy.
📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Grateful to the editors for including me!
#Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess
📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Grateful to the editors for including me!
#Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess
our potatoless breakfast www.irishtimes.com/news/darwin-...
Darwin's spuds wouldn't cook in the Andes
Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle is a journal of his travels and discoveries as a young man in South America
www.irishtimes.com
July 12, 2025 at 3:21 PM
our potatoless breakfast www.irishtimes.com/news/darwin-...
Reposted by Simon Flynn
99p on kindle. A no-brainer, as people used to say
July 12, 2025 at 1:31 PM
99p on kindle. A no-brainer, as people used to say
Steven Rose - always an interesting and provocative thinker in science and a prominent figure in the so-called 'Darwin Wars' in the late 20th Century. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Steven Rose obituary
Neuroscientist, author, political activist and advocate for social responsibility in science
www.theguardian.com
July 12, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Steven Rose - always an interesting and provocative thinker in science and a prominent figure in the so-called 'Darwin Wars' in the late 20th Century. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Latest read. It’s easy to see how this morally complex novel lends itself well to college courses and book clubs. There’s much to shock and this happens on many levels. I did, however, find the writing clunky at time - it could have been better edited. I will read more Butler.
July 5, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Latest read. It’s easy to see how this morally complex novel lends itself well to college courses and book clubs. There’s much to shock and this happens on many levels. I did, however, find the writing clunky at time - it could have been better edited. I will read more Butler.
Latest read: This isn't Gaskell's best-known work, possibly because of the amount of dialect that features. However, it's arguably her most realistic (okay, minus the usual convenient coincidences) and the final 100 pages step things up a gear and pack an emotional punch.
June 29, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Latest read: This isn't Gaskell's best-known work, possibly because of the amount of dialect that features. However, it's arguably her most realistic (okay, minus the usual convenient coincidences) and the final 100 pages step things up a gear and pack an emotional punch.
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Born #OnThisDay 1799 Joseph Pease, Liberal MP for Durham South 1832-41, and the first Quaker to sit in the Commons. This post looks at the difficulties he encountered in taking his seat at Westminster. victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/q...
Quakers in the Commons: Joseph Pease and the right to affirm
Taking their seat in the Commons can be a nervous moment for new MPs, but for the Quaker Joseph Pease in 1833, tensions were heightened because he feared that his refusal to take oaths would preven…
victoriancommons.wordpress.com
June 22, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Born #OnThisDay 1799 Joseph Pease, Liberal MP for Durham South 1832-41, and the first Quaker to sit in the Commons. This post looks at the difficulties he encountered in taking his seat at Westminster. victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/q...
Reposted by Simon Flynn
One of our excellent Science Communication MSc students is leading a free history of science walking tour in London. Sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-wal...
London Walking Tour: Untold Histories of Science
Explore the untold histories of science on this multisensory, interactive walk centred on underrepresented and marginalised identities.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
June 18, 2025 at 8:20 AM
One of our excellent Science Communication MSc students is leading a free history of science walking tour in London. Sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-wal...
Reposted by Simon Flynn
If you don’t do the research yourself, you don’t know what the LLMs HASN’T told you about the data it’s analyzed. You don’t know what materials are available but not accessible to the LLM. You don’t have anything close to the information you need to make a cogent argument that stands up to scrutiny.
An interesting account of the way that some writers are using AI to conceptualize and write works of history. Most of the benefits described here involve ways of amalgamating and synthesizing materials from already-existing digital databases. I remain concerned...
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/m...
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/m...
A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.
www.nytimes.com
June 17, 2025 at 12:14 PM
If you don’t do the research yourself, you don’t know what the LLMs HASN’T told you about the data it’s analyzed. You don’t know what materials are available but not accessible to the LLM. You don’t have anything close to the information you need to make a cogent argument that stands up to scrutiny.
Reposted by Simon Flynn
The 1832 Reform Act received royal assent #OnThisDay 1832. This blog from our editor Philip Salmon provides an overview of the Act’s significance and legacy: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/1...
190th Anniversary of the 1832 Reform Act
For a 20 minute talk about the Reform Act by Dr Philip Salmon please click here. This month marks the 190th anniversary of the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, one of the iconic milestones in modern…
victoriancommons.wordpress.com
June 7, 2025 at 10:48 AM
The 1832 Reform Act received royal assent #OnThisDay 1832. This blog from our editor Philip Salmon provides an overview of the Act’s significance and legacy: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/1...
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Redesigning our Year 9 curriculum to include Semmelweis and Snow, and vaccinations. Explaining through causality is part of our curricular metacontent. So these models build on a culture of explaining.
I explain metacontent here:
cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...
#iTeachBio #chatbiology
I explain metacontent here:
cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...
#iTeachBio #chatbiology
May 30, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Redesigning our Year 9 curriculum to include Semmelweis and Snow, and vaccinations. Explaining through causality is part of our curricular metacontent. So these models build on a culture of explaining.
I explain metacontent here:
cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...
#iTeachBio #chatbiology
I explain metacontent here:
cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...
#iTeachBio #chatbiology
Latest reads. Baldwin’s ‘The White Man’s Guilt’ is a particularly powerful essay and the short stories often make difficult reading. Highly recommended.
May 29, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Latest reads. Baldwin’s ‘The White Man’s Guilt’ is a particularly powerful essay and the short stories often make difficult reading. Highly recommended.
Reposted by Simon Flynn
Electric Fish and the First Battery daily.jstor.org/electric-fis...
Electric Fish and the First Battery - JSTOR Daily
Allesandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, the earliest electric battery, in part because of his investigations into the torpedo, an electric ray fish.
daily.jstor.org
May 26, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Electric Fish and the First Battery daily.jstor.org/electric-fis...