History of Science coverage from Scientific American, featuring news and articles about advances in the field.

The study of the history and philosophy of science examines how scientific knowledge is generated, justified and transformed over time. Historian-philosophers trace the evolution of concepts, methods ...

Astronomers once believed the sun revolved around the Earth. In the 19th century, scientists thought the shape of a person's skull could reveal their mental strengths or weaknesses. And in the 20th ...

How does technical art history relate to the burgeoning field of heritage science? Has technical art history become part of heritage science? Can both disciplines be considered counterparts within the ...

“In 1969 the California Board of Education issued new guidelines for the biology curriculum of the state’s public schools. The guidelines included a statement that the Book of Genesis presents a ...

Proposed federal rules would rely on political appointees to decide how a lot of U.S. science gets done. History shows the consequences of such actions.

The Science History Institute preserves and interprets the history of chemistry, engineering, and the life sciences. During a ceremony in Philadelphia on June 10, the American Chemical Society ...

According to a familiar story, science was born as a pastime of seventeenth-century European gentlemen, who built air pumps, traded telescopes, and measured everything from the size of the earth to ...

We keep hearing that these are unprecedented times for science: scientific skeptics running federal agencies, growing mistrust of vaccines, and messaging from the highest levels of government that ...