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More than just what happened and why: From the History and Philosophy of Science to Applied Ethics and Religion, our courses connect across the OSU campus providing a broad perspective and a unique insight into the issues facing our world. Our students and faculty research on and collaborate with a wide array of disciplines from Oceanography to Nuclear Engineering - from Music to Environmental Science. Our school provides students with a series of lenses though which they can examine the universe and their place in it.

News and Reflection @ SHPR

Ethical Evolution

Jun 4, 2013

Terra, the research magazine of Oregon State University, has just published this article about my book Experimenting with Humans and Animals (Johns Hopkins, 2003) as part of an ongoing series on animals and science at OSU. Read full story.

Was Stalin an Environmentalist?

Jun 2, 2013

Remember that photograph of Joseph Stalin with the flower in his hair on his way to San Francisco? It’s in the archives. Well, no it isn’t. The environmental credentials of longtime Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, at first glance, don’t seem very credible. And yet he and his scientific experts did have strong ideas about the … Continue reading → Read full story.

“M. Couplet will find one”

May 29, 2013

When the anatomists at the seventeenth-century Paris Academy of Sciences wished to dissect an animal – which was often – they called on Claude-Antoine Couplet (1642-1722). Couplet was an élève (literally, a student) of the Academy, although he was hardly … Continue reading → Read full story.

SHPR Digest – May 2013

May 14, 2013

SHPR News Christopher McKnight Nichols has had a banner month starting with the American Military and Diplomatic History Conference that was held on campus May 7th to celebrate the launch of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Military and Diplomatic History – … Continue reading → Read full story.

Want to speed up the pulse of nature?

May 13, 2013

I am fanatically enthusiastic about the organizers of this summer’s Congress on the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, in Manchester, UK. This is how conferences should be done! They have rejected curmudgeon-hood and have fully embraced social media. They have started a blog beforehand, and they have included a list of presenting historians of science — … Continue reading → Read full story.

Mapping the Universe with Robert Fox

May 8, 2013

by Laura Cray* As a self-professed library nerd, I was excited to attend Robert Fox’s lecture, Mapping the Universe of Knowledge, on Monday, May 6, 2013. The lecture focused on work of Paul Otlet, Henri La Fontaine, and Hendrick Christian Andersen and their vision for a world united by knowledge. Robert Fox is professor emeritus [...] Read full story.