Stardust Log

A record of stardust, quietly accumulating.
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Series

A list of the series on this blog, each following one subject across several parts. Every series is written to be read in order from Part 1.

Science history · in progress

A History of the Science of Consciousness (seven parts)

The sense that something is being seen or heard — consciousness — is visible only from the inside. Taking as its thread how far a person's own report can be trusted, this series runs from nineteenth-century introspection and behaviorism through brain waves, the split brain and the clash of theories, to patients who cannot report and to AI.

  1. Part 1Why Did Psychology Give Up on Consciousness? Introspection, Fechner's Threshold and Watson's Behaviorist Manifesto, 1850–1913
  2. Part 2Measuring Wakefulness — Berger's EEG, the Reticular Formation and REM Sleep, 1924–1953
  3. Part 3Did Splitting the Brain Split Consciousness? The Corpus Callosum, W.J.'s Left Hand and the Interpreter, 1940–1981
  4. Part 4Seeing Without Knowing, Acting Before Deciding — Blindsight and Libet, 1965–2012 — coming soon
  5. Part 5Searching for the Neural Correlates of Consciousness, 1989–2005 — coming soon
  6. Part 6Rival Theories of Consciousness — Global Workspace, Integrated Information and the Adversarial Test, 1988–2025 — coming soon
  7. Part 7Consciousness Without Report — Unresponsive Patients and AI, 2006– — coming soon

Science history · on hiatus

What Are Genes Made Of? (seven parts)

The rules of heredity were found long before anyone knew what genes were made of. From Mendel's peas to chromosomes, DNA, the double helix and the genetic code, this series follows how the rules and the name came first and the substance was worked out later.

  1. Part 1Why Was Mendel's Work Ignored for 34 Years? Pea Counts, Nägeli and a Gene With Only a Name, 1856–1909
  2. Part 2Genes on Chromosomes — Sutton and Morgan's Fruit Flies, 1902–1915 — on hiatus
  3. Part 3Nuclein and the Assumption That Genes Were Protein, 1869–1940 — on hiatus
  4. Part 4Transformation — the Evidence That Genes Are DNA, 1928–1952 — on hiatus
  5. Part 5The Double Helix, 1950–1953 — on hiatus
  6. Part 6How DNA Copies Itself — Meselson and Stahl, 1958 — on hiatus
  7. Part 7Cracking the Genetic Code, 1954–1966 — on hiatus

Science history · complete

A History of Psychiatry (seven parts)

For illnesses of the mind, how to treat them and how to classify them were settled before their causes were understood. From Pinel at the end of the 18th century to the diagnostic manuals of the 20th, this series follows the gap between what works and what is understood.

  1. Part 1Pinel and the Unchaining of Asylum Patients — Moral Treatment and the 90 Percent Cure Rate, 1793–1877
  2. Part 2How Schizophrenia Got Its Name — General Paresis, Kraepelin's Dementia Praecox and Bleuler, 1822–1913
  3. Part 3Did Freud's Psychoanalysis Work? Anna O., the Talking Cure and Eysenck's Count, 1880–1952
  4. Part 4Why Did Lobotomy Win a Nobel Prize? Malaria Fever, Insulin Coma and Electroshock, 1917–1958
  5. Part 5How Were Psychiatric Drugs Discovered? Lithium, Chlorpromazine and Imipramine, 1949–1976
  6. Part 6Home Confinement and Mental Hospitals in Japan — Shuzo Kure's Survey to the Mental Health Act, 1900–1987
  7. Part 7What Did DSM-III Solve? The Rosenhan Experiment and the Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnosis, 1955–1980

Science history · complete

Tracing the Old Quantum Theory (five parts)

From Planck in 1900 to the arrival of quantum mechanics in the 1920s: a quarter of a century in which the calculations fit before anyone could say why.

  1. Part 1Continuous or Discrete? The Line Planck Crossed in 1900
  2. Part 2Eighteen Years of Doubt — Einstein's Light Quantum, 1905 to 1923
  3. Part 3The Model That Fit Too Well — What Bohr Could Not Explain in 1913
  4. Part 4Stretched Until It Tore — Sommerfeld's Extension and the Impasse of the Old Quantum Theory
  5. Part 5Letting Go of the Orbit — The Birth of Quantum Mechanics and What the Old Quantum Theory Left Behind

Science history · complete

The Rise of Quantum Mechanics (six parts)

How the finished theory spread from 1927 into the chemical bond, the nucleus and solids, and arrived at the question of entanglement in 1935. A sequel to Tracing the Old Quantum Theory.

  1. Part 1Swap the Electrons and the Atoms Hold — Heitler and London's Hydrogen Molecule, 1927
  2. Part 2Out Through a Wall It Cannot Climb — Gamow and Quantum Tunnelling, 1928
  3. Part 3The Answers That Would Not Go Away — Dirac's Equation and the Positron, 1928–1932
  4. Part 4Free to Move, Yet No Current — Bloch, Wilson and the Electrons in Solids, 1928–1931
  5. Part 5The Question That Was Answered, and the One That Stayed — Bohr and Einstein at the Solvay Conferences, 1927 and 1930
  6. Part 6Quantum Entanglement and Schrödinger's Cat — What the EPR Paper Started in 1935

AI · two parts

Is There an Upper Limit to AI Intelligence? (two parts)

How far can AI intelligence grow? The physical limits of computation, and the fields where today's AI has and has not passed humans, set out with figures from the papers.

  1. Part 1Is There an Upper Limit to AI Intelligence? Physical Limits of Computation and Self-Improvement (Part 1)
  2. Part 2Where AI Has Passed Humans and Where It Hasn't: Math, Driving, Robots and Learning from Little (Part 2)