Phlogiston

One of the nice benefits of hosting ScienceOnline conferences is that I sometimes get presents. The one that I find totally fascinating that I got this year is the 2009 issue of Phlogiston, the Journal of History of Science published once a year in Serbian language – print only (the journal does not even have a homepage).

I got this issue from Jelka Crnobrnja-Isailovic who came all the way from Serbia to do a session on challenges to Open Access in developing countries together with her friend and colleague Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove.
The 2009 issue of Phlogiston is dedicated to Darwin and the articles are just amazing – from history to biology to societal implications to applications of evolutionary thinking to other disciplines. There is an article on biases in computer simulations of evolution, and an article on all the species that are named after Darwin himself (ending with the latest – Darwinius masillae). Jelka’s own contribution digs through Darwin’s correspondence to show how strongly Darwin himself disputed the Naturalistic Fallacy, especially in the context of his opposition to slavery which may have been one of the motivators for his thinking about evolution in the first place.
Totally cool reading! I wish the stuff was online so I could link to it, perhaps have some articles translated….