Physical sciences and technology blog carnival: Philosophia Naturalis

In this edition of the Tangled Bank I raised the issue of a blog carnival focused on the physical sciences and technology. It's been a month since then, longer than I hoped, but now the planets seem to be aligned just right.

The carnival will be named Philosophia Naturalis. That's Latin for Natural Philosophy, which Wikipedia describes as "a term applied to the objective study of nature and the physical universe that was regnant before the development of modern science." The name is also a reference to Isaac Newton's 1687 Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (although Newton didn't originate the term).

Just as the Tangled Bank focuses its attention on the life sciences and medicine, Philosophia Naturalis will take the physical sciences and technology as its focus. The physical sciences include physics, astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and Earth sciences. And just as medicine is applied life science, technology is applied physical science, including such topics as nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, alternative energy, and quantum computing. We also intend to be generous about considering "borderline" topics for inclusion.

Why another carnival? Surprisingly, there seem to be no carnivals out there having this focus. There needs to be a way for people interested in any of the physical sciences and advanced technology to easily read new articles in these fields -- articles that have been judged to be especially noteworthy. There also needs to be a way for people who write about these topics to bring their work to the attention of a wider audience.

The first edition will be published right here, on Thursday, September 14. Future editions will appear at least once a month, and more often if participation warrants. Volunteers to edit and host future editions are most welcome.

But the project needs your help right now. It needs you to submit suggestions for articles to be included. This may be your own writing. However, since only links and brief quotations will be published in Philosophia Naturalis, anyone other than the copyright owner can also send in suggestions of especially good articles they've found.

We're looking for the best articles published on the Web within the past few months that fall within the topic focus. Articles may range from introductory tutorials for a wide audience to more specialized pieces that still may be interesting to educated people with an active curiosity. These need not be blog articles. They could also be any good, short science writing that first appeared in a print publication and has been posted on the Web by its copyright holder for general access.

We have some submissions already for the first edition of the carnival, but we need more. All you have to do is send a short email message -- no later than Wednesday, September 13 for the first edition -- to carnival@scienceandreason.net, with a link to the article and a few words why you're recommending it. Please put "Philosophia Naturalis" somewhere in the subject line.

Tags: blog carnival, Philosophia Naturalis