Travels in the Knowledge Web:

Canned Food to Sociology

Canned Food – Preserved food by the canning process which sterilized putrefaction bacteria at a high temperature when the cans were immersed in a hot water bath or steam, after which the cans were sealed. The first commercial application of this idea was developed in 1812 by British inventor and engineer… Bryan Donkin Who started out as a papermaker, using the French Fourdrinier process and making a fortune. Donkin’s canned food was a runaway success with the British Royal Navy exploration expeditions (especially that of James Ross to the Arctic). Donkin had originally picked up the canning idea from another Frenchman… Nicholas Appert A champagne bottler whose food-preserving idea won a Napoleon prize for feeding the troops with food preserved by being boiled inside a sealed champagne bottle. Appert also came up with the bouillion cube (made from meat and veggie extracts). Appert’s parents were pals with a local family whose son also became a star… George Seurat Inventor of the pointilliste painting technique, which involved many tiny dots of paint giving an ‘impression’ (hence he and his Impressionist pals: Signac, Pisarro, Matisse) . A big influence on Van Gogh and Gaugin. Seurat learned his color-juxtaposition art from the chemist who ran the Gobelins Tapestry Factory… Michel Chevreul He lit up (and cleaned up) the world with his work on (soaps and) candles. So famous, that when he died, France shut down for the day. He was also big in fertilizer, potash, and above all chemical dyes. Experimenters like Gay-Lussac came to work with him. So, in 1849, did chemist… Stanislao Cannizzaro Sicilian radical (Garibaldi follower) and science whiz who in 1860 helped bring order to chemistry at the First International Conference in Karlshrue, Germany (organized to agree definitions) and with his idea of atomic weights blew away such science biggies as Mendeleyev and Russian musician… Alexander Borodin Who was also a chemist. Borodin was one of the ‘Five’ composers (with Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Cui). He helped make Russian music known in the West with such stuff as opera ‘Prince Igor,’ the Polovtsian Dances, and the tone poem ‘In Central Asia,’ dedicated to his pal… Franz Liszt Megastar composer and child prodigy piano virtuoso (only very few people can play what he wrote for piano!). Met Beethoven. Big pal of Chopin. Knew all the French and German Romantics. He worked all over Europe. In early life (1831) he became attracted to the cult led by French thinker Henri de Saint Simon Wierdo. Fought at Yorktown, failed to build a Panama Canal, spied for France, big supporter of scientists. He developed a new philosophy and social plan, eventually known as New Christianity, in which society would be run by industrialists and scientists. His thoughts inspired Engels and Marie Curie’s father. His secretary was… Auguste Comte French egghead. He saw history as a path from belief to metaphysics to reason. Science and technology were the final triumph of social evolution. His lectures packed the halls and he influenced such as Fourier, Ostwald, Mach and Ratzel. His social theories led him to a science of society, which he called…
Sociology Which studies social behavior as influenced by human social structures, social interactions, institutions, organizations, traditions and the dynamics that govern their interaction.