Thread by @seth_fletcher

THREAD: For @sciam’s 175th birthday — which is today! — we asked some of our favorite thinkers to write about the evolution of science and technology since our first issue. We basically let them run with it, and we were thrilled with what they came up with. 1/x

.@NaomiOreskes and @ErikMConway wrote about which technological revolutions really were transformative, and which were…not so much.

scientificamerican.com/article/democr…

.@marynmck explained how a century of progress in stamping out infectious disease led to overconfidence, and our being devastated yet again by a completely predictable pandemic.

scientificamerican.com/article/social…

.@LordMartinRees covers 175 years of astronomy and cosmology, from Comte's #hottake that we'd never know what stars were made of to gravitational waves and the multiverse.
scientificamerican.com/article/how-as…

Our own @katewong follows the study of human evolution from Darwin to the present day

scientificamerican.com/article/how-sc…

And @PeterBrannen1 shows how scientist grudgingly came to accept that deep history is punctuated by mass extinctions, just in time for us to face down another one.

scientificamerican.com/article/what-a…

These were all a lot of fun to work on. Thanks to the writers and their editors @markfischetti @ClaraMoskowitz @jfischman @Madhusree1984 @JenLSchwartz /end