iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Isaac Fletcher's #c18th farming diaries from #Cumbria feature on Farming Today. Download from BBC Sounds www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... and see also Cumbria County History Trust website www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/farming-year...

bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 01/01/26 Isaac Fletcher's Farming Diaries

The farming diaries of an 18th-century yeoman farmer.

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Indeed. And it started in the UK around the beginning of the nineteenth-century #19thC. There is a book that explores this...https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947905/

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Dr Penny Bradshaw @drpennybradshaw.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

It feels rather moving that I should receive author copies of my new book on Beatrix Potter on this, the anniversary of her death: 22 December (1943). She was an extraordinary woman and I just hope that my new book manages to capture some of her unique and inspirational brilliance 📚🍄🍃

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Victoria County History @vch-home.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

A rather different blog from us, hosted by @ihr.bsky.social, & written by Dr Christopher Tinmouth. Christopher reflects on his involvement with the VCH in Cumbria and the benefits that supporting neurodivergent people can bring to a broad-based community history project like the VCH. #Skystorians

blog.history.ac.uk

The Value of Encouraging Neurodivergent Participation in Community Research Initiatives for the Victoria County History of England - On History

Dr Christopher Tinmouth addresses the value of encouraging neurodivergent participation in community research initiatives.

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Victoria County History @vch-home.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

#ICYMI - we are celebrating the publication of our 250th #BigRedBook, and our first publication for the historic county of #Westmorland. In September we had an event to mark this and to place the volume in the context of the series and to showcase the extraordinary work behind it. #Skystorians

history.ac.uk

Celebrating Local and Place-Based History: Westmorland and the 250th VCH ‘Big Red Book’

People, Place and Community Seminar

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

The Cumbria County History Trust has just launched the first 'Red Book' in the Victoria County History of Westmorland, covering the Kirkby Lonsdale area. We'll be on Radio Cumbria c.1215/1220 today. Link available after c.2pm today, c.2hrs 15 mins in: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Dr Sarah Rose holding the Kirkby Lonsdale 'Red Book'

Press release for Kirkby Lonsdale 'Red Book'

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

I think Fringed and Field Gentians #GentianFamily but admittedly in Switzerland hence bonus Edelweiss. All found within sight of the Matterhorn #WildflowerHour

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Grass of Parnassus, flower of Cumberland #Cumbria, high up in Newlands #WildflowerHour

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Looking up and down Coledale, with a finish of course in the Coledale Inn #Cumbria #LakeDistrict

Looking up Coledale with Eel Crag, a glimpse of Grasmoor and Grisedale Pike

Looking down Coledale towards Skiddaw, Lonscale Fell and Blencathra

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Looking down the Glencoyne valley to Ullswater, and a red deer in the bracken just above the lake ##LakeDistrict #Cumbria

Looking down the Glencoyne valley with Ullswater below and Pennines in the far distance

A red deer in the bracken with trees behind

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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

At long last, my PhD dissertation—Charles Darwin’s Science of History—has been filed and approved. I graduate shortly. The abstract is below. 🌱🐋🦋🦫🗃️🧠🧪 #HistSTM #PhilSci

Abstract

The natural sciences and history seem to represent alternative, even antithetical, ways of understanding the world. The natural sciences seek recurring patterns in nature and explain them using general laws. History concerns itself with unique events and explains them using narratives of how they happened as they did. This dichotomy has come to seem natural, even inevitable. But it is neither. Charles Darwin believed that it is possible to integrate the natural sciences and history into a unified program of inquiry that can explain stable and recurring patterns in nature using contingent historical processes rather than general laws. And he devoted his career to building such a unified program.

In this dissertation, I examine the development and character of this science of history.Darwin did not begin his scientific career pursuing this project. When he first began to build a science of living nature, Darwin’s goal was to discover and characterize the necessary and invariant laws that govern and explain the living world. He had internalized a conception of science that had been formulated by John Herschel, Charles
Lyell, and Charles Babbage. They had seen scientific explanation as consisting in showing phenomena to be the necessary results of universal laws, taking as their model Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. Darwin in his turn consecrated himself to the ambition to do for the living world what Newton had done for the heavens: he would discover and
characterize the laws of life.

Within a decade, however, Darwin would come to abandon his ambition to subsume the living world under a regime of invariant laws. He came to reject the simple, linear conception of causation on which his Newtonian program had been founded in

favor of an understanding of evolutionary causation as ineluctably complex. He also came to realize that history has causal power in the living world, both constraining and creative.

Darwin ultimately concluded that, to do justice to the profound complexity and historicity of the living world, he would have to integrate the natural sciences and history into a unified program of inquiry. This required him to rethink what laws of nature are and to reconceive the goals of scientific explanation. He came to understand explanation
of living nature in more pragmatic terms, as making phenomena intelligible to working naturalists and providing them a conceptual framework to organize and drive their scientific work. Most fundamentally, he concluded that explanations in the sciences of
life must take history seriously, not as a fixed stage on which evolution unfolds, but as a critical component of biological explanation.

In order to create explanatory tools better adapted to his revised conception of science, Darwin returned to several ideas he had encountered as a young man and reimagined them through a historicizing lens. These included the natural theological
notion of contrivance, the biblical and literary image of the tree of life, and the imaginary demon that the mentors of his youth had created to define a regulative ideal for scientific knowledge. Darwin did not merely appropriate these older ideas. He reconceived them by viewing them through a historicizing lens to make tools for making sense of the
phenomena of living nature.

Darwin’s science of history did not long survive him. His vision of a unified program of inquiry fell into an eclipse after his death, even among scientists who have considered themselves to be his greatest champions. And that eclipse has not yet ended.

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Victoria County History @vch-home.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Our friends at VCH Cumbria work on Lancashire north of the Sands, a small corner of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and all of Cumberland and Westmorland. Their work depends on volunteers and donations. To support them, follow the link:

cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk

Support Us | Cumbria County History Trust

The Cumbria County History Trust is a charity that aims to produce a permanent record of the history of Cumbria from the prehistoric to the present. We work through the Victoria County History of Cum...

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

In the end, we didn't think we could make that definitive extrapolation, but it's clear that Eunice Foote showed evidence for the warming effect of atmospheric CO2...in 1856!

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Today in #LakeDistrict sunny paradise it is Newlands and swimming under waterfalls (extremely cold)

Miners' Crag at the top of Newlands valley

Waterfall swimming pool in Newlands beck

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Today in #LakeDistrict paradise weather it's Blencathra, and the first swim of the year, but the heating is not switched on in Scales Tarn

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Another day in #LakeDistrict paradise, this time with a homage to the spectacular climbing ground of Pillar Rock (completely deserted today)

Pillar Rock from directly below in the morning sun

The complexity of Pillar Rock and Shamrock (on the left) revealed bother early sun

Starting the Shamrock Traverse onto Pillar

Pillar Rock High Man from above, with its 'interesting' descent options

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Stunning weather in the #LakeDistrict today. Buttermere, Crummock, Ennerdale, and a deserted Grey Crag.

Grey Crag in Birkness Combe. Deserted by climbers despite the weather

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Hmm. Meta has apparently stolen lots of my stuff too. But I do wonder what it made of my well-known publication 'The binding of 2,4,6-trinitrophenyl derivatives to the mouse myeloma protein MOPC 315'.

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Victoria County History @vch-home.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Huge excitement in the office today at the arrival of the page proofs from @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social for a very special publication. Lonsdale Ward will be the first ever volume we have produced for the historic county of Westmorland, and will also be our 250th #BigRedBook. 🗃️

Crop from the title page: The Victoria History of the Counties of England, A History of Westmorland Volume I.

Map showing the area covered by the volume. The small towns of Burton-in-Kendal and Kirkby Lonsdale to the south, with Lancashire beyond. To the east is the West Riding of Yorkshire and to the west, Kendal Ward of Westmorland.

The area covered is the Lune valley and - on a map, at least - forms a flat bottomed triangle.

In case any geographers are watching, we'd love to know how t write Alt-Txt for maps...

Illustration from the proofs: three sheep atop a rocky outcrop. The outcrop is known as 'Fox's Pulpit' after the Quaker, George Fox, who preached at this spot, 300 metres up, for 3 hours, in 1652.

The Anglicans had a chapel up there before that. No, we really don't know why: the medieval chapel was in a much more hospitable spot at the bottom of the valley.

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Perfect weather for the Derwentwater regatta this morning #Cumbria

View looking west across Derwentwater with Catbells and Causey Pike ridges

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

For some reason I missed this, but it's a lovely obituary of a wonderful person, with whom I was privileged to work over many years.

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Any experts on terrible #C19th handwriting on here? #histsci

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Winter conditions in Cumbria this week, but also of course in Switzerland here in the upper Rhone valley.

The upper Rhone atUlrichen banked by snow.

Langlauf tracks in the snow between Ulrichen and Geschinen. View east towards the Furka Pass.

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Sty Head Tarn like an ice mirror, and a glimpse towards Great End #Cumbria

Glimpse towards a snowy Great End from Sty Head

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Sharp Edge on Blencathra was interesting today. Spot the climbers! #Cumbria

More distant view looking down Sharp Edge

Looking down Sharp Edge to an ice-covered Scales Tarn

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

This one is for @lakesstiles.bsky.social: the stile at Hole in't Wall on Helvellyn is normally a good 2m high.

Stile at Hole in't Wall on Helvellyn almost buried in snow drifts

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Superb day on Striding and Swirral edges on Helvellyn, apart from deep drifts of unconsolidated snow #Cumbria

View looking up a snowy Striding Edge on Helvellyn

View looking down a snowy Striding Edge on Helvellyn

Red Tarn below Helvellyn looking deep black

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Full winter conditions on Blencathra with stinging spindrift and stunning light effects below the cloud ##Cumbria

View of snowy ridges towards summit of Blencathra

Lower snowy ridge of Blencathra with snowy Souter Fell behind

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Fleeting views above the cloud inversion seen on the Melmerby Scar Challenge today. A fog bow and, if you look carefully, the summits of Helvellyn and other high fells just proud of the cloud #Cumbria

Distant summits of Helvellyn and other peaks above the cloud inversion, seen from Cams Hill in the Pennines

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

Boxing Day stroll over Gowbarrow via Aira Force, and view along Ullswater towards Helvellyn #Cumbria

View towards along Ullswater to Helvellyn from Gowbarrow

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Early Christmas dusting of snow on Knapside Hill this morning #Cumbria

Snow covering on Knapside Hill, East Fellside.

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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Today I argue that the fusion of Big Tech and politics in the Tony Blair Institute is causing trouble for both The Royal Society and Keir Starmer.

open.substack.com

Big Tech in the UK

Dorothy Bishop’s attempt to get The Royal Society to oust Elon Musk has crystallised political dilemmas of sweeping consequence

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

An overlong review essay of Metropolitan Science: London Sites and Cultures of Knowledge and Practice, c. 1600–1800 by Rebekah Higgitt & Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin with Noah Moxham #histsci #histtech thonyc.wordpress.com/2024/11/28/s...

Front Cover of the book Metropolitan Science

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

For the many joining, if you are interested in #Cumbria and the #LakeDistrict you can convert this starter pack into a list by following these instructions: nws-bot.us/bskyStarterP.... NB, the list does not update when the starter pack is updated. You can of course update or edit the list yourself.

nws-bot.us

Convert BSky Starter Pack to List

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Sue Wilkinson @suewilkinson.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Here's my new account, dedicated to #GrasmereDialectPlays. I'm very excited about this research - and really want to share with you all! Please follow!

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Awaiting the exact publication date next year, but this will be a big day for history in #Cumbria

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Interested in 1930s contemporary novels, set in #Cumbria, with tales of class, politics, illegality and torrid relationships? I have recently published my grandmother's two previously unseen novels. The first is The Miner and the Flockmaster www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CHDDMP3S.

amazon.co.uk

The Miner and the Flockmaster: Amazon.co.uk: Howard, Ankaret, Jackson, Roland, Jackson, Jolyon: 9798859381944: Books

Buy The Miner and the Flockmaster by Howard, Ankaret, Jackson, Roland, Jackson, Jolyon (ISBN: 9798859381944) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Roland Jackson @rolandjackson.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Updated starter pack on #Cumbria and the #LakeDistrict. See the link below. If you want to be included, just let me know.

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