Res Obscura

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Historical maps probably helped cause World War I
On cartography as historical argument
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Benjamin Breen
2
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Simulating History with ChatGPT
The Case for LLMs as Hallucination Engines
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Benjamin Breen
20
Experiencing scientific revolutions: the 1660s and the 2020s
Lessons from Boyle's scientific desiderata and the Midgley Effect
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Benjamin Breen
16
Why Early Modern Books Are So Beautiful
Three theories
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Benjamin Breen
13
Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
Some lessons from history and archaeology
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Benjamin Breen
2
Wilfrid Voynich: Bookseller, Revolutionary, Amateur Cryptologist... Suspected Spy?
The first in a series on the extraordinary lives of the Voyniches
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Benjamin Breen
Do painters subconsciously paint themselves into their work?
The Renaissance history of automimesis, and a proposal for research
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Benjamin Breen
3
Res Obscura is now on Substack
Three years late, but historians are always late
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Benjamin Breen
Res Obscura
Res Obscura
Notes on the history of technology, medicine, science, art, drugs, and empire from UC Santa Cruz history professor Benjamin Breen. Also: using AI in research and teaching.
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Books
Pre-order "Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science"
Coming January, 2024, from Grand Central. I'd be very grateful if you considered pre-ordering it!
Order "The Age of Intoxication"
My first book, on the early modern global drug trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Articles
Open-access PDFs of my academic publications
© 2023 Benjamin Breen
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