Courses: Fall 2007
History of Science 201: The Origins of Scientific Thought
(Meets with ILS 201)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 1:00-2:15 TR, 6210 Social Science; 2 lectures and 1 discussion section per week. See also the parallel course, Integrated Liberal Studies 201, which bestows natural science credit at the introductory level. Prerequisites: None; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
This course is the first in a sequence of courses that examines the development of science in cultural and intellectual context from antiquity to the twentieth century. The class begins with an examination of perspectives towards the natural world in the poetry, philosophy, and medicine of ancient Greece. It follows the movement of the classical tradition into medieval Islam and Christendom, and concludes with the transformation of European science during the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout our investigation of what 'science' has been in the past, we will pay particular attention to issues which still have relevance today, such as the interaction between science and religion, the importance of different institutional settings for science, and the relationship between science and government.
Grading will include frequent quizzes in discussion sections and essay exams.
History of Science 203: Science in the Twentieth Century: A Historical Overview
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary); 1:20 MW, 6104 Social Science; 2 hrs. lecture and 1 hr. discussion. Prerequisites: None; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Richard Staley
This course surveys the history of science in the twentieth century, from the discovery of x-rays and radioactivity in the 1890s through to the complex of scientific and social questions raised by the human genome project and stem cell research in the present day. This period saw spectacular transformations in the reach of modern science and technology, accompanied by the increasing specialization and fragmentation of knowledge. Here we explore the changing dimensions of science in an age of unprecedented promise and conflict. Tracing the evolution of physics and biology and exploring the emergence of environmentalism through the course of the century, we examine major conceptual developments, the interaction of science and society, and the impact of war on science and technology. Course requirements include three take-home essays and class participation, with some informal writing for discussion sections.
History of Science 323: The Scientific Revolution: from Copernicus to Newton
(Crosslisted with History)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 11:00-12:15 TR; 6102 Social Science. Essay exams and in-class exercises. . Graduate students must enroll simultaneously in Hist. Sci. 623. Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
An investigation of the renaissance and revolution in European science that began in 1543 with the heliocentric astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus and ended with Isaac Newton's death in 1727. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to issues of tradition and novelty, institutional settings for scientific activity, and the relationship between science and religion. Topics covered will include the Copernican cosmology and the trial of Galileo, the mechanical philosophy, Newton's theory of gravitation, the appearance of new scientific organizations such as the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences, the role of science in European exploration and expansion, and 17th-century perceptions of the scientist's place in society.
History of Science 324: Science in the Enlightenment
(Crosslisted with History)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 8:50 MW, 224 Ingraham; discussion F (undergrads), discussion for grads TBA. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Thomas Broman
The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was a cultural movement that took the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century as the foundation for a new vision of humanity and society. Scientific knowledge, according to the proponents of the Enlightenment, could provide an instrument of social and economic progress. Yet the Enlightenment was far more than the mere "application" or "diffusion" of scientific ideas into new areas of European culture. Much more fundamentally, it was during the Enlightenment that science acquired the widespread authority that it still possesses today in our culture. This course will discuss these developments and examine this world created by the Enlightenment, a world that is still very much the one we inhabit today. The course opens with an extended review of the social and cultural developments that gave rise to the Enlightenment. After this discussion, we will examine a range of disciplines to demonstrate the recurrent assumptions and concerns of the period. Particular topics vary from year to year, but they focus on several themes: the relationship between force and matter in Newtonian mechanics and phenomena such as electricity and magnetism; the role of travel and colonization in natural history and the comparative study of human societies; the basis of human perception and knowledge; race and gender in Enlightenment thinking; and the relationship between the immaterial and the material in living organisms.
Requirements: For undergraduates, participation in discussion sections, two 5-6 page take-home essays, and a 10-page research paper. For graduate students, a 15-18 page research paper.
History of Science 350: Film in Green Screen: Environmental History and Action
(Meets with Env Studies 402, Lec. 5 and Comm Arts 469)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 9:00-11:30 F; 387 Van Hise. Prerequisites: Sophomore Honors or Junior standing.
Instructor: Gregg Mitman
How has film shaped past and present interactions between humans and the environment across different cultures and landscapes? The success of An Inconvenient Truth and March of the Penguins and the impact, in all of its myriad meanings, of Blue Vinyl and The Real Dirt on Farmer John are recent reminders of the extent to which film can inform and engage the public in critical environmental issues that affect human and animal lives across the globe. And, yet, the very different conventions of these films also remind us, as the French film critic, André Bazin, once noted: "The bounds of the science film are as undefined as those of the documentary. But, after all, who cares!"
We take Bazin's dilettantish attitude toward scientific cinema in exploring the history and theory of an amalgam of films that, for better or worse, might be labeled environmental cinema. As this seminar reveals, however, what we call environmental cinema is itself shaped by the changing cultural and social meanings of nature and the environment over time. From travelogue-exploration films of the 1920s, to the experimental avant-garde of surrealist scientific filmmakers such as Jean Painlevé, from the worlds of Walt Disney to those of Jacques Cousteau, from the social documentaries of John Grierson and Pare Lorentz to more contemporary cinema documenting the struggles of peoples confronting issues of environmental injustice across the globe, this seminar will call students to rethink the ways in which cinema has shaped how we see, think about, consume, and politicize nature in both past and present societies.
Students will be required to attend film screenings to be held throughout the semester, which will take place on Thursday or Friday evenings. In addition to select film reviews, the main assignment will be for students to choose a recent or historical environmental film and write a 15-20 page essay analyzing its myriad impacts-economic, cultural, political, and social. How does one measure a film's impact? Did the film alter public attitudes toward nature or the environment in significant ways? The seminar will lay the theoretical and empirical groundwork for students to be able to address these questions in their final assignment.
History of Science 394: Science in America
(Crosslisted with History and Med Hist)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 11:00-12:15 TR, 1010 Med Sci Center. Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Ronald Numbers
From the colonial period to the present; emphasis on the development of scientific institutions and the influence of science on American life.
History of Medicine 507: Health, Disease and Healing I
(Crosslisted with Med Hist and History)
3 cr., H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 2:30-3:45 MW, 114 Social Work; Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Instructor: Walton Schalick
This course presents an in-depth survey of medicine and public health from its roots in Antiquity through approximately 1500. There are three principal themes. The first focuses on the evolving concepts of illness, beginning with the ideas of the Hippocratics, who lived during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. We will study how their ideas were taken up and transformed by later scholars, with particular emphasis being paid to medicine in medieval Islam and the reception of medical knowledge in western Europe after 500 A.D. through its transformation in the newfangled universities. We will also pay close attention to the teaching and practice of anatomy in those universities. The second theme studies the medical practitioners of this era, focusing primarily on physicians but also paying significant attention to surgeons, apothecaries, female healers and the various other health-providers who together comprised the practice of healing in the ancient and medieval worlds. Within that theme, the notion of the medieval medical marketplace will be an important one. The third theme centers on the evolution of health as a social and political problem. It includes the emergence of hospitals in Constantinople and Baghdad, two large medieval cities where caring for the sick poor became a matter of pressing concern and the evolution of public health through the period of the Black Death in the later fourteenth century and beyond.
Each week there will be one 75-minute lecture on Monday to introduce the weeks subject, followed by a 75- minute seminar/lecture on Wednesday to flesh out the readings in depth. Depending on the complexity of the material, readings for the seminar meeting will be about 100 pages per week. Readings depend primarily on a packet of readings, but we will also have recourse to two textbooks: Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine by Nancy Siraisi, and Carole Rawcliffe's Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England.
Written work will consist of 3 take-home essay assignments, each of 5-6 pages in length.
History of Science 509: The Development of Public Health in America
(Crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate);1:00-2:15 TR; 1010 Medical Science Center. Prerequisites: junior standing AND consent of instructor.
Instructor: Judith Leavitt
This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation.
History of Science 532: The History of the (American) Body
(Crosslisted with Med Hist and Womens Studies)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced); 9:30-10:45 TR, 224 Ingraham. Prerequisites: Women's Studies 103 or other women's studies course required; previous history (including Med Hist or Hist Sci) course preferred.
Instructor: Judith Houck
Do bodies have a history? What do bodies mean? Are we our bodies? Who decides the value of a body? What are the consequences of having the wrong body?
Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. Within a larger three-unit framework, this course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and "fitness?" How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems?
History of Science 553: International Health and Global Society
(Crosslisted with Med Hist and Population Health)
3 cr.; I (Intermediate), Z (Humanities or Social Science); 2:30-3:45 TR; 351 Moore. Prequisites: Junior or Senior standing.
Instructor: Richard Keller
Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases-along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics-has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the "microbial unification of the world" as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings. Open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
HistSci 561: Greek and Roman Medicine and Pharmacy
(Crosslisted with Classics, Med Hist, History & S&A Phm)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 TR; 6203 Social Science. Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: John Scarborough
Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C.-A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine.
History of Science 623: Studies in Early Modern Science
(Crosslisted with History)
1 cr.; A (Advanced); 4:35 pm T, 6105 Social Science. Prerequisites: Graduate standing; concurrent registration in History of Science 323 or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
Advanced readings in the primary and secondary literature of the history of 16th and 17th-century science, with emphasis on current historiographic issues. Open only to graduate students. This course must be taken by graduate students concurrently with History of Science 323. One 60 minute meeting per week.
HistSci 720: Proseminar: Historiography and Methods
3 cr.; 9:55-12:25 M; 7130 Social Science. Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
Instructor: Michael Shank
This seminar is designed to orient first-year graduate students in the Department of the History of Science to work in the field. It offers a sampling of classic and current work in the historiography of science (broadly understood to include technology and medicine). Graduate students in other departments who are interested in exploring the field, or in completing a minor in either History of Science or Science and Technology Studies are also welcome. The seminar will be reading- and discussion-intensive.
Assignments will include issue papers, leadership in discussion, book reviews, and a historiographical paper. The reading load is relatively heavy. In addition to many articles, the readings are likely to include Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Harvard UP, 1999), Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions rev. ed. (Univ. Chicago Press, 1970), and Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge UP, 1988); and Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice 2nd edition (Hodder Arnold, 2006).
History of Science 905: Seminar: Modern Physical Science
Topic: Cultures of Physics: The Physics of Culture
3 cr.; 2:25-4:25 T; 6109 Social Science; Prerequisites: Graduate standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Richard Staley
This seminar will examine the relations among culture and science historically by following two different strategies. One strategy is to explore how scientists approach those relations themselves, focusing first on physicists and examining a rich variety of sources ranging from philosophical discussion and fantasies about the knowledge of extraterrestrial beings, through to invocations of national styles and terms like "German," "British" and "Jewish" physics. Our readings will explore how scientists in specific social settings have grappled with what it means to pursue natural knowledge, paying particular attention to the way their debates have drawn on different cultural resources, often functioning to mark boundaries and define disciplines (while expressing quite different imperatives over time).
Our second strategy will be to explore how resources from the physical sciences have been used by other disciplines to examine culture. Here we pay attention to material tools, like anthropological and psychological tests designed to understand human perception and test differences between different cultures; to the use of intellectual resources in different contexts (especially statistics); and to the relations between social and physical epistemologies (like relativity and cultural relativism, for example).
No prior acquaintance with physics or its history is required, and students will have the possibility of investigating these issues in different sciences and over the period from Newton to the science wars.
History of Science 919: Disaster and Catastrophe in the Modern World
(Crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; 1:15-3:15 W, 1406 Med Sci Center; Prerequisites: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.
Instructor: Richard Keller
This graduate seminar focuses on the historical and contemporary dimensions of disaster and catastrophe in the modern world. It explores the coupling of human and natural systems through a concentration on intersections between natural and human-made hazards and disasters. The course examines "natural" disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and heat waves, but also industrial catastrophes such as the Bhopal and Chernobyl explosions. The focus is principally on acute rather than chronic disasters and degradation. The seminar provides an introduction to an expanding humanities and social science literature on disaster. Students are required to participate actively in discussions and to produce an original research paper on a related topic.
HistSci 950: History of Science Colloquium
0-1 cr.; A (Advanced); 4:00-6:00 W, 6104 Social Science; Prerequisites: History of Science major; Graduate standing.
Instructor: Thomas Broman
Intended for graduate majors in the history of science, this requires regular attendance at History of Science colloquia, averaging 4 or 5 per semester. May be taken for 1 credit or 0 credits. Required of first and second semester graduate students in History of Science.