Courses: Fall 2004
History of Science 180: Freshman Honors Seminar-History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Topic: The Victorian Evolutionists
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 1:20-3:15 W, 6304 Social Science. Prerequisites: Open to freshmen only or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Victor Hilts
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his epoch-making Origin of Species, which argued that the diversity of biological species found around the globe could be explained by a mechanism that he called “natural selection.” Darwin’s book was the most important contribution to a wave of evolutionary thinking in the mid-nineteenth century that had far-reaching implications not only for the history of biology but also for many other important issues. In this undergraduate honors seminar, students will read the writings of some of the most important evolutionary thinkers of Darwin’s own time, including selections from Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, Francis Galton, and Edward B. Tylor. Examination of these writings will focus both upon their place within the history of scientific thought and upon their broader role as shapers of an evolutionary view of Nature and the place of humans within Nature. No background in history of science or general history is presumed.
The seminar will consist primarily of readings and discussion, but there will be one small writing project involving library research.
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 201: The Origins of Scientific Thought
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 1:00-2:15 TR, 3650 Humanities; 2 lectures and 1 discussion section per week. See also the parallel course, Integrated Liberal Studies 201, which sometimes meets with Hist. Sci. 201 and bestows natural science credit at the introductory level.
Instructor: David Lindberg
This course is the first of a three-term sequence that examines the development of science in cultural and intellectual context from antiquity to the twentieth century. This first course begins with ancient Greek philosophy, about 600 B.C., and concludes with Isaac Newton, who died in 1727. Lectures and readings will trace the unfolding of Greek philosophies, particularly those of the atomists, Plato, and Aristotle, into the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages and the mathematical and experimental science of the 17th century.
The central threads will be astronomy and cosmology, but we will also make frequent excursions into neighboring disciplines. We will also consider scientific institutions and the relationship between science and other features of European culture: the educational system that made progress possible, the encounter between science and religion, and the close relationship between science and philosophy. Finally, we will follow the geographical itinerary of Western science from ancient Greece and Rome to medieval Islam, back to edieval Europe, and ultimately to Europe at the beginning of the modern era.
History of Science 203: Science in the Twentieth Century: A Historical Overview
3 cr, Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary). Open to Freshmen. 2 hrs lecture, MW 1:20, 6203 Social Science; 1 hr discussion.
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 circa 2000. The period is one which has seen 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 205: The Sciences of Man
3cr. H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 2 lectures and 1 discussion section per week; 11:00 MW; 1111 Humanities. Prerequisites: None; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Victor Hilts
This course discusses mankind's attempt to achieve self-knowledge through the methods of science. In doing so, it provides an overview of the emergence of the social and behavioral sciences.
Main emphasis in the lectures will be placed upon the period from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. This period encompasses the first appearance of the sciences of political economy, anthropology, experimental psychology, and sociology, as well as the abortive sciences of social physics, phrenology and criminal anthropology.
Attention will be given to the main problems facing those who constructed a science of human nature. Why were some attempts more successful than others? What extra-scientific biases affected the development of the social sciences?
For students taking this course there will be two hour exams along with the final exam. Only students taking the course for honors credit will be assigned a term paper.
History of Science 280: Honors Seminar: Studies in Science, Technology, and Medicine
3 cr.; I (Intermediate), H (Humanities), satisfies Communications Requirement Part B; 4:00-5:15 PM TR; 6105 Social Science. Perquisites: Communications Requirement Part A must be satisfied. Open to non-honors students with consent of instructor. Open to Freshmen.
Instructor: Thomas Broman
This course features a study of scientific travel and exploration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when travel to parts of the world previously unexplored by European scientists became much more common and reports from places such as the Pacific Ocean and Africa began shaping the understanding of what (for Europeans) were new and exotic parts of the world. During the first six or seven weeks we will read a selection of primary sources featuring the travel accounts of Captain Cook's voyages in the 1760 and 1770s, Alexander von Humboldt's travels in South America in the early 1800s, and Charles Darwin's famous account of the Beagle expedition in the 1830s. We will also read studies by historians on science and travel during this first part of the course.
During the second half of the course, students will begin to define their topics for their own 15-page paper on science and travel. Our meetings will focus on issues such as defining a topic, conducting research and critiquing drafts. Toward the end of the semester, every student will have a chance to lead a discussion on the results of his/her research.
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 325: History of Physics: The Classical Period
3-4 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 1:00-2:15 TR; 214 Ingraham. Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Instructor: Richard Staley
This course surveys the history of physics and related sciences from the seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century, setting the development of the ideas and methods of "classical" science in social and cultural context. Topics include the emergence of an experimental methodology, mechanics and the Newtonian world view, the history of optics, electricity and magnetism, and thermodynamics. We will trace the interplay of idea and experiment, image and machine across the library, laboratory, exhibition-hall and factory in exploring the changing relations between science and technology, science and religion, and science and the state. Our aim will be to explain the role of the physical sciences in the emergence of the modern industrial world, and to build an understanding of key factors in the vibrant - and troubled - ferment of human knowledge and society circa 1900.
History of Science 339: Technology and Its Critics Since World War II
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced); 11:00-12:15 TR; 4308 Social Science. Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor. Graduate students must enroll concurrently in History of Science 639.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
The course examines thinkers and social activists in the United States who questioned the dominant faith in technology from World War II until roughly 1980. The course begins by examining the tremendous enthusiasm for science and technology that emerged after World War II, inspired by the new military technologies created by scientists and engineers. These technologies include the atomic bomb, radar, digital computers, and ballistic missiles.
Some people challenged this faith in the inevitable benefits of technological change. At first this challenge was limited to a few intellectuals who criticized the consumer society of the 1950s, with its bland suburbs, conformist white-collar bureaucracies, and mind-numbing advertising. In the late 1950s, this critique was taken up by new social movements that attacked the most dramatic technological achievement of World War II, the atomic bomb. In the early 1960s, critics shifted ground to new technologies, most importantly synthetic pesticides and the automobile, and made connections with the new environmental movement. Critics of technology drew strength from the counterculture of the 1960s, which encouraged political and social activism against large-scale technologies like nuclear power. The counterculture also strengthened groups seeking to create counter-technologies, such as solar energy. Even in the midst of today's enthusiasm for everything digital, technology's critics continue to expose the dark side of technological change.
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 473: History of Mathematics
(crosslisted with Math)
3 cr.; X (either Humanities or Natural Science), A (Advanced); 8:50-10:45 T, 901 Van Vleck; Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
Instructor: staff
The course will use William Dunham's book Journey Through Genius: the Great Theorems of Mathematics to give an overall direction, and Victor Katz's History of Mathematics for depth and projects/exercises. (Dunham's book lacks material about non-Western contributions, the period 500-1500, and most of the twentieth century. Katz's book seems robust in nearly all areas.) We will emphasize mathematical ideas that developed over an extended period of time. The study of areas and volumes, e.g., begins in antiquity and continues today. Geometry is another good example.
Students should have had an introductory course in analytic geometry and calculus. This will allow them to examine first-hand the concepts presented. Assignments will usually have both mathematical and historical components. This has been designated a "writing-intensive course."
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 508: Health, Disease and Healing II
3-4 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 9:30-10:45 TR; B223 Van Vleck. Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Instructor: Richard Keller
The course examines medical developments between about 1700 and the present, concentrating on Europe. It examines such subjects as disease and demography; public health and hygiene; the medical professions; the law, the state, and medicine; public attitudes to medicine and medical practitioners; and medical ideas (both "regular" and "irregular").
History of Science 509: The Development of Public Health in America
(crosslisted with History of Medicine)
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); 1:00-2:15 TR;
5235 Medical Sciences 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. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation.
History of Science 512: Galileo Galilei: Life, Writings, and
Interpretations
3 cr.; A(Advanced); 4:00-5:15 PM TR; 6116 Social Science. Prerequisites: Open to graduates and undergraduates with sophomore honors or junior standing.
Instructor: Michael Shank
In both the popular imagination and the history of science, Galileo Galilei casts a shadow of almost mythic proportions in accounts of science and religion, as well as the history of physics and astronomy. Interpretations of his achievement and its context thus span an extraordinary range. The course offers an in-depth introduction to his writings with emphasis on his context (Pisa, Padua, and Florence), and the many interpretations of both his scientific work and his trial. The course format combines lecture and discussion.
Readings will include much of Galileo's Dialogue on the two Chief World Systems; Drake, ed., Opinions and Discoveries of Galileo; Finocchiaro, ed., The Galileo Affair; Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible; a course reader.
History of Science 517: Monsters and Science: A History of Vertebrate Paleontology
crosslisted with Geology
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); on-line course. Prerequisites: junior standing.
Instructor: Joseph L. Skulan (Geology)
Have you ever wondered how people discovered that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago? Behind the fossils in museums lies a fascinating story of exploration, discovery and controversy. Vertebrate paleontologists, the scientists who study forms of life from prehistoric and geologic times, have tried for more than two hundred years to make sense of bones, teeth and claws found all over the world. Monsters and Science describes the origin and development of vertebrate paleontology, with particular emphasis on how paleontologists have profoundly changed our view of the history of life on earth, and how they have struggled to parlay the popular appeal of their science into power in academic and scientific communities.
This course is taught entirely on-line, with 14 weekly modules consisting of written lectures and assigned readings. Students will participate in weekly moderated online discussions and additional discussions on the course bulletin board. Students who successfully complete Monsters and Science will be eligible to enroll in a weeklong, 1-credit summer field course, in which they will travel to Wyoming and excavate vertebrate fossils for the UW Geology Museum. For more information contact Dr. Joseph Skulan <lizards@geology.wisc.edu>.
History of Science 531: Women and Health in American
History
(crosslisted with Womens Studies and History of Medicine)
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); 11:00-12:15 TR; B223 Van Vleck. Prerequisites: Junior standing AND consent of instructor.
Instructor: Judith Houck
This course examines selected topics in the history of women’s relations to health and medicine. We will analyze, for example, representations of women in medical literature; women’s changing relations to male medical authority; the medicalization of childbirth; women as midwives, nurses, and physicians; and the history of anorexia nervosa. While the primary focus will be on the United States, we will benefit from exploring these issues in a comparative frame, with readings on South Asia as well.
History of Science 553: International Health and Global Society
crosslisted with Medical History and Population Health
3-4 cr.;Z (Humanities or Social Science), I (Intermediate); 2:30-3:45 TR; B231 Van Vleck. Perquisites: 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.
History of Science 561: Greek and Roman Medicine and Pharmacy
crosslisted with Medical History, History, S&A Pharmacy and Classics
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D ( Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 TR; 3335 Sterling. 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.
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 639: Studies in Technology and Its
Critics Since World War II
1 cr.; 9:55 W; 6224 Social Science. Perquisites: Graduate standing; concurrent registration in History of Science 339.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This one-credit graduate discussion seminar is required for students taking History of Science 339 and cannot be taken without concurrent enrollment in that course. The seminar will provide graduate students with advanced discussion and additional readings supplementing the themes in HS339, as well as additional written work.
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 720: Proseminar: Historiography and Methods
?3 cr.; 8:30-11:00 W; 7130 Social Science. Prerequisites:
Graduate standing.
Instructor: Michael Shank
This seminar is designed to orient first-year graduate students in the History of Science Department 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). This seminar may be of interest to graduate students in other departments who are interested in a minor in either History of Science or Science and Technology Studies. The seminar will be reading- and discussion-intensive. Assignments will include issue papers, leadership in discussion, book reviews, and a historiographical paper. In addition to many articles, the readings are likely to include Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Harvard1999); Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970); and Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988).
100 • 200 •300 • 400 • 500 • 600 • 700 • 900
History of Science 909: History of Biology and Medicine
Topic: Nature and Culture in the Museum: Europe and America, 1880-1940
3 cr.; 1:00-3:15 W; 6105 Social Science. Prerequisites: Graduate standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Lynn Nyhart
The "museum movement" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century made museums of nature and culture (including technology, art, and the decorative arts) into central public institutions across Europe and America. Despite numerous analyses of museums and museum culture produced in the past two decades, scholars have rarely ventured across the disciplinary lines drawn between museums devoted to nature and those devoted to culture. Yet ideas about the relations between nature and culture were central to many kinds of museums, especially those devoted to a particular region or locality. This course will explore the different models of the relations between nature and culture expressed in museums between about 1880 and 1940, reaching further backward or forward in time as appropriate. We will take a comparative perspective, focusing especially on museum cultures in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany.
Topics may include:
- culture growing out of nature: evolution in the museum
- humans inside or outside of "nature"?
- nature as the raw material for culture: technology, agriculture, and commerce in museums
- displaying "primitive" peoples vs. "cultured" peoples; museums of folklore
- rationales for collection and display: "object-based epistemology;" "salvage" anthropology; preserving natural and cultural heritage; using nature and art to elevate mass culture.
- different models for viewing: historical narratives, systematic typologies, encyclopedic perspectives
- who sets the agenda? Who is the imagined audience? To what extent do "museum" nature and culture reflect broader assumptions and agendas, to what extent are they peculiar to museums as institutions?
Seminar participants will be expected to prepare a 25-35 page research paper as well as being responsible for leading at least one seminar discussion. Weekly readings will range from collections of articles to monographs and essays. They will include both primary and secondary sources. Reading knowledge of a second language (German or French, in particular) is helpful but not required.
History of Science 919: Science, Medicine, and Empire
crosslisted with Medical History
3cr.; 1:30-3:30 M; 1406 Medical Sciences Center. Prerequisites: Graduate standing AND consent of instructor.
Instructor: Warwick Anderson
The course will examine the mutually productive relations of medicine, science, and the colonial state. We will review major new works in the history of colonial medicine and science, focusing on Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The emphasis will be on the role of science and medicine in the construction of race and gender, and in state formation. No expertise in regional studies or the history of medicine is required.
History of Science 950: History of Science Colloquium
0-1 cr.; 3:30-5:30 W, 6203 Social Science; Prerequisites: History of Science major; graduate standing
Instructor: Lynn Nyhart
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.