Courses: Spring 2005
History of Science 202: The Making of Modern Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 11:00 TR, 1300 Sterling, 2 hrs lecture, 1 hr discussion; Open to freshmen. (See also the parallel course, Integrated Liberal Studies 202, which meets with Hist. Sci. 202 and carries Natural Science credit.)
Instructor: Lynn Nyhart
This course offers an introduction to the history of the sciences between the late seventeenth century and the early twentieth century, with the aim of understanding how science came to be so important in modern culture. We will treat such pivotal intellectual developments as Newtonianism, Darwin's evolution theory, the conservation of energy, and the sciences of the invisible. We will seek to understand the relationship between these ideas and the broader cultural context in which they took place, paying particular attention to the processes by which scientists and non-scientists have assimilated new information and changed their ideas about nature. We will see how scientific ideas have developed in relation to religious belief systems, on the one hand, and technology, on the other. These big, messy, important relationships are among the most important in our culture's history and remain central to understanding the condition of modern Western and global culture today.
Requirements: 3-4 take-home essays, participation in discussion sections (including informal writing), weekly reading averaging about 60-80 pages.
History of Science/History of Medicine 212: The Physician in History
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 2:25 MW, 6104 Social Science, plus 1 hr discussion
Instructor: Thomas Broman
This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine over a long period of development, and it is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, and describes how physicians have used those meanings as a source of status and authority in different ages. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course attempts to challenge some widely held assumptions about the ways that experimental science has contributed to modern medicine.
The historical survey is divided into 3 units. The first unit examines how our ideas of "illness" have evolved since the time of the ancient Greeks, and how our modern conceptions of illness emerged from the experimental science of the 19th century and the highly technology-based medical practice of the 20th century. The emphasis of this section is on the important continuities that exist between our time and the ancients' ideas of illness, as well as on the profound consequences of our own ideas of what it means to be "healthy" and "sick". In this section we also will examine the connections between medicine and religious and magical beliefs.
The second unit of the course focuses on the role of physicians in their roles as both healers and supervisors of the health care system between the Middle Ages and today. In this section of the course, we will discuss the establishment of medicine as one of the disciplines located in the new universities of the late 12th and 13th centuries. We then will proceed to a consideration of the competition faced by physicians from other healers in the 17th and 18th centuries, and then finally to the growing prestige and power of medicine, as it affected the social standing of physicians, in the later 19th and 20th centuries.
Finally, we will discuss the problem of health as both a social and political problem. This part of the course will take its point of departure in the later Middle Ages, when the spread of the Black Death called governments' attention to the need to make provisions for public heath. We will see how those mechanisms for guarding public health evolved between the Middle Ages and the 19th century, when the explosive growth of cities and the return of dangerous epidemic diseases gave new urgency to problems of public health.
Course Requirements: The basic requirement for the course consists of three 5-6 page papers, one assigned at the end of each unit, in which students respond to a question about the major themes of the unit. Discussion sections will also feature some shorter and more informal writing assignments.
Texts: New reading materials are being selected for the course, which has been extensively restructured from earlier versions. Therefore at present no readings have been finalized, although there will no doubt be a xeroxed packet as the primary source of readings.
History of Science 230: Agriculture and Social Change in Western History
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary); 9:30-10:45 TR, 10 Ag Hall; Open to freshmen.
(crosslisted with Rural Sociology)
Instructor: Jess Gilbert
Agricultural practices and social history from prehistoric times to the present. Topics include origins of agriculture, feudalism, agriculture in the Industrial Revolution, farming in America, and the consequences of the Green Revolution.
History of Science 280: Honors Seminar
Topic: Einstein and the Modern World, 1905-2005
3 Honors cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); satisfies Communications requirement Part B; Prerequisite: Communications Requirement Part A must be satisfied. Open to non-honors students with consent of instructor. Open to Freshmen. 1:20-3:15 M, 4322 Social Science
Instructor: Richard Staley
This honors course examines Einstein's extraordinary impact in physics and culture. The course surveys his life through his education in Germany and Switzerland; his work in the Patent Office in Bern and as a feted Professor in Berlin; and his life as scientific sage in Princeton. A century has passed since the publication of his early work on light quanta and relativity, which allows us to assess both what those works meant in their context, and how their author's extraordinary career has shaped perceptions of science to the present day. We will examine Einstein's papers and key historical studies to help us understand changing concepts of space and time, Einstein's social relations and political views, the relations between theory and experiment in his research, and so-called "Jewish physics" in Nazi Germany. A background in physics will not be assumed, but students should be ready to grapple with Einstein's major conceptual achievements. Developing independent projects, students will be able to investigate how factors as diverse as contemporary technology and modern art may have helped shape or been inspired by Einstein's research. The course requires a series of informal and formal writing assignments, leading up to a research paper of 8-10 pages with a major revision. Students will share their research projects with the class in oral presentations at the end of the semester.
History of Science/History of Medicine 284: The Physician in History - Honors
1 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 7:30-8:30 pm R, 7130 Social Science. Prerequisites: Con reg for honors in Hist Sci/Hist Med 212 or cons inst. Open to freshmen.
Instructor: Thomas Broman
This course is a one-credit honors option that accompanies HOS/HOM 212. By signing up for this course and registering simultaneously for honors in 212, you will receive 4 credits of honors course work. Because we meet in a seminar-type discussion format, enrollment is limited to 12.
In 284, we meet once a week for an hour to discuss a common reading that deals with one of the major themes in medical history. Among these themes are the experience of death, religious belief and the limits of human power, and science and the professional authority of physicians. The majority of readings are drawn from literature, such as Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, The Imaginary Invalid by the French dramatist Molière, The Death of Ivan Illyich by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, Doctor Zay (a 19th-century novel about a female physician in Maine) by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. From time to time we have also read and discussed works by historians, such as Faith, Reason and the Plague in 17th-Century Tuscany by Carlo Cipolla, and A Midwive's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
The aim of these discussions is to allow students an opportunity to think in depth about the place of medicine in the history of Western culture, and to discover how our ideas about illness and death have changed over time. Thus the aim is not so much use the readings to lay out a particular story of how ideas about health and illness have changed through history as it is to examine a set of issues that defines the place of medicine in our culture.
Requirements: Apart from doing assigned readings and attending weekly discussions, each student is asked to prepare one 2–3 page "think piece" as an introduction for one week's discussion, and to expand the think piece into a 5-page paper at the end of the semester.
History of Science 311: Schools and Learning in the Medieval World
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 9:30-10:45 TR, 1641 Humanities; Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor.
(crosslisted with History, Medieval Studies, & Classics)
Instructor: William Courtenay
An introduction to the various forms of education in the Middle Ages and their effect in shaping the childhood and adolescent experience of literate medieval men and women. Some attention will also be given to the medieval origins of such modern educational institutions as the public grammar school and the University.
History of Science 323: The Scientific Revolution: from Copernicus to Newton
(crosslisted with History 323)
3 cr. Bestows humanities credit at the intermediate/advanced level. Weekly quizzes, essay midterm and final. Prerequisites; junior standing or consent of instructor. 1:00-2:15 TR, 5231 Social Science. Graduate students must enroll simultaneously in Hist. Sci. 623.
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 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
3-4 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); lectures 8:50 MW, discussion 8:50 F (undergrads), discussion TBA for grads. 6240 Social Science Prerequisite: junior standing.
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 interest. 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. After this discussion of Enlightenment culture and its legacy, we will examine how individual sciences were shaped by the currents of Enlightenment thought. This study will cover a broad range of disciplines, including chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, geology, anthropology, history, and the philosophy of language.
History of Science 326: History of Physics: The Modern Period
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 11:00 MWF, 4308 Social Science; junior standing.
Instructor: Richard Staley
At the dawn of the twentieth century physicists won a new world view from the measurement of space and time and new theories of matter; by mid-century they had delivered a weapon that shadowed an era; and at century's end cosmologists sought ways to describe the first seconds of evolution on the basis of astronomical observations. This course will explore the span of physics from the laboratory bench to the congressional lobbyist. By setting the discipline in social context we will investigate the changing relations between modern science and modern culture. In addition to tracing the unfolding philosophical and technological implications of physics, we will examine the nature of its debts to industry, military concerns and government, and explore the perspective that anthropologists and sociologists have offered on its practices. Charting the rise of the physics discipline from the opening of micro-physics in the 1890s to its status as the pattern for big science? (and beyond?) Allows us to approach a number of questions. How has the nature of our knowledge of the physical world been changed by the dynamic interplay between theory and experiment, the tensions between national and international interests, and the stresses and opportunities of hot and cold wars?
History of Science 350 Lecture 1
Topic: History of the Printed Scientific Book and Journal
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); prerequisites: So honors or junior standing; 3:30-5:30 pm T; 976 Memorial Library.
Instructor: Robin Rider
Using as examples many rare books in Special Collections and a variety of other printed and electronic resources, this course will explore the printing and publication of science from the late 15th century to the present, with attention to cultural, economic, social, esthetic, and technological factors affecting the dissemination of scientific ideas. The reading list will draw from history of science and technology, history of the book, and cultural history.
History of Science 350 Lecture 2
Topic: Africa's Encounters with the West
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 9:55 MWF; 4322 Social Science.
Instructor: Libbie Freed
Westerners (as well as many Africans) often use science, technology, and medicine both as a framework to explain Africa's problems (poverty, deforestation, disease, underdevelopment, lack of industries or education or scientific research, etc.) and at the same time look to science, technology, and/or medicine to solve those problems. This view is both simplistic and revealing: it illustrates the international authority and hegemony western science, technology, and medicine have achieved, but ignores the long and often checkered history they have had in Africa.
Science, technology, and medicine influenced when and how Europeans got to Africa, what they were looking for, and even how they envisioned both Africa and Africans once they got there. Similarly, Africans' own traditions and techniques have influenced encounters between Africans and Westerners, as well as Africans' responses to western science, technology, and medicine. The course will examine specific encounters ranging from the early European trade with Africa in the 16th century, through explorations of Africa's interior, the colonial period, and Africa's continued unenviable place in western hierarchies of health, wealth, and productivity at the end fo the 20th century.
History of Science 350 Lecture 3
Topic: Science and Exploration
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 3:30 R; 4322 Social Science; Lab 3:30 - 5:30pm T, 6102 Social Science.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
This course examines how European concepts of nature colored - and were themselves colored by - early modern European exploration of the globe during the two centuries or so following Columbus' ‘discovery' of the New World. Our survey of this shifting terrain begins with a sketch of the various cultural frameworks (cosmographical, theological, political, economic) through which Europeans viewed the seas, skies, and populations - human and otherwise - of the Indies both east and west. We then look at some early modern European institutions as sites for synthesizing natural knowledge about these new worlds, such as cabinets of curiosity, overseas trading companies, religious orders devoted to the foreign missions, the first scientific societies, and the early modern state. The final section of the course focuses on the intersection of early modern European travel writing and the literature of scientific discovery, with a particular emphasis on gender, utopianism, and social satire.
History of Science 401: History of Pharmacy
2 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 11:00 MW, 2002 Rennebohm. Perquisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor.
(crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy)
Instructor: John Scarborough
Pharmaceutical field, from antiquity to modern medical care; professional; structuring in principle countries of the West.
History of Science 517: Monsters and Science: A History of Vertebrate Paleontology
(crosslisted with Geology)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); junior standing; Internet course only.
Instructor: Joseph Skulan
A History of Vertebrate Paleontology describes the origin and development of vertebrate paleontology, with particular emphasis on how paleontologists have struggled to parlay the popular appeal of their science into power, if not respectability, in academic and scientific communities. View the website for information on this course. http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g517
History of Science 524: The Medical History of Sex and Sexuality
(crosslisted with Medical History and Womens Studies)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 9:30-10:45 TR; 479 Van Hise; Prerequisites: previous history course (including medical history and history of science) preferred.
Instructor: Judith Houck
What causes homosexuality? Can frigidity in women best be cured by a pill, an analyst’s couch, or sweeping social change? Are Sexual psychopaths sick or criminal? What determines a person’s sex? Are there therapeutic uses for sex toys?
Over the course of the twentieth century, medicine and biomedical science have become increasingly influential in the social and cultural lives of Americans. This course looks at the changing place of medicine in our public and private sexual lives. We will be guided by five particular questions: How has medicine (and scientific authority) helped to define and control appropriate sexual behavior? How has medicine become involved in the definition and creation of sex? What do medical interventions reveal about social and cultural ideas of sex and sexuality? How do campaigns against sexual disease illuminate cultural judgments about social groups? How do boundaries defining appropriate sexual behavior also define appropriate sex/gender roles?
History of Science 536: The History of the Social Sciences
(crosslisted with History)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced); Lectures MWF 11:00, 2619 Humanities; Discussion Sections: Extra meetings to be arranged (Graduates), F 11:00 (Undergraduates) Office Hours: Wednesday and Friday afternoons (prior arrangement advisable); Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. Not open to students who have had or are taking Hist of Science 205.
Instructor: Victor Hilts
This course will focus upon the development of the social sciences from the eighteenth century until the mid twentieth century. Lectures will pay attention not only to the history of ideas but also to their historical context. There will be two hour examinations and one final examination. With the approval of the instructor, undergraduates who receive a grade of B or better on both hour examinations may write a short paper (10-15 pg.) in lieu of the final examination. Graduate students will ordinarily write a 15-20 page term paper in lieu of the final exam.
History of Science 555: Undergraduate Seminar
3 cr.; A (Advanced); 1:20-3:15 W, 6304 Social Science. Prerequisites: Open to History of Science majors only; initial preference to seniors.
Instructor: Victor Hilts
This seminar introduces History of Science majors to the process of doing history, not just reading it. The course will guide students through the steps involved in producing a 15 to 25-page paper based on original historical research using primary sources. These steps include topic selection, bibliographies, interpretation of sources, and techniques for writing and revising the paper. An overall theme for the semester will be chosen. However, students who have research topics already in mind will be able to write papers on those topics.
History of Science 562: Byzantine Medicine and Pharmacy
(crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, Medical History and Medieval Studies)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 TR, 2327 Sterling; junior or senior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: John Scarborough
Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350-c. 1400 A.D.).
History of Science 623: Studies in Early Modern Science
1 cr.; A (Advanced); 5:00-6:00 R, 6304 Social Science; Prerequisites: grad standing; concurrent registration in Hist Sci 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.
History of Science 668: Food, Health, Society: Historical Perspectives
(crosslisted with Medical History)
3 cr.; 11:00-12:15 TR, 382 Van Hise; Prerequisites: jr standing
Instructor: Frederick Gibbs
Diet and health have always gone hand in hand, but what people have eaten to restore or maintain health has undergone constant and sometimes radical transformations over time. This course on food, health, and society explores how medical theories and Western cultural contexts have come together to shape dietary fashion from antiquity to the present (or, as some would say, from Athens to Atkins). We will take a thematic approach to the general topic of food and health, each week dedicated to a particular philosophy of diet and its implications and/or a particular kind of food or drink (herbal remedies, spices, wine, caffeine, sugar, etc.) and its perceived medical virtues. How and why did certain foods become popular as means to health at various times? What caused them to fall out of favor? More broadly, what were the cultural, political, and economic consequences of such fancies? How do our modern ideas about diet square with historical views? A fairly heavy reading load allows class time to be mostly discussion complemented by short lectures. Students will be evaluated by 1-2 page writing projects roughly each week and a 15 minute presentation near the end of the semester.
History of Science 907: Seminar on Postwar Technology and Its Critics
3 cr.; 2:25-5:00 R, 6105 Social Science; Prerequisites: graduate standing.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This graduate reading seminar will introduce students to the history of postwar technology, with a focus on oppositional currents. No background in history of technology is assumed. The course is divided into three parts. The first part will introduce students to the historiography of technology, with readings selected from classic and recent works, such as Mumford’s Technics and Civilization. The second part will sample recent secondary literature on postwar technology and its critics. Topics in this section may include atomic weapons, technology and the Cold War, nuclear power, environmentalism, and social movements of the 1960s. The third section will examine some classic primary works of the period, such as Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, Roszak’s Making of a Counter Culture, or Galbraith’s New Industrial State.
Requirements for this course include a literature review or research proposal, along with brief written assessments of the weekly readings, shared with the class by email.
History of Science 915: Seminar-Science in America
(crosslisted with Medical History)
3 cr.; 1406 Medical Sciences Center; Prerequisite: Graduate standing.
Instructor: Ronald Numbers
This course will requires consent of instructor.
History of Science 919 - Lecture 1
Topic: Imagining the Global Unconscious: Histories and Literatures of
Psychoanalysis and Colonialism
(crosslisted with Medical History)
3 cr; 1:15-3:15 W, 1406 Med Sci Center; Prerequisites: Grad standing and consent of instructor
Instructor: Warwick Anderson, Richard Keller
For most of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis was a tool both of empire and of anti-imperialism. Insights from psychoanalysis shaped European ideas about the colonial world, the character and potential of native cultures, and the anxieties and alienation of displaced white colonizers and sojourners. Moreover, this intense and intimate engagement with empire came to shape the global psychoanalytic subjectivities that emerged in the twentieth century - whether European or non-European. Our understandings of culture, citizenship, and self have a history that is both colonial (and thus “global”) and psychoanalytic - yet the history of this intersection has been scarcely explored, and never examined in comparative perspective.
Beginning with close readings of key psychoanalytic texts, colonial literature, and existing studies of psychoanalysis and colonialism, the seminar will explore the uses of psychoanalysis for the framing of colonial citizenship and the impact of empire in the making of the modern psychoanalytic subject. Sessions will be co-led by faculty and graduate students, with occasional participation by visiting faculty from other institutions. Prospective students are encouraged to contact Professors Anderson (whanderson@med.wisc.edu) and Keller (rckeller@wisc.edu) for further information.
History of Science 919 - Lecture 2
Topic: Seminar-A History of Reproduction in the United States
(crosslisted with Medical History)
3cr.; 4:00-6:00 pm M, 123 Van Hise; Prerequisites: Grad standing and consent of instructor
Instructor: Judith Houck
This course examines the history of reproduction over the course of United States history with several questions in mind: How have women fought to gain control over their fertility? How has reproductive control been withheld from women? How have reproductive choices been influenced by race, class, ability, age, sex, and place? How has the relationship between sexuality and reproduction changed over time? How has the state been involved in determining reproductive choices? How has medicine figured into the history of reproduction? How does the history of reproduction inform the current discussion of reproductive choice?
History of Science 950: History of Science Colloquium
0-1 cr.; A (Advanced) 3:30-5:30 W, 6102 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.