Week 1: Introduction |
1 |
Introductory Lecture |
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Week 2: Beginnings |
2 |
"What is Science?" |
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3 |
The Presocratics |
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Week 3: The World According to Plato and Aristotle |
4 |
Plato's World |
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5 |
Aristotle's Physics |
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Week 4: Aristotle's Biology |
6 |
Aristotle and Hippocrates on Biology and Medicine |
First Paper Due |
Week 5: Ancient Mathematics, Astronomy, and Engineering |
7 |
Ptolemy and Euclid |
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8 |
Galen and Alexandrian Engineers |
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Week 6: Science in the Middle Ages |
9 |
Arabic Science |
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10 |
Medieval European Universities |
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Week 7: Medieval Technology |
11 |
Medieval Technology |
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Week 8: The European Renaissance |
12 |
No lecture |
In-class Midterm Exam |
13 |
Patronage, Alchemy, and Humanism |
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Week 9: Revolutions in the Body and in the Stars |
14 |
Vesalius and Anatomy |
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15 |
The Copernican Revolution |
Second Paper Due |
Week 10: Observatories and Ellipses |
16 |
Tycho Brahe and the New Astronomy |
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17 |
Kepler: Mysticism and Mars |
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Week 11: Galileo: Astronomy, and the Church |
18 |
Interpreting Scripture and the Heavens |
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Week 12: Galileo's Physics and Bacon's Collecting |
19 |
Galileo's Physics |
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20 |
Bacon and the Culture of Collecting |
Second Paper Revision Due |
Week 13: Descartes's New Methods for the New Sciences |
21 |
Descartes's Mechanical Philosophy |
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Week 14: Newton and Newtonianism |
22 |
Newton's Dynamics and Gravitation |
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23 |
Newton's Optics and the Culture of Newtonianism |
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Week 15: Laboratories, Societies, and Gentlemen |
24 |
England's Royal Society |
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25 |
No lecture |
Final Paper Due |