Overview

HIST 404 is a course designed for science students in the last year of their B.Sc. and for history students in the last year of their BA (History). In addition to employing certain standard textbooks on the subject, the course makes fairly extensive use of primary documents written by pioneer scientists and by their disciples. Although it is suitable for students with no prior knowledge of the history of science, students enrolling in the course must have good, university level, reading and writing skills.

Does modern science owe any intellectual debts to the philosopher-scientists of Classical or Hellenistic Greece? Did scientific thinking progress or regress during the Middle Ages? Were the foundations of the Scientific Revolution laid in the Renaissance? These are some of the questions addressed in the initial units of HIST 404 that survey the background and genesis of the Scientific Revolution. The course goes on to examine the work of Galileo Galilei and other pioneer scientists in the seventeenth century including Bacon, Gilbert, Harvey, and Descartes. Unit 3 focuses on the achievements of Sir Isaac Newton, and on the popularisation of Newtonianism as a scientific world view during the Enlightenment.

The second half of the course traces the broadening scope of science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining important discoveries in the study of electricity and related phenomena as well as the “coming of age” of the disciplines of chemistry, geology, and biology. Lyell and Darwin are among the many thinkers whose work is explored in Unit 4 and Unit 5. The final unit of the course is devoted to an important issue which has proved very controversial among historians of science: the contribution of women to the evolution of scientific thought.

Outline

Evaluation

To receive credit for HIST 404, you must achieve a course composite grade of at least “D” (50 percent) and a grade of at least 50 percent on the final examination. The weighting of the course assignments is as follows:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Course Materials

Textbooks

Alic, Margaret. 1986. Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century. London: The Women's Press.

Alioto, Anthony M. 1987. A History of Western Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Schiebinger, Londa. 1989. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Williams, L. Pearce, and Henry John Steffens, eds. 1978. The History of Science in Western Civilization, Volume II: The Scientific Revolution. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Williams, L. Pearce, and Henry John Steffens, eds. 1978. The History of Science in Western Civilization, Volume III: Modern Science, 1700-1900. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Other Materials

The course materials include a study guide and a student manual.