Readings
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Required books
[MMS] Bowler, Peter J., and Iwan Rhys Morus. Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780226068619.
Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. New York, NY: Anchor, 2000. ISBN: 9780385720793.
WEEKS | READINGS |
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The culture of experiment | |
2 |
"The Scientific Revolution." In MMS, pp. 23-53. Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air, and Its Effects (Oxford: H. Hall, 1660), excerpts. Shapin, Steven. "Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology," Social Studies of Science (1984): 481-520. Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "The Organization of Science." In MMS, pp. 319-340. |
A new language of science | |
3 |
"The Chemical Revolution." In MMS, pp. 55-78. Golinski, Jan. "The Chemical Revolution and the Politics of Language," The Eighteenth Century 33, no. 3 (1992): 238-251. Lavoisier, Antoine. "Preface" from Elements of Chemistry (Edinburgh, 1790), from Dover facsimile edition (1965), pp. xiii-xxxvii. Linnaeus, Carl. "Preface," "Introduction," and "Mammalia." A General System of Nature, Through Three Grand Kingdoms of Animals, Vegetables and Minerals. London, UK: Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1806. |
Science and life | |
4 |
von Liebig, Justus. "Organic Chemistry Applied to Physiology and Pathology." In Animal Chemistry. Cambridge, UK; 1842; reprint, New York, NY: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1964. pp. 1-23. Schwann, Theodor. "Theory of the Cells." In Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants. Translated by Henry Smith. London, UK: Sydenham Society, 1839, 1847.
Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "The New Biology." In MMS, pp. 165-188. |
Science, technology, and the human body | |
5 |
Maxwell, James Clerk. "The Telephone: The Rede Lecture Delivered to the Senate House of the University of Cambridge, 24 May 1878." In Empires of Physics: A Guide to the Exhibition. Cambridge, UK: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1993. ISBN: 9780906271087. "I am the Edison Phonograph," the first recorded promotional message on the Edison phonograph, recorded at the Edison Studios, New Jersey, 1906. (OGG)
Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "Science and Technology." In MMS, pp. 391-414. |
Science and religion | |
6 |
Darwin, Charles. "Struggle for Existence." Chapter 3 in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London, UK: John Murray, 1859. (PDF - 1 MB) ———. "General Summary and Conclusion." From The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 volumes. London: John Murray, 1871. (PDF) (Courtesy of eBooks @ Adelaide.)
Caputo, Marc. "Florida schools to teach evolution as 'scientific theory'." Miami Herald, 20 February 2008. Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "The Darwinian Revolution," and "Science and Religion." In MMS, pp. 129-162 and 341-366. |
Midterm exam | |
7 | No readings |
Psychiatry and society | |
8 |
Sicherman, Barbara "The Uses of a Diagnosis: Doctors, Patients, and Neurasthenia," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 32 (1977): 33-54. Freud, Sigmund The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis (1910). With introduction and commentary by Raymond E. Fancher. (PDF) (Courtesy of Dennis Nilsson, Raymond E. Fancher and Christopher D. Green.) Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "The Emergence of the Human Sciences," and "Science and Medicine." In MMS, pp. 301-307 and 439-461. |
Interpreting relativity | |
9 |
Einstein, Albert. Excerpt from "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." Beginning through Part 1: § 3, first three paragraphs. Galison, Peter. "Einstein's Clocks: The Place of Time." Critical Inquiry 26 (Winter 2000): 355-389.
Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "Twentieth-Century Physics." In MMS, pp. 253-276. |
Physics and war | |
10 |
Smyth, Henry DeWolf. Excerpts from A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes Under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940-1945 (1945). (PDF) (Download the complete the report.) Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "Science and War." In MMS, pp. 463-486. Links to four academic symposia discussing Copenhagen [scroll down] |
Cold war science | |
11 |
Badash, Lawrence. "From Security Blanket to Security Risk: Scientists in the Decade after Hiroshima." History and Technology 19 (September 2003): 241-256. Edward Teller's testimony in the J. Robert Oppenheimer Hearing Before Personnel Security Board, Washington, DC, April 28, 1954. Kaiser, David. "The Atomic Secret in Red Hands? American Suspicions of Theoretical Physicists During the Early Cold War." Representations 90 (Spring 2005): 28-60. Additional background
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Eugenics and social control | |
12 |
Davenport, Charles B. "The Effects of Race Intermingling," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 56 (1917): 364-368. (PDF) Buck v. Bell, U.S. Supreme Court, 274 US 200 (1927). (PDF)# "An Act to Provide for the Sexual Sterilization of Inmates of State Institutions in Certain Cases," Virginia Code chapter 394, 20 March 1924. (PDF)#
Dorr, Gregory M. "Assuring America's Place in the Sun: Ivey Foreman Lewis and the Teaching of Eugenics at the University of Virginia, 1915-1953." Journal of Southern History 66 (May 2000): 257-296. Additional backgroundBowler and Morus. "Biology and Ideology." In MMS, pp. 415-438. |
Engineering life | |
13 |
Berg, Paul, et al. "Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules." 1975. (PDF)#
Additional backgroundRogers, Michael. "The Pandora's Box Congress." Rolling Stone 189 (June 19, 1975): 37-40, 42, 74, 77-78, and 82. Bowler and Morus. "Genetics." In MMS, pp. 189-212. |