Scientific Revolution
Spring 2010
'There was no such thing as The Scientific Revolution, and this is a course about it.' This paraphrase of the first line of Steven Shapin’s The Scientific Revolution perfectly introduces the paradox at the core of this class. On the one hand, there was no such thing as a single event or a single process that we can unquestionably identify as the beginnings, as the origins of what today we call modern science. And yet on the other hand, there is no doubt that by the end of the seventeenth century a completely new way of looking at the universe, of manipulating with its objects and of conceptualizing its phenomena emerged as a new paradigm of knowledge and established the foundations of the natural sciences as we understand them today.
With the help of intellectual, philosophical, cultural, visual, and technical materials, the course tries to make sense of the revolution in knowledge that occurred in early modern Europe and of how it dramatically changed the world.
The class fulfills the Second Writing Requirement.
With the help of intellectual, philosophical, cultural, visual, and technical materials, the course tries to make sense of the revolution in knowledge that occurred in early modern Europe and of how it dramatically changed the world.
The class fulfills the Second Writing Requirement.
