|
History 275S Spring 2000 |
Prof. Cathryn Carson Office hours: |
| Announcements: The reading schedule has been slightly modified as of 3/1/00. |
Course description
We will be aiming in the seminar for an overview of the history
of science since the Scientific Revolution, with readings from
key secondary texts. Our organizing theme will be the question:
What does it mean (historiographically, epistemologically, politically)
to put science in context? We will look at different forms
of contextualization and think about what historians can make
of them. Readings will be taken from Foucault, Rudwick,
Desmond, Smith, Latour, Geison, Forman, Harwood, Galison, Pickering,
Haraway, Prakash, Staudenmaier, and Golinski. Central problems
include the constitution of the scientific community, national
frameworks, gender, science as practice, and the relationship
of science to a host of other things (empire, technology, the
state).
Expectations
The seminar is open to all interested graduate students, and to undergraduates with the permission of the instructor. It is constructed as a history course, but it is also designed to be of interest to students in other fields, particularly science studies. No specific prerequisites are imposed; if you are concerned about your preparation, you may want to sit in occasionally on History 30B or consult R.C. Olby et al., Companion to the history of modern science (London: Routledge, 1996).
Like other 275s in the history department, the seminar aims to give you a broad introduction to the historical literature and to sharpen your skills in analysis and presentation. It makes heavy demands of reading and discussion; you will be expected to think about all the texts and participate actively. The point of the seminar is mutual education. I take participation very seriously.
Each class meeting will be led by one seminar participant, who will prepare materials for discussion. These materials must be sent out by e-mail by 8 p.m. on Sunday evening before each class. (You will thus need to have access to e-mail.) The format is fairly free, with two caveats: you will need to identify the issues or questions around which you would like to center the discussion, and you should get a sense of scholarly reactions to the text using the Isis Current Bibliographies. I will be responsible for the first weeks of class, so you can get a feel for what is expected.
By the end of the semester you will also write a historiographic review of 20-30 pages. For this assignment you will read two or more books from the secondary literature and analyze them with reference to each other and the debates in the field. You may pick any topic that interests you, as long as you treat it from the perspective of the seminar. The review will be due at the beginning of class on May 8.
Grading: 50% for seminar participation, 50% for the historiographic review.
Not required, but enthusiastically encouraged, is attendance
at the history of science colloquia, which meets every few Mondays
at 4:30 p.m. in 442 Stephens. More information is available
through the Office for History
of Science and Technology. Of direct interest for the
seminar will be the visit of Bruno Latour in April (see readings
for 3/20).
Schedule of discussions
| Date | Responsible | Principal text |
| 1/24 | Carson | Thomas S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) |
| 1/31 | Carson | Jan Golinski, Making natural knowledge: constructivism and the history of science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) |
| 2/7 | Moshfegh | Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984) |
| 2/14 | Talke | William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, ed., The sciences in enlightened Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) |
| 2/21 | HOLIDAY | |
| 2/28 | Carson | Martin J.S. Rudwick, The great Devonian controversy: the shaping of scientific knowledge among gentlemanly specialists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) |
| 3/6 | Carson | Adrian Desmond, The politics of evolution: morphology, medicine, and reform in radical London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) |
| 3/13 | Carson | Crosbie Smith, The science of energy: a cultural history of energy physics in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) |
| 3/20 | Moshfegh |
Bruno Latour, The pasteurization of France (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1988) Gerald Geison, The private science of Louis Pasteur (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) |
| 3/27 | SPRING VACATION | |
| 4/3 | Talke | Paul Forman, "Weimar culture, causality, and quantum theory, 1918-1927: adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a hostile intellectual environment," HSPS 3 (1971): 1-115. |
| 4/10 | Moshfegh | Jed Z. Buchwald, ed., Scientific practice: theories and stories of doing physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) |
| 4/17 | Moshfegh | Donna J. Haraway, Primate visions: gender, race and nature in the world of modern science (New York: Routledge, 1990) |
| 4/24 | Carson | Gyan Prakash, Another reason: science and the imagination of modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) |
| 5/1 | Talke | John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., Technology's storytellers: reweaving the human fabric (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989) |
| 5/8 | Carson | Wrap-up |
With the exception of the Forman thesis (4/3), all texts are available for purchase in the bookstores. The Forman thesis will be made available for photocopying (at cost) in the Office for History of Science and Technology (543 Stephens Hall). Occasional supplementary reading will also be made available there.
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Last modified 1 March 2000 by Cathryn Carson