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History 30B, Spring 2000Science and Society since the Scientific Revolution |
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History 30B, Spring 2000Science and Society since the Scientific Revolution |
Basic expectations
During this semester you will write a research paper of 8-10 pages on a topic of your choice. The paper is intended to allow you to explore a topic in more depth than we can do in class. It will also give you experience in historical research and writing.
The paper should follow standard academic guidelines: double spacing, 10 or 12 point font, normal-sized margins. You must use notes (either footnotes or endnotes, plus a bibliography), and you should follow the format of the Chicago manual of style or Kate Turabian's Manual for writers of term papers, theses, or dissertations. Grammar, spelling, and proofreading count, as do such things as logic and organization.
A useful introduction to the research paper is Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The craft of research. Feel free to use other guides as well.
The paper is due on Thursday,
April 20, at the beginning of your section meeting. (For
the penalties on late papers see the course
website.) As the semester progresses we will talk
more about the paper; this handout is meant to start you
thinking.
Picking a topic
You should choose a subject based on your own interests - perhaps your major, or your interests outside of class. Brainstorm for questions you would like to know the answer to. Asking a question, after all, is key. A research paper is an argument, not a report, and you should frame it as the answer to a question. At the same time as being interesting, a good question should be answerable: you should be able to think of sources that will let you build up a case. If you could use help formulating a topic, come talk to the instructors or send us an e-mail (clcarson@socrates.berkeley.edu, kbeyer@ohst7.berkeley.edu).
You may choose any topic from
the history of science from 1700 to the present. Please
don't forget that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are
as interesting as the twentieth!
Identifying sources
Historians use two kinds of sources: primary and secondary. Roughly speaking, primary sources come from people involved in the events you are examining. In the history of science they include such things as laboratory or field notebooks, journal articles, textbooks, scientists' autobiographies, photographs, botanical samples, contemporary popularizations - the list goes on. Secondary sources are analyses by historians or other later observers, who have often studied primary sources themselves. Secondary sources have the advantage of giving you a big picture in which to answer your question, which makes them indispensable for any research project. They have the disadvantage of having perspectives of their own built in.
Berkeley has excellent collections of primary sources for the history of science, whether in the main libraries, the branch libraries (Biosciences, Physics, Geology, etc.), or the Bancroft Library (manuscript and archival materials). Whenever you can - within the constraints of library collections and languages - your research should make use of primary materials. Some topics, however, will not be amenable to primary research, in which case you will have to do a particularly good job of dealing with the secondary literature.
Sources should be used critically. This means you must consider the reliability of the source and the plausibility of the argument. There are a great number of unreliable books out there on the history of science, written by people with limited or polemical grasp of their topics. Like print materials, sources on the World Wide Web have to be used with caution. We will visit the Teaching Library for an orientation on sources. You should also feel free to ask for help.
Useful guides are: