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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 |
The final exam will be given on Wednesday, May 17, from 5-8 p.m. in 210 Wheeler Hall. Please bring blue books. The exam will cover the entire semester, though with a definite emphasis on material since the midterm. The following examples should give you an idea of the sorts of questions that will appear. Each should be answered in a paragraph of 6 to 8 sentences, preferably no more and certainly no less. In framing your answers you should aim at two things: to give a coherent and well-argued answer to the specific question, and to include enough detail (e.g., names of major figures, time location by quarter-century or so) to demonstrate your knowledge. On the exam you will be given a good choice of questions from which to select the ones you want to answer. Obviously, the topics of these preparatory questions will not limit the topics on the exam.
Note that some of the questions
are judgment calls: they can be answered in more than one
way. What matters is that you make a good argument.
1. When was "life" constituted as a subject of scientific study? Contrast older views of natural history with the slow emergence of fields like morphology and physiology.
2. What did science contribute to the "first" Industrial Revolution, the one that took place between roughly 1760 and 1830? And what to the "second," the one that came into its own in the last decades of the nineteenth century?
3. What happens to the Newtonian program of mechanical explanation by 1930? Consider the debates of the nineteenth century as well as the transformations of the twentieth.
4. In what ways was Darwin's theory of the origin of species by natural selection anchored in earlier traditions of natural history? Consider the foci of his attention, the kinds of arguments he used, and the sorts of evidence he deployed, relating them to earlier work in his field. In what ways, by contrast, did Darwin break with earlier traditions?
5. How do scientific institutions in the United States diverge from European patterns? Focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, describe the formation of an identifiably American scientific community. When does scientific leadership pass from Europe to the United States?
6. When was the "Golden
Age" of scientific research? Looking back over the
centuries, identify the period in which you would find it most
appealing to be a scientist. Justify your choice.
(Note: you may pick any era as long as you make a good argument.)