STS 2821 - [Science in Western Civilization: Newton to Darwin, Darwin to Einstein]

(crosslisted) BSOC 2821, HIST 2820
(HB) (HA-AS, HST-AS)

Fall or Spring. Not offered: 2020-2021. Next offered: 2021-2022. 4 credits. Student option grading.

S. Seth.

This course offers a history of science in its social, political, cultural, and intellectual contexts from the death of Isaac Newton (1727) to the end of the Second World War. In the first part of the class we examine the spread of a “Newtonian” view of the world throughout the eighteenth century and the importance of the mathematical and experimental sciences to the social and political ideologies of the European Enlightenment, concluding with a discussion of the “chemical revolution” and the death of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier—discoverer of Oxygen—at the hands of French revolutionaries. Part two explores the crucial importance of the industrial revolution to the development of thermodynamics and electrodynamics, particularly in England and Germany. At the same time, we will investigate the novel cultures of science that came into being in the nineteenth-century, and the clashes between gentlemen-practitioners and a new breed of professional ‘scientists’ and ‘engineers’. Part three takes up the history of medicine and geology, essential topics in their own right, and necessary elements for an understanding of the development of Darwin’s theory of evolution (and related topics, such as social Darwinism and eugenics), examined in the fourth section of the course. In part five we turn to the two “pillars of modern physics”, the quantum and relativity theories, as well as the role of science and technology in the First World War. The course ends with an in-depth look at the “physicists’ war” and attempts by allied and German scientists to construct an atomic bomb. Course materials include a variety of primary and secondary sources as well as novels, plays, and films.