SCIENTIFIC CHANGE
NATS 1730 6.0, 2016-17
Thursday 11:30-14:30, Vari Hall B
Course Directors
Dr E. Hamm (Fall term)
Bethune 218, (416) 736-2100 ext. 20223,
Office hours: Wednesday 12:30-14:00
Dr D. Monaldi (Winter Term)
Bethune 308, (416) 736 2100 ext. 33601,
Office hours: Friday 12:00-13:00
Course Description
This course is designed to provide you with a critical appreciation of science through the study of its history and present character, and to help you develop some of the intellectual scope and skills fundamental to a university education. You will learn important scientific concepts and study examples of scientific reasoning from different times and places, all of which will be taught in a non-technical way. This course explains scientific ideas and practices in their broad social and historical context, showing how and why science and thinking about science changes over time. The broad scope and relevance of science means that we will also have the opportunity to study some of the interactions of science, religion, and philosophy. An important aim of this course is to show that science is a human activity and a crucial part of our everyday world. That is why it is important for all educated citizens, not just scientists, to know something about science.
To succeed in this course, you will need curiosity and a willingness to learn unfamiliar ideas, attend all lectures, do the required readings, take notes from the lectures and readings, learn to express yourself in written assignments and study for examinations. NATS 1730, Scientific Change, is a General Education course intended for students without any science background and as such it has no prerequisites.
Please note, any changes, additions or corrections to this syllabus, as well as further information about assignments, will be posted on the course Moodle page.
Course credit exclusions: NATS 1710 6.0
Course Requirements
There will be two short writing assignments, a number of in-class assignments (only two per term will be graded), a mid-term and a final examination. The in-class assignments are meant to help you hone your note-taking skills and discussion skills, and give experience dealing with the material. All assigned readings are mandatory. Examinations will cover lectures and readings. A typical class consists of a lecture, an in-class assignment and a discussion period in which everyone will be expected to participate. The details of the assignments will be announced in class and on Moodle (see below). Please take note of the deadlines!
First writing assignment 20 October 20%
Fall term in class assignments various dates 5%
Mid-term examination (in class) 1 December 20%
Second writing assignment 9 February 20%
Winter term in class assignments various dates 5%
Final examination final exam period 30%
Textbooks and other Required Readings
Peter Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
Michael Frayn, Copenhagen (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 2000)
The textbooks are available at the York Bookstore.
Other reading materials will be made available on the course Moodle page, either as a pdf or you may need to link through to the York University Library.
Course Policies and Resources
Extensions on the writing assignments will only be considered if they are requested at least one week before the scheduled due date. If you do not have an approved extension, assignments handed within a week of the due date will lose a letter grade. After that the penalty increases to an additional letter grade for each day late.
Everyone should read “Writing University Papers,” a brief guide on writing papers and documenting sources. It has plenty of useful advice and is readily available on the course Moodle page.
You will have to submit a completed and signed printout of the “Academic Integrity Checklist” with each take home assignment. The checklist is available at SPARK and directly at: http://www.library.yorku.ca/spark/academic_integrity/index.html
Everyone is expected to know the information at SPARK, which is very helpful not just for this course but for all courses at York, or anywhere for that matter.
All cases of plagiarism, a serious academic offence, will be dealt with according to the York Senate Policy on Academic Honesty: www.library.yorku.ca/web/research-learn/academic-integrity.
Course Homepage, Announcements and Office Hours
This course uses the Moodle system, available at York at moodle.yorku.ca. If you are new to Moodle you will need to login with your passport York user id and password. All students are automatically “subscribed” to the course; all you need to do is enrol.
You are responsible for checking the Moodle site for this course regularly; it is the first place to go if you have any questions course content, assignments, policies, procedures and examinations.
If you need to speak with the Course Directors in person you are welcome to see us during office hours, call us or send an email. For information of a more general nature you might also try the Division of Natural Scienc e website at www.nats.yorku.ca.
Other Useful Information and Important Dates
York University offers many valuable services to help you get through your courses and to make your way through university life. York also offers help with writing, and ESL issues. See: currentstudents.yorku.ca.
The York Library and the librarians offer a variety of resources to help you with research and make better use of the library and its collections. See www.library.yorku.ca.
Best of all, just visit the library in person and read some books – you’d be amazed at the things you might learn!
Some important dates to bear in mind for this course, a “Y” course, are:
Last date to add a course without permission of instructor September 21
Last date to add a course with permission of instructor October 19
Last date to drop a course without receiving a grade February 10
Course withdrawal period (withdraw from a course and receive February 11 – April 5
a grade of “W” on transcript
A complete and authoritative list of these and other important dates can be found here www.registrar.yorku.ca/enrol/dates.
Outline of Meetings, Required Readings and Deadlines
All readings are either from the textbooks, identified by the author’s name, or posted on Moodle.
Fall Term
8 September Introduction to the course
15 September Science in antiquity
Dear, “Introduction: Science as Natural Philosophy, Science as Instrumentality”
Aristotle, selections from Physics and Politics – Moodle
Jo Marchant, “Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism: The First Computer,” The Smithsonian Magazine, February 2015 – Moodle
22 September Ancient astronomy, Arabic-Islamic Science and Copernicus
Kuhn, The Problem of the Planets” – Moodle
Ragep, “Islamic Culture and the Natural Sciences” – Moodle
29 September Galileo and the Telescope
Galileo, The Starry Messenger – Moodle
6 October Science and Religion, Galileo and the Catholic Church
Koestler, “The Trial of Galileo” – Moodle
13 October The Mechanical Philosophy and the Human Body
Descartes, “Treatise on Man” – Moodle
Dear, Ch. 1 “The Mechanical Universe from Galileo to Newton”:
“I. The World as a Machine”
“II. Mechanical Intelligibility”
“III. Problems with Mechanism”
20 October Newton and the Newtonian Synthesis
Newton, “Rules of Reasoning” – Moodle
Dear, Ch. 1 “The Mechanical Universe from Galileo to Newton”:
“IV. Newton, Mechanism, and Explanation”
27 October Fall Readings Days, 27-30 October.
3 November Ordering Nature and Society, European and Chinese Perspectives
Dear, Ch. 2, “A Place for Everything”
Elman, “China and the World History of Science, 1450-1770”
Leibniz, Novissima Sinica, “Preface” excerpts – Moodle
10 November Alchemy, Chymistry, Chemistry
Moran, “Sites of Learning and the Language of Chemistry”
Dear, Ch. 3, “The Chemical Revolution Thwarted by Atoms”
17 November Romanticism Rocks! Geology as Global science.
Goethe, On Granite – Moodle
Lyell, Principles – Moodle
24 November Darwin and Society (more global science). Review for Midterm Examination
Darwin, Origin of Species – Moodle
Dear, Ch. 4: Design and Disorder
1 December Mid-term examination, in class
Winter Term
5 January Science in the Industrial Age: Physics in the 19th Century
Dear, ch. 5: Dynamical Explanation
12 January Einstein, Space, Time, and Spacetime
John Stachel, “How did Einstein Discover Relativity?”, and
Peter L. Galison, “Einstein’s Time, or Einstein, Poincaré and Modernity: A Conversation”, both available online at https://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/einstein , under “Essays by Historians”
19 January Chemistry for Life, Chemistry for Death
Excerpts from Ludwig F. Haber, The Poisonous Cloud. Chemical Warfare in WWI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), available online as ebook at the York University Library
Excerpts from Vaclav Smil, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001)
26 January Einstein, Bohr and Quantum Mechanics
Dear, Ch. 6: How to Understand Nature?
Second assignment due in class
2 February Modern Physics and War 1
Frayn, Copenhagen, the whole play
9 February Modern Physics and War 2
Excerpt from Jeff Hughes, The Manhattan Project. Big Science and the Atom Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pdf in the course website
16 February Big Science and the Military-Industrial Complex
TBA
23 February Reading Week
2 March DNA and Discovery; Science and Gender
Race for the Double Helix: In Class film
9 March Electronic Brains
Excerpts from Jon Agar, Turing and the Universal Machine. The Making of the Modern Computer (Cambridge UK: Icon Books, 2001), pdf in the course website
16 March The Expanding Universe
TBA
Dear, Conclusion: Making Sense in Science
23 March Human History and Earth History: The Anthropocene
Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011), 842-867. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1938/842
30 March Wrap up and review for Final Examination
7-24 April Final Examination in examination period
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