Teaching of the History of ScienceAuthor(s): Mark GraubardSource: Isis, Vol. 40, No. 2 (May, 1949), p. 123Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/227042 .Accessed: 09/10/2014 12:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Isis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 158.251.134.134 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 12:17:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Teaching of the History of Science

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. A New Course in the History of Science for undergraduate and graduate students.- The new course entitled The Development of the Sciences runs for a year, of three quarters, three hours weekly. No general history of science text is used. The object is not to trace the growth of an idea, a particular science or a technique from an incipient point some- where in the crude matrix of the past to modern expanses or perfection. Rather is it to examine science in the making. Instead of emphasizing modern knowledge as our point of vantage from which to judge everyone else in the light of our own perspective, it is sought to study the science of the past as it was, the scientists as they thought, labored, or fumbled in terms of their own times, as- sumptions, beliefs, value, goals and intruding factors. The first quarter deals with the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, Ptol- emy, Pliny, Archimedes, Euclid, Cato, Varro, and Greek Alchemy. The second embraces the middle ages, specifically alchemy, astrol- ogy, magic and witchcraft as noted in the works of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Waite's alchemical col- lections, Gassendi's attack on astrology, the Maleus maleficarum, several witch trials, Johann Wier and Bekker, and terminating with Copernicus and Vesalius. The third quarter begins with Galileo's Dialogues, Dreyer's Brake, Newton, and Boyle; continues with Magie's Source Book in Physics and Shapley and Howarth's Source Book in Astronomy, proceeds to Galton, Darwin, Mendel, and Dohzhansky; Geike, Lyell, and a few others, and finishes with Freud, Franz Alexander and the modern chimera of Lysenko. What is aimed at is not "The March of Science" but man's overt and inner conduct in the quest for truth -called science.

Mark Graubard

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE. -A course in the history of science, given for the first time at the University of Delaware in I947-48 as a seminar on the senior-graduate level, is being offered in 1948-49 as a straight lecture course on the junior level, in order to make it available to more students.

The course is presented this year, as it was last year, by Herbert H. Finch, instructor in history, as an offering of the Department of History. Representation in the class has included ad- vanced students from several fields of study, in- cluding chemical engineering, chemistry, philos- ophy, sociology, and history. The first offering of the course resulted in a number of student papers on science in the state of Delaware during each of the main eras of modern western civili- zation.

For the first year, the collateral text was the history by Dampier, and for the present year the text is the posthumous history of the physical sciences by Jeans. The basic text is the instruc- tor's own outlines and bibliographies in The His- tory of Science in Society. As the title of this process syllabus implies, a great part of the em- phasis is on the social influences as determinants of the development and directions of scientific advances. The outline covers these topics: I- Philosophy of history of science; 2 -Science in primitive culture; 3 -Science in ancient Near East civilization; 4- Science in early Greek civil- ization; 5 - Science in Hellenistic civilizations; 6- Science in early post-Hellenic civilizations; 7- Science in modern European civilization: experimentalism in early capitalism; 8 -Science in modern European civilization: Operational certainties in the Enlightenment; g- Science in modern European civilization; Reaction in Ro- manticism; Io - Science in modem European civilization; Developmental certainties in Real- ism; iI -Science in modern European civiliza- tion -Fundamental uncertainties of today; I2- Special topics in the history of science.

In the eleventh topic, Fundamental Uncertain- ties of Today, Mr Finch is almost sociological in his treatment of the subject in giving considera- tion to the functions of special agencies of re- search, such as industrial and university labora- tories; and the relationship between science and government in varying governmental philoso- phies; those of the United States, England, and the U.S.S.R. Special attention is given here to such matters as biochemistry, astrophysics and genetic physics.

To conclude the course, Mr Finch touches upon more than a score of special topics in the history of science, including philosophy, agricul- ture, society, the individual, music and drama, art, literature, religion, education, as well as the specific sciences.

123

This content downloaded from 158.251.134.134 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 12:17:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Article Contentsp.123

Issue Table of ContentsIsis, Vol. 40, No. 2 (May, 1949), pp. 93-196Front Matter [pp.93-94]Second Preface to Volume Forty: In Defense of Petrarca's Book on the Remedies for Good and Evil Fortune [pp.95-99]A Prolegomenon to the Sciences [pp.99-106]Visierkunst, Ars Visorandi, or Stereometry [pp.106-107]Metallurgical Anthropology in Hesiod and Plato and the Date of a "Phoenician Lie" [pp.108-112]Saggio di una Bibliografia Lagrangiana [pp.112-117]Obituaries [p.118]Notes and Correspondence [pp.119-122]Personalia [p.122]Teaching of the History of Science [p.123]Seventy-Third Critical Bibliography of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the History of Civilization (To November 1948) [pp.124-193]Administrative Documents [pp.193-196]Back Matter