History 697S/797S. Scientific Revolution: The problem of knowledge in early modern Europe

Prof. Brian W. Ogilvie - UMass/Amherst - Spring 2006

Who, what, where, when

History 697S/797S is taught by Professor Brian Ogilvie of the UMass History Department. My office hours this semester are MW 11-12, Tu 4-5, and by appointment. My office phone is 545-1599, and my home phone is 549-9189. My e-mail is ogilvie@history.umass.edu.

The course meets Monday, 2:30-5, at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies. Note: the first meeting will take place in Herter 212.

Announcements and links

The syllabus is now available (PDF format). It lists required and recommended reading. I did not order the books through a bookstore; you should decide which ones you want to own (if you can't afford them all), order them yourself, and use the Five College libraries to get the others. Share with your classmates if you like!

Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-century England (via JSTOR). This link will work if you are connected to the UMass network or at another campus that has subscribed to JSTOR. If not, you will need to enter JSTOR through the UMass proxy server, then browse or search for the work. (It was published in Osiris, a history of science journal, in 1938.)

Handout from Feb. 6 by Damerow and Renn (PDF format) - password protected; if you didn't get the password, ask me.

Brief course description

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, something important happened to the way Europeans understood the world. This shift in understanding has conventionally been called “the Scientific Revolution.” But some modern scholars deny that such a thing ever happened. In this course we will approach the Scientific Revolution from a broad historiographical perspective, with a focus on the discipline of history of science but drawing also on intellectual history and the history of philosophy. Our trajectory will follow modern interpretations, from the metaphysical and methodological approaches that characterized the early twentieth century, through social and epistemological approaches, to the contextual, cultural approaches that characterize history of science at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By following the changing interpretations of the Scientific Revolution from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, students will come to better understand both the Scientific Revolution itself and the development of modern history of science. Students may register for this course as a readings course (697S) or a research seminar (797S).

Appendix: writing history

History is located in the disputed borderlands between the social sciences and the humanities. Many historians pride themselves on being able to draw on the explanatory power of social science while still communicating their results clearly and effectively to a general audience. To do so, historians must think and write clearly. The following handbooks and guides will help you do so.

A graduate student’s writing library

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The craft of research. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-06568-5. An excellent guide to research from the perspective of rhetoric.

Turabian, Kate. A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations. 6th ed. Revised by John Grossman and Alice Bennett. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. The nuts and bolts of formatting papers, writing footnotes, using abbreviations, etc. Your paper should follow Turabian’s guidelines.

Williams, Joseph M. Style: Toward clarity and grace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. ISBN 0-226-89915-2. The best guide to improving your writing style. Unlike Strunk and White and many other guides, Williams explains his principles carefully. The textbook edition, published by Longman, has useful exercises but omits the detailed discussion of coherence that the Chicago edition contains. The Chicago edition is also a lot cheaper. I suggest that you buy the Chicago edition but that you work through the exercises in the textbook edition, available at the DuBois Library, if you have problems applying the principles.

The American Heritage book of English usage. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. ISBN 0-395-76785-7. This is an inexpensive, up-to-date guide to grammar, word choice, gender, pronunciation, and other difficulties. There are many other usage books out there, some hoary with age but still authoritative (e.g. H. W. Fowler, Modern English usage).

Kaye, Sanford. Writing under pressure: The quick writing process. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Useful tips for those times when you need to write quickly and effectively. N.B. These should not be necessary for this course. I list it only as a general recommendation.

Miller, Casey, and Kate Swift. The handbook of nonsexist writing. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. ISBN 0-06-096238-0. An eye-opener for anyone who still thinks that “man”=“person.”