History of Science Since 1700

This course is a survey of the history of Western science & technology since the 18th century, emphasizing the development of various scientific fields within their institutional settings and the professionalization of the roles of the scientist and engineer.

It is a follow-on to History of Science to 1700 (HIST 445/645), which traces scientific ideas and practices from antiquity to the so-called "scientific revolution" of the seventeenth century. While it is helpful to have an understanding of the earlier history of science, it is not required. We begin with an overview of the scientific revolution and the work of Isaac Newton as a prelude to tracing the development of eighteenth-twentieth century science. The course is organized into three parts, roughly divided by century. In the eighteenth century Newton's new conception of how to do observational and experimental "science" (the word was not used then) spread through the west, as investigators probed new realms of astronomical, physical, chemical, magnetic, and electrical phenomena. In the nineteenth century they dug deeper into these phenomena and theories, specializing and forming the beginnings of the scientific disciplines and departments we know today. In our present century entirely new ways of looking at nature transformed astronomy, physics, the earth sciences, and the biological sciences, spurring re-groupings and redefinitions of the traditional disciplines. Technology, hitherto mostly isolated from science, became essential to the exploration of the natural world, while science correspondingly informed technical achievements.

Revised 01/30/06

HIST 446 Spring 2006 Tatarewicz