Re: History of Science

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 12:57 PM 11/7/00 -0500, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
> 1) Can somebody suggest a good available textbook for not
> very sophisticated students? Include the ISBN, if possible.

I can't help there.  Sorry.  See below for possibly constructive suggestions.

> 2) Also a textbook which can help me to develop the course.
> The content of the course would be very much up to me.

Suggestions:
  a) The Encyclopedia Britannica has a fairly nice ten-page article on
"SCIENCE, The History of".
  b) Anybody who is even remotely interested in the history of science
should read
        Richard S. Westfall
        _Never at Rest, a biography of Isaac Newton_
        http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521274354/

This is an awesome book.  Westfall spent 20 years working on it.

The book doesn't just cover Newton;  by putting his work in context, it
winds up giving a sweeping picture of math, science, and life in general at
the time of the Scientific Revolution.

At 05:21 PM 11/8/00 -0500, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> In my opinion elements of history of science for science majors
> should be presented in the context of science courses, such as
> mechanics, thermodynamics, e&m, genetics, organic chemistry,
> or astronomy.

My opinion differs.

1a) For one thing, the approach suggested above is not supported by typical
existing textbooks.  The texts sometimes mention the attribution of some of
the key ideas, but this is about one percent of what you would need for a
meaningful discussion of the history of science, and a distorted percent at
that.

1b) More importantly, there is a good reason _why_ the texts don't go into
the real history of science.  As I said before, the real history of science
is more complicated and more confusing than real science.  Consider a
typical student who is trying to learn, say, calculus.  The student
probably wants to follow the path of least resistance.
 -- The student probably doesn't much care which of the ideas were due to
Newton and which were due to Wallis, or Descartes, or Leibnitz, or Riemann,
or whomever.
 -- More importantly, the student probably doesn't want to hear about all
the potholes and blind alleys that were explored along the road to our
current understanding.  But these are a hugely important part of the real
history.

To be explicit:  In my opinion, History of Science is an advanced course,
open to those who have already taken a calculus-based physics course.

> A course for non-science majors should not ignore their limitations.

True, of course.

> It should be a cultural "science appreciation"
> course with a mixture of real science and real history.

2a) Hmmm.  A mixture of real science and real history... That sounds
hard.  Would that use two texts (one science book and one history
book)?  Or is there a specialized science+history combination text out there?

2b) This reminds me of an old joke:
  Question:  Why do baseball players get paid more than scientists?
  Answer:  Would you pay to watch a scientist work?

In this vein, I understand how one might construct a "history/appreciation"
course for baseball or some other spectator sport.  It would not require
the students to play the game at the Major League level, but they should at
least have watched the game enough to know how it is played.

By the same token, since science is not a spectator sport, I am skeptical
that it is possible to construct a worthwhile "history/appreciation of
science" course for students who don't know enough science to know what the
issues are.

> Serious History of Science topics can not be developed with very limited
> preparations.

Agreed.

But that leads to the question of whether it is worth teaching
_non-serious_ History of Science topics.  When it comes to bread, people
say half a loaf is better than none.  But when it comes to mercury lamps,
half a bulb is not better than none;  a broken bulb is a piece of dangerous
junk, and I have to pay somebody to get rid of it.