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Re: [Phys-l] history of science



For what its worth, some years ago taught a 2 semester course for students who were not science majors about why we believe the earth goes around the sun.
It began with the preSocratic greeks, then the various post-Socratic Greeks, to Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and then special relativity. It seemed to work well. We did the science and the history together. They experienced in deep ways, for example the geocentric-heliocentric shift...at the time I called it a revolution, but am less inclined to here....as well as the Aristotole, Galileo, Newton shift, and finally the shift to special relativity.
The students found it very interesting. We had labs that dealt with the issues. Being a Catholic school, it allowed me to discuss the history of the language of their religion, as well as the connections between religion and science.

So "revolutions" in scientific thought can be do while doing the science as well. I didn't try qm however because the context would have taken too long to develop.

joe

Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. Ph.D.
Retired Professor of Physics
Co-Director
Northern Indiana Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Collaborative
574-276-8294
inquirybellina@comcast.net




On Apr 23, 2011, at 8:59 PM, John Denker wrote:

On 04/23/2011 02:23 PM, Krishna Chowdary wrote:
this is for a team-taught interdisciplinary program that
will be studying revolutions in physics and theater (and possibly
music) in the early modern period (e.g. Galileo, Shakespeare) and in
the early 20th century (relativity and QM for the physics). The
program will be at the introductory and general education level.

This is almost certainly a bad idea, for a number of reasons.

I wish you well. Along with lots of other folks, I would be
delighted if you succeed, but it seems unlikely. This has been
tried thousands of times, and it always fails. Maybe you have
found the philosopher's stone that will allow it to succeed,
but it seems unlikely.

You can teach the history of science, or you can teach an
introductory course, but not both.

The introductory course should proceed step by step. It should
be a simple, orderly, logical building-block process. You violate
these principles at your peril. Alas, the actual history was
not simple nor orderly nor logical, and did not proceed step by
step. Hence the "revolutions".

There is no way students can appreciate revolutionary science
before they know what non-revolutionary science looks like.
There is no way they can understand that QM was a revolutionary
departure from classical physics before they understand classical
physics. There is no way they can understand how Beethoven or
Brahms broke the laws of classical music until they know what
the classical laws were.

The course description sounds like teaching beginners to swim
by throwing them into a maelstrom.

I'm all in favor of a course on the history of science, but it
must be considered an advanced course, open to those who already
understand science and already understand how history is done.
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