English 5563: The History of Scientific and Technical Literature

Fall 2000
Dr. Denise Tillery
Office: Morrill 302-A
Phone: 744-6217
Office hrs: Tues/Thurs 1:00-2:00, Wed 1:00-3:00

Course Description

This class will cover the history of scientific and technical writing from Ancient Greeks through the twentieth century. It will be an historical survey; we will seek thematic links between different historical periods, and move beyond the concepts of scientific "breakthroughs" or "revolutions" to try to understand how different ways of understanding the universe come in and out of favor at different times. We will analyze the texts that scientists produce, and discuss how these texts interacted with and changed the societies that produced them. The final goal of the class is an understanding of the general history of science and how science both shapes and is shaped by the culture that surrounds it.

We will also focus on stylistic changes to scientific writing that paralleled changes in scientific thought. You'll read a considerable amount of scholarship in addition to the primary sources, and you'll be expected to draw upon that scholarship in your papers and exams.

Course Requirements

Weekly discussion questions are questions or comments that you draw from the readings. Their purpose is to stimulate discussion and get you thinking about the readings ahead of time. Turn them in each week after class on Tuesday. Group presentations are a way to get everyone involved in discussions without the pressure of an individual presentation. Each week, a group of two or three students will lead the class in discussing the week's readings. You will each be responsible for two or three group discussions throughout the semester. The individual presentation will cover an outside source the class hasn't read; this is a way to present additional material for the class. I've established some possible topics for individual presentations and scheduled dates the topics should fall on; you can select a topic that interests you and present on that date. Exams will be patterned after the comprehensive exams and give you an idea of what to expect from those. Finally, the last four assignments will get you thinking about and working on the final paper well before the deadline. Final paper topics are up to you, though we may brainstorm potential topics in class.

Class Schedule

Unit I: Ancient Thought: Greeks and Early Science

Week 1: Aug 21-26

• Introduction: What is science? Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chapters 1-3 (pp. 1-34)

Week 2: Aug 28-Sept 1

• Ancient Beginnings: Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, chapters 1-3 (pp. 1-68); Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle, pp. 1-23. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, lines 1-264, 599-634. (all readings on reserve)

Week 3: Sept 4-8

• Plato, selections from Timaeus, (1161, paragraph c-1171 paragraph e), on reserve
• Lindberg, pp. 355-368.
• Individual presentation on Medieval English science writing

Unit Two: Early Modern Science and the "Scientific Revolution"

Week 4: Sept 11-15

• Bacon, Essays (selected). R. F. Jones, "Science and Prose Style in the Third Quarter of the Seventeenth Century."
• Selections from Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, and Zappen, "Francis Bacon and the Historiography of Scientific Rhetoric." (all readings except Bacon on reserve)

Week 5: Sept 18-22

• Shapin, selections from The Scientific Revolution (on reserve)
• Galileo, "The Starry Messenger."
• Individual presentation on invention of telescope/microscope and history of science

Week 6: Sept 25-29

• Harvey, De Motu Cordis (Anatomical Exercises), 1-118.

Week 7: fall break; Oct 4-6

• Sprat, selections from History of the Royal Society, selections from Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing (both on reserve)

Week 8: Oct 9-13

• Boyle, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature. Selections from Merchant, The Death of Nature
• Markley, "Objectivity as Ideology" (all readings on reserve)

Week 9: Oct 16-20

• Individual presentation on plain style movement and scientific prose
• Thursday: Midterm exam

Week 10: Oct 23-27

• Newton, selections from Principia, Cavendish, selections from Observations on Experimental Philosophy (on reserve)
• Individual presentation on women and the history of scientific literature

Unit Three: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Science: Popular Science and the Modern Report

Week 11: Oct 30-Nov 3

• Darwin, Origin of the Species, first half. Additional readings (on reserve)
• Individual presentation on science and race in nineteenth/twentieth centuries
• Abstract for final paper due

Week 12: Nov 6-10

• Darwin, continued, selections from Kynell and Moran, Three Keys to the Past: The History of Technical Communication

Week 13: Nov 13-17

• Einstein, Relativity, selections from Kynell and Moran

Week 14: Nov 20; Thanksgiving

• Crick and Watson, "The Structure of DNA" (on reserve), additional reading on metaphor and twentieth-century science
• Tuesday, annotated bibliography due

Week 15: Nov 27-Dec 1

• Milgram, "Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority"
• Thursday, draft final paper due

Week 16 Dec 4-8

• Hawking, A Brief History of Time
• Thursday, final paper due

Dec 11, 10:30-12:20 Final Exam