HISTORY 654 / 854: TOPICS IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE "SCIENCE IN THE
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT." In many respects, we still live with the
legacy of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a movement of
intellectual and cultural renewal that bequeathed many patterns
of thought to the modern world. In this course, we look at the
Enlightenment in Europe as a cultural and social phenomenon and
consider the crucial role played in it by new scientific ideas.
We shall try to understand how a new model of the universe—the
outcome of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution—came to
be seen as having profound implications for human beings’
understandings of themselves, their relationship with God, their
society, and their history. Along with the works of great
thinkers such as Newton, Voltaire, and Diderot, we shall also be
looking at the part played in the Enlightenment by ordinary men
and women, and considering what the ferment of new ideas meant
to them. Instructor: Prof. Jan Golinski Email:
firstname.lastname@example.org