Administrative Information:

Dr. Eric D. Kupferberg

Program in Science, Technology and Society

Office Hours: TBA

617-432-4020; edkupfer@mit.edu

Lectures: Mondays & Wednesdays 12:30-2:00

Course Books: (available through or other web sources)

Philip Appleman, ed., Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979).

Diane B. Paul, Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995).

Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1961, 1989).

Michel Morange, A History of Molecular Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).

Recommended Course Books: (available through internet sites, and on Reserve at Hayden Library)

R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge, eds., Companion to the History of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1990).

Stellar Access:

A majority of assigned readings will be posted on the course Stellar site, along with weekly study guides and lecture outlines.

Assignments:

There will be three analytical papers, a midterm examination in class, and a final examination. The first paper (4-5 pages) will be due on March 8^th; the second paper (5-6 pages) on April 7^th, and the final paper (11-14 pages) on Friday, May 7^th. Details and requirements for the three papers will be circulated in class. No late papers will be accepted. In addition, you will be expected to submit a weekly “reading log” for assigned materials. These short reports (200-400 words) should be well-written, and emailed to the entire class. Specific instructions for the reading logs will be given in class.

Grading:

Your final grade will be based on: Paper 1 (15%); Paper 2 (15%); Paper 3 (20%); Midterm (15%); Final Exam (20%); and Participation in Class Discussions and Reading Logs (15%). Attendance in sections is mandatory. The course readings should be completed before each lecture.

Feb. 4^th – Introduction or What is History of Science?

Feb. 9^th – Culture of Newtonianism

Richard S. Westfall, “Chapter 6: Organization of the Scientific Enterprise,” in The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 105-119.

James B. Conant, ed., “5. The Discovery of Boyle’s Law,” in, Case 1, Robert Boyle’s Experiments in Pneumatics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 57-67.

Steven Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology,” Social Studies of Science (1984): 481-520. (Available through JSTOR)

Feb. 11^th – The Enlightenment, the Rise of the Human Sciences, and Natural History

Marquis de Condorcet, “The Tenth Stage: The Future Progress of the Human Mind,” in Condorcet: Selected Writings, ed. Keith Michael Baker (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1976), 258-282. Also available on-line www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/progress/CondorcetChapt10.html; or, ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/~hist280/research/condorcet/pages/progress_english_tenth.html

Adam Smith, “Chapter 1: Of the Division of Labor,” in The Wealth of Nations, Books I-III (London: Penguin, 1986), 107-121.

Neil McKendrick, “The Role of Science in the Industrial Revolution,” in Science & Culture in the Western Tradition, ed. John. G. Burke (Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick, 1987), 157-159.

Neil McKendrick, “Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline,” in Science & Culture in the Western Tradition, ed. John. G. Burke (Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick, 1987), 160-162.

Carl Linnaeus, “Introduction” and “Preface,” Critica Botanica (London: Ray Society, 1938), xix-xxvii.

Carl Linnaeus, “Introduction,” and “Outline of Mammalia,” A General System of Nature, (London: Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1806), 3-9.

Feb. 16^th – No Class. MIT Holiday

Feb. 18^th – Enlightenment Chemistry

(b) Carleton E. Perrin, “The Chemical Revolution,”  in Companion to the History of Modern Science, eds. R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge (New York: Routledge, 1990), 264-277.

Joseph Priestly, “Of Dephologisticated Air, and of the Constitution of the Atmosphere,” and Antione Laurent Lavosier, “”Memoir on the Nature of the Principle which Combines with Metals During their Calcination and Which Increases their Weight,” in A Source Book in Chemistry: 1400-1900, eds. Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 112-122, 154, 163-174.

Antione Laurent Lavoisier, “Preface,”in Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1965), xii-xxxvii. Available on-line: acd.ucar.edu/textbook/ch1/box3/Lavoisier.cite4.html; or, webserver.lemoyne.edu/faculty/giunta/lavpref.html

Jan Golinski, “‘The Nicety of Experiment’: Precision of Measurement and Precision of Reasoning in Late Eighteenth-Chemistry,” in The Values of Precision, ed. M. Norton Wise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 72-91.

Feb. 23^rd – Enlightenment Physics

(b) Robert Fox, “Laplacian Physics,” in Companion to the History of Modern Science, eds. R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge (New York: Routledge, 1990), 278-294.

Selections from Thomas Young and Augstin Fresnel on the Interference and Diffraction of Light, in Great Experiments in Physics, ed. Morris H. Shamos (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959), 93-120.

Ken Alder, “A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France,” in The Values of Precision, ed. M. Norton Wise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 39-71.

Feb. 25^th – Romantic Science

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject,” “Polarity,” “Theory of Color: Didactic Section,” “Dedication, Preface & Introduction,” “Part One: Physiological Colors,” and, “Pathological Colors: A Supplement,” in The Collected Works: Scientific Studies, v. 12, ed. Douglas Miller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 11-17, 155-178.

Myles W. Jackson, “A Spectrum of Belief: Geothe’s ‘Republic’ Versus Newtonian ‘Despotism’,” Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 673-701. (Available through JSTOR)

March 1^st – Thermodynamics

(b) Crosbie Smith, “Energy,” in Companion to the History of Modern Science, eds. R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge (New York: Routledge, 1990), 326-339.

James Joule, “The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat,” in Great Experiments in Physics, ed. Morris H. Shamos (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959), 166-183

Hermann von Helmholtz, “On the Interaction of Natural Forces,” in Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, ed. David Cahan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 18-45.

Rudolf Clausius, “The Second Law of Thermodynamics,” in A Source Book in Physics, ed. William F. Magie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935, 1965), 228-236.

March 3^rd – Organic Chemistry, Cell Biology, and the Mechanist/Vitalist Debate

Theodor Schwann, “Theory of the Cells,” in Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants, trans. Henry Smith (London: Sydenham Society, 1839, 1847), 186-215.

Justis von Liebig, “Organic Chemistry Applied to Physiology and Pathology,” in Animal Chemistry (Cambridge, 1842; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1964), 1-23.

Hermann von Helmholtz, “The Application of the Law of the Conservation of Force to Organic Nature: An Address to the Royal Society of London on April 12, 1861,” in Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, ed. Russell Kahl (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), 109-121.

Timothy Lenoir, “Social Interests and the Organic Physics of 1847,” in Science in Reflection. The Israel Colloquium: Studies in History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science, v. 3, ed. Edna Ullmann-Margalit, [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, no. 110] (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 169-191.

March 8^th – Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution

(First Paper Assignment Due)

(b) Sir Gavin de Beer, “Biology before the Beagle,” in Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, 2^nd ed., ed. Philip Appleman (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 3-10.

(b) Charles Darwin, selections from Origin of Species and Descent of Man, in Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, 2^nd ed., ed. Philip Appleman (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 35-88, 196-208.

March 10^th – Social Darwinism

(b) Richard Hofstadter, “The Vogue of Spencer,” in Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, 2^nd ed., ed. Philip Appleman (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 389-399.

(b) Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth,” in Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, 2^nd ed., ed. Philip Appleman (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 399-405.

(b) Peter Kropotkin, “Mutual Aid,” in Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, 2^nd ed., ed. Philip Appleman (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 405-415.

(b) Diane B. Paul, “Chapter 2: Evolutionary Anxieties,” in Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), 22-39.

Herbert Spencer, “Progress and the Social Organism,” in Science and Culture in the Western Tradition, ed. John G. Burke (Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick, 1987), 223-227.

March 15^th – Empire of Physics

P.M. Harman, Chapter 4, “Matter and Force: Ether and Field Theories,” in Energy, Force, and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth-Century Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 72-98.

James Clerk Maxwell, “A Dynamical Theory of the Electrical Field,” in A Source Book in Physics, ed. William F. Magie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 528-537.

James Clerk Maxwell, “The Telephone: The Rede Lecture Delivered to the Senate House of the University of Cambridge, 24 May 1878,” in Empires of Physics: A Guide to the Exhibition (Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1993), 15-27.

Simon Schaffer, “Empires of Physics,” in Empires of Physics: A Guide to the Exhibition (Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1993), 87-111.

(Recommended but not required) Bruce Hunt, The Maxwellians (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 73-107.

March 17^th – Mid-Term Examination

March 22^th – March 26^th – No Class, Spring Break

March 29^th - Fin-de-Siecle Chemistry

Dimitri Mendeleev, “The Relation Between the Properties and Atomic Weights of the Elements,” in A Source Book in Chemistry: 1400-1900, eds. Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 438-444.

Michael Gordin, “Making Newtons: Mendeleev, Metrology, and the Chemical Ether,” Ambix 45, pt. 2 (July 1998): 96-115.

March 31^st – Scientific Medicine

Louis Pasteur, “The Attenuation of the Causal Agent of Fowl Cholera,” and “On a Vaccine for Fowl Cholera and Anthrax,” in Milestones in Microbiology: 1546-1940 (Washington: ASM Press), 126-132.

Robert Koch, “Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms,” and “The Aetiology of Tuberculosis,” to be distributed in class.

Stanley J. Reiser, “The Emergence of Scientific Medicine: A View from the Bedside,” in Science, Technology, and Society in the Time of Alfred Nobel, eds. C.G. Berenhard, E. Crawford, P. Sorbom (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982), 121-134.

Edwin O. Jordan, “Profitable and Fruitless Lines of Endeavor in Public Health Word,” Science 33 (1911): 833-838.

April 5^th – Fin-de-Siecle Psychology – Freud

Jan Goldstein, “The Hysteria Diagnosis and the Politics of Anti-Clericalism in Late Nineteenth Century France,” Journal of Modern History 54 (1982): 209-239. (Available through JSTOR)

Roger Smith, “Chapter 18: The Unconscious: Reason and Unreason,” in The Norton History of the Human Sciences (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 701-721.

(b) Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1961, 1989), 5-62.

April 7^th – Agricultural and Industrial Science

Charles Rosenberg, “Chapter 10: The Adams Act: Politics and the Cause of Scientific Research,” in No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought, rev. & expanded (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 173-184, 288-291.

W. Bernard Carlson, “Innovation and the Modern Corporation: From Heroic Invention to Industrial Science,” in Science in the Twentieth Century, eds. John Krige & Dominique Pestre (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997), 203-225.

Larry Owens, “MIT and the Federal ‘Angel’: Academic R & D and Federal-Private Cooperation before World War II,” Isis 81 (1990): 188-213. (Available through JSTOR)

April 12^th – Building American Physical Sciences and The Great War

(Second Paper Assignment Due)

Ronald C. Tobey, “Chapter 1: The Paradox of Progressive Science,” and “Chapter 2: The Awakening of the Scientists, 1916-1920,” The America Ideology of National Science, 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 3-61.

Hugh R. Slotten, “Human Chemistry or Scientific Barbarism? American Responses to World War I Poison Gas, 1915-1930,” Journal of American History (Sept. 1990): 476-498. (Available through JSTOR)

April 14^th – Relativity & Quantum Mechanics (Prof. David I. Kaiser Guest Lecturer)

Albert Michelson and Edward Morely, “The Michelson-Morley Experiment,” in A Source Book in Physics, ed. William F. Magie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 369-377.

Henri Becquerel, “The Radiation from Uranium,” in A Source Book in Physics, ed. William F. Magie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 610-613.

Pierre and Marie Curie, “Polonium” and “Radium,” in A Source Book in Physics, ed. William F. Magie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 613-616.

Barbara Lovett Cline, “Chapter 4: Max Planck – The Quantum Theory,” and “Chapter 5: Albert Einstein – Work of 1905,” in Men Who Made a New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965, 1987), 51-87.

Albert Einstein, selections from Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Available on-line: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/einstein/works/1910s/relative/index.htm

Werner Heisenberg, “Philosophical Problems of Atomic Physics,” in Science and Culture in the Western Tradition, ed. John G. Burke (Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick, 1987), 252-256.

April 19^th – No Class, Patriots Day

April 21^st – Eugenics

(b) Diane Paul, “Chapter 1: What is Eugenics? Why Does it Matter?” “Chapter 3: From Soft to Hard Heredity,” “Chapter 5: Eugenic Solutions,” and “Chapter 6: ‘Whose Country is This? Eugenics and Race,” in Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), 1-21, 40-49, 72-114.

Raymond Pearl, “Breeding Better Men: The New Science of Eugenics which would Elevate the Race by Producing Higher Types,” The World’s Work (Jan. 1908): 9818-9824.

Charles B. Davenport, “The Effects of Race Intermingling,” Proc. of the American Philosophical Society 56 (1917): 364-368.

April 26^th – Science and Social Control: Behavioralism and IQ Testing

Francis Galton, “On the Inheritance of Intelligence,” in A Source Book in the History of Psychology, eds. Richard J. Herrnstein and Edwin G. Boring (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 414-420.

James McKeen Cattell, “On Mental Tests,” in A Source Book in the History of Psychology, eds. Richard J. Herrnstein and Edwin G. Boring (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 423-427.

Alfred Binet and Victor Henri, “On the Psychology of Individual Differences,” in A Source Book in the History of Psychology, eds. Richard J. Herrnstein and Edwin G. Boring (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 428-433.

Clark Wissler, “On the Inadequacy of Mental Tests,” in A Source Book in the History of Psychology, eds. Richard J. Herrnstein and Edwin G. Boring (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 442-445.

(b) Diane Paul, “Chapter 4: The Menace of the Moron,” and in Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), 50-71.

John B. Watson, “On Behavioralism,” in A Source Book in the History of Psychology, eds. Richard J. Herrnstein and Edwin G. Boring (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 507-515.

April 29^th – Science and WWII

Jerremy Bernstein, Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall (Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics, 1996), 70-94.

Herbert Mehrtens, “The Social System of Mathematics and National Socialism: A Survey,” in Science, Technology and National Socialism, ed. Monika Renneberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 290-311.

Peter Galison, “Physics between War and Peace,” in Science, Technology and the Military, Sociology of the Sciences, vol.12, eds. E. Mendelsohn, M.R. Smith, and P. Weingart (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1988), 47-86.

Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), selections to be distributed in class.

May 3^rd – Cold War Science

Daniel J. Kevles, “The National Science Foundation and the Debate over Postwar Research Policy, 1942-1945,” Isis 68 (1977): 5-26. (Available through JSTOR)

Daniel J. Kevles, “Chapter XXII: Victory for Elitism,” in The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 349-366. (To be distributed in class)

Stuart Leslie, “Profit and Loss: The Military and MIT in the Postwar Era,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 21 (1990), 59-85.

Stuart Leslie, “Science and Politics in Cold War America,” in The Politics of Western Science, 1640-1990, ed. Margaret C. Jacob (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1994), 199-233.

May 5^th – Cybernetics and Computer Sciences

(b) Paul E. Ceruzzi, Selections from A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), read pages 1-90, scan page 143-206.

Nobert Wiener, Cybernetcs: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and in the Machine, 2^nd ed. (New York: MIT Press, 1961), selections to be distributed in class.

(Recommended but Not Required) Peter Galison, “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision,” Critical Inquiry 21 (1994): 228-266.

May 7^th – (Third Paper Assignment Due)

May 10^th – The Space Race and Global Surveillance

Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), selections to be distributed in class.

Other reading materials will be distributed in class.

May 12^th – Molecular Biology

(b) Michel Morange, Selections from A History of Molecular Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 1-39, 67-98, 105-149.