Module Topics, Reading and Questions

Term 1

Week 1: Getting Started: A Sociocultural History of the Scientific Revolution

Week 2: Humanists, Natural Philosophers and the Late Medieval Universities

Week 3: The Rise of Experience

Week 4: Of Vices and Virtues: Practical Knowledge and the Burden of Past

Week 5: Scholars, Craftsmen and How to Present New Knowledge

Week 6: Reading Week

Week 7: Encountering the New World

Week 8: Mapping the Unknown

Week 9: New Plagues from the New World: The Case of the French Pox

Week 10: Consuming the New World

Term 2

Week 1: Science, Magic and Superstition

Week 2: Playing the Game: Science and Patronage

Week 3: Cabinets of Curiosity: Wonder and the Order of Nature

Week 4: Making and Translating Scientific Knowledge

Week 5: Do Books Make Revolutions?

Week 6: Reading Week

Week 7: The Question of Trust and the Building of Scientific Identities

Week 8: A World Apart: Women and Early Modern Science (this session was taught in week 7; topic of week 7 in week 8)

Week 9: Secret Passions: Descartes' Passions and Newton's Alechemical Dreams

Week 10: Do we still need the Scientific Revolution?