America's rocket ride to the moon was based on the cannonball physics of Galileo and Newton, foreshadowed by Verne's vision of the Baltimore Gun Club, and driven by the needs of the cold war.  The Rocket state was an extraordinary amalgam of fact, fantasy, and the fear of Armageddon that had profound consequences for American politics and culture in the years after World War Two.  We'll explore its rise and fall, focusing on four of its characteristic technologies that emerged from WWII - the atomic bomb, the rocket, the computer, and an organizing social vision based on the secret laboratories of the Manhattan Project.  In addition to some first-rate scholarship, we'll read quite a lot of science fiction - the defining literature of the cold war Rocket State.  In short, this course is about a time in American history when the country learned how to build rockets and sought to redefine itself and its culture in their image.  You'll do several in-class reports (depending on enrolment) and a final paper of 8-10 pages.  THE DRAFT OF THE PAPER WILL BE DUE THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE END OF CLASSES!  Grades will be based on these assignments, classroom participation, and your success in dealing with various necessary deadlines.

 

 

433H  U.S. Science & Technology

Larry Owens

Th 1:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

 

FROM EDISON TO GATES: THE MAGNIFICENT CAREER OF U.S. SCIENCE AND THOSE WHO MADE IT.

In little more than a century, the United States changed from a scientific backwater into a global superpower.  We'll explore that transformation by focusing on the individuals who contributed to it, the places they worked, and the ways in which their works and lives became central to the organizations and culture of American life.  The tentative line-up includes P.T. Barnum and the American Museum; Thomas Hunt Morgan and the Fly Room; Thomas Edison and the incandescent lamp; Ellen Swallow Richards and the Women's Lab at MIT; J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb; Wernher von Braun and rocketry; and Bill Gates and the computer.  The seminar will be organized much like a graduate course, with intense weekly discussions and reports, frequent writing, and a concluding symposium for the sharing of final papers.

 

 

Amherst

Disease and Doctors: An Introduction to the History of Western Medicine

John Servos

 

Disease has always been a part of human experience; doctoring in among our oldest professions.  This course surveys the history of Western medicine from antiquity to the modern era.  It does so by focusing on the relationship between medical theory and medical practice, giving special attention to Hippocratic medical learning and the methods by which Hippocratic practitioners built a clientele, medieval uses of ancient medical theories in the definition and treatment of disease, the genesis of novel chemical, anatomical, and physiological conceptions of disease in the early modern era, and the transformations of medical practice associated with the influence of clinical and experimental medicine in the nineteenth century.  The course concludes by examining some contemporary medical dilemmas in the light of their historical antecedents. 

Two class meetings per week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Five College History of Science Courses

Spring 2011 - TBA

Smith

Amherst

Mount Holyoke

UMASS