Readings and student projects will be based on primary sources and works by historians of science. I do not expect prospective students to have a science background beyond, say, a course in high school physics or completion of a lower-level astronomy course here. Cholera pandemics provide model systems for retrospectively correlating societal attitudes with the methods used in eventually providing a solution to a large-scale social problem. Open to Honors students. Our main concern will be to discuss what we value, and why we value it, and how we arrive at such determinations.
Students are responsible for leading the discussions in the second half of the term.
Open to fourth term Honors students only. And then we will do some serious, close reading of some rich and serious writing. Every other week pairs of students will be responsible for leading our class discussion. I'll take the first week, and the other unclaimed weeks. Open to Honors students.