History of Science OnlineCourse Info: HSCI 3013 - section 995 - Fall 2008 |
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Reading 2 + Quiz (Primary Source)
| # | Due Date | Pts | Activity | Time |
| 3 | Thursday 11:59 p.m. |
10 |
Reading 2 + Quiz |
60-90 min |
“Scientific education makes use of no equivalent for the art museum or the library of classics, and the result is sometimes a drastic distortion in the scientist’s perception of his discipline’s past.”
Thomas S. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970), p. 167.
Definitions: A Primary Source is an original text or translation from the historical period that is studied in its own right. A Secondary Source is any work that is consulted to help us understand or interpret the primary sources. A translation of Galileo's Dialogo (1632) is a primary source; a biography of Galileo by a modern historian is a secondary source.
Learning Objective: Primary source readings introduce you to excerpts from original sources on a variety of aspects of the weekly topics.
Each week you will have two assignments that substitute for classroom lectures: "Reading 1" and "Reading 2." Both assignments have quizzes worth a total of 25 points. Usually the Reading 1 quiz is worth 15 points and the Reading 2 quiz is worth 10 points, but some weeks the points will go the other way around. Often, but not always, the Reading 1 assignment consists of background readings from your textbooks, and the Reading 2 assignment consists of readings from primary sources.
Why read primary sources? Through these you touch the past more directly than in any other assignment. The excerpts from primary sources lay the essential foundation for your understanding of history. Most weeks in this Readings 2 assignment you are following the sage advice of C.S. Lewis, quoted at the bottom of this page. Also, you won't want to skim over them lightly and then have to basically repeat this assignment when writing your Interpretation essay later in the week, which must be based in part on evidence you can find in your selected primary sources.
Varieties of formats. There is actually quite a bit of variety in the Reading 2 assignments. Occasionally there is one long excerpt of an English translation of a primary source; more often there are several shorter excerpts to read. Occasionally, as in Week 1, there is a different kind of assignment that intermingles both primary and secondary sources together, rather than assigning primary sources on their own. Sometimes the primary sources survive only in fragments or, in the case of mathematical sciences, they are highly technical. In such cases summaries or paraphrases or excerpts of the primary sources are used in the Reading 2 assignment. For example, Crowe's presentation of mathematical accomplishments is often included among the other primary sources, because his discussions can give you a flavor of the original author's work, substituting for the more difficult mathematical or astronomical texts themselves.
Reading out loud. Savor each primary source as an opportunity to get a first hand impression of the figure or topic of the time. Many excerpts from primary sources are deceptively short: they are easy to skim quickly without understanding, perhaps because of their concise form or archaic language. In these cases, you will remember the details of the sources much more clearly if you do the reading out loud. Seriously! If you skim the readings the way you might skim a textbook, you are not going to catch the spirit of the original text... so, whatever you do: slow down. Allow yourself extra time. There's probably lots of new vocabulary, and the writing style may be dense. Reading out loud is the best way to get yourself primed to really appreciate each and every word -- getting inside what the original author intended, so that you can really understand, and remember, what the source is about. Indeed, sometimes there may be audio recordings of the sources available, so that you can listen to them a couple of times, while reading them, or even while doing the dishes.
History of Science Exhibits Online. Primary source readings are sometimes found as exhibits in the Exhibits Online website (the comments below assume your familiarity with the Exhibits Online orientation). Other times they are found on the course website. And sometimes they are found in a textbook (Crowe's excerpts of Ptolemy and Copernicus are two of the chief selling points of that book).
Introductory comments. When the primary sources are found on the course website, I often offer a few introductory comments about things I find interesting or exciting about the text you are reading. They may help you to focus on general themes that are the reason I selected the source in question. If they get in the way of your appreciation of the text, just focus on the reading itself!
Note on names: Don't be confused by the fact that ancient Greek names are often translated in different ways. For example, Greek names often end in "-os," and Latin names often end in "-us." Where Greek names would use a "k," Latin names substitute a hard-sounding "c." Because it was once common practice to use Latinized names, Greek names would be given in their Latin spelling. For example, "Eudoxos of Knidos" would be Latinized as "Eudoxus of Cnidus." It is now common practice to use the same language as the time period being studied, so when exploring Herophilos of Kos we would use a Greek transcription of his name, but if we were looking at the late medieval knowledge of Herophilus of Cos we would use a Latinized version. The same rule applies to transcriptions from the Arabic: If we want to know what Ibn Sina thought, we will transcribe from Arabic to English, but if we want to know how Ibn Sina was known in the Renaissance to European physicians, we'll use the Latinized version of his name, Avicenna. In this case, because the Latinized form of the name is so different from the actual transcription of his Arabic name, you just have to know that Ibn Sina and Avicenna were the same person. Similarly, the great commentator on Aristotle Ibn Rushd was known in Latin Europe as Averroës. Have I confused you yet? In any case, now you know that older sources tend to use Latinized names all the time.
Study Questions. After the introductory comments there are some questions for you to reflect upon. These are just basic reading comprehension questions meant to slow you down as you read. The idea is to take a few seconds before you "turn" the page just to make sure that you have understood the source so far. If you are confused by the questions when you finish a page, it would be a good idea to read the page again so that you are really ready to proceed to the next. Really, I mean it: read each page twice! (And read them out loud.) These questions are often related to the issues you may want to bring up in your Interpretation Essay.
Images and Illustrations. If the primary source is found on Exhibits Online it is probably because there are images of the original books held in the History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma. Explore the images! (There's more about images in the Exhibits Online orientation).
Reading 2 Quiz. After you complete the Reading 2 assignment for a given week, there is a related quiz. Just as in the Reading 1 assignment, you will be given the questions in advance, so you can print them in advance and write in the answers as you complete the readings (see About Quizzes).
Note: This page is a general description of the Reading 2 assignment. For the specific questions you will be quizzed over on any given week, go to the Reading 2 assignment page for that week .
Here are the instructions you will see each week for the Reading 2 assignment quiz.
| READING 2 QUIZ: The statements are either True or False. When you take the quiz at Desire2Learn, you will see 10 of these statements, chosen at random. You can take the quiz a total of two times, up until the due date, when the quiz will no longer be available. If you take the quiz a second time, your first attempt will be erased and your second attempt will be recorded. You will find the quiz in the Quizzes section of Desire2Learn. |
“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books.... The student... feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand.... But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.... It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” C. S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” in God in the Dock.
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HSCI 3013. History
of Science to 17th century
Many thanks to Mythology
and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.
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