THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2024/2025

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Social and Political Science : Science, Technology and Innovation Studies

Undergraduate Course: History of Science 1 (STIS08005)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Social and Political Science CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryIntroductory survey of science in world history from ancient times to the present, focusing on the natural, social, and engineering sciences (in their broader intellectual, institutional, and technical contexts) in the modern West (in its broader geopolitical, social, and economic contexts). The course discusses the changing meanings and conditions of scientific knowledge, showing how such knowledge has depended upon and reshaped its historical contexts. The course is appropriately combined with History of Western Medicine.
Course description The course surveys science in world history from ancient times to the present, focusing on the natural, social, and engineering sciences in the modern West (including the pivotal history of science in Edinburgh) and their respective wider contexts while also interrogating the historical association between science and western modernity. We shall develop an approach to understanding scientific knowledge and authority as embedded in historically specific social, cultural, economic, and political settings. Asking what makes something scientific and how the historical sciences have interacted with their changing environs, we shall examine broad transformations in the ideas, institutions, status, apparatus, applications, and consequences of science, broadly construed to include aspects of engineering, mathematics, health, philosophy, theology, and other related subjects. These questions will be closely linked to the changing faces of science's practitioners, targets, and constituents, which we shall examine in terms of gender, class, race, religion, and cultural identity.

The course has an open-ended design that supports a wide variety of student backgrounds and learning goals, whether you are looking to broaden your horizons, explore unfamiliar subjects, dig deeply into topics of special interest, or develop new skills in historical and social interpretation. Students have recently come from more than a hundred degree programmes and nearly every area of the university.

The course is otherwise the same as STIS08011 Themes and Perspectives in the History of Science, which uses a 'pass/fail' marking scale. We suggest students enrol on STIS08011, unless they require a conventional numerical mark.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Students MUST NOT also be taking Themes and Perspectives in the History of Science (STIS08011)
Other requirements Available to all first and second year students, and any others provided this pre-honours course is compatible with degree programme requirements.
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesVisiting students are very welcome in this course, no pre-requisites.
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Explain major developments in the ideas, institutions, and products of science in world history
  2. Apply contextual and comparative perspectives to scientific knowledge and practices from disparate times and places
  3. Discuss how scientific knowledge and practices relate to their wider political, economic, social, and cultural contexts
  4. Critically evaluate the use of historical evidence in historical argument
Reading List
The course uses a dynamic reading list openly accessible through the university's resource list platform. Course textbooks include:
Morus, Oxford Illustrated History of Science
Fara, Science: A Four Thousand Year History
Reser and McNeill, Forces of Nature
Henry, A Short History of Scientific Thought
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Enquiry and lifelong learning; Outlook and engagement; Research and enquiry; Personal and intellectual autonomy.
Additional Class Delivery Information The course meets on Tuesday and Thursday evenings for a combination of lecture, discussion, and other activities, which will be recorded to the extent possible for those unable to attend. Optional small group tutorials are offered at a variety of times. The course is designed to be flexible, so we encourage you to sign up if interested, even if there are potential scheduling or logistical issues
KeywordsScience,Technology,Ancient,Classical,Medieval,Early Modern,Modern,Cross-Disciplinary,History
Contacts
Course organiserDr Lawrence Dritsas
Tel: (0131 6)50 4011
Email: L.Dritsas@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: Ewen.Miller@ed.ac.uk
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