SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
IN THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL WORLDS

Professor Richard Olson 
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00 AM –12:15 PM 
Office: Parsons 1257 
Email: Olson@HMC.edu

Parsons 2358
Office Phone: x7-4476

General Goals:

• To learn about the social and conceptual natures of “science” and “technology” as those terms can reasonably be applied to the activities of persons in the Ancient and Medieval worlds, with special emphasis on how broad environmental and cultural considerations shape the character of technologies and sciences;
• To gain awareness of the level of sophistication of ancient technology and science;
• To become aware of the contingent character of Western technologies and sciences;

Emphasis will be on comparative approaches to science and technologies in the following three sets:

• Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China: ~ 3500bce to ~ 300bce
• Greece, China, and Rome:  ~ 600bce to ~ 475ce
• Western Europe and  the Islamic Empire:  ~ 700ce to ~ 1400ce.

There will be occasional comparisons with the out-of-phase developments in Mesoamerican technology and science, which generally trailed old-world developments by ~ 2000-2500 years.

Because of my own training, there will generally be greater emphasis on science than on technology and more emphasis on institutions connected with learning than on those connected with economic life; but I will try to offer some balance and explore connections between that which I know better and that which I am slowly learning.

Course Requirements and Basis for Grading:

Quizzes and colloquium write-up (25%):  There will be four short quizzes during the semester as well as several STS sponsored colloquia.  Twenty-five percent (25%) of the grade will be based on the three best quizzes and the best 2-page critical review of an STS or other authorized event.

Written Responses to Readings (25%):  To encourage students to   read material in a timely fashion and to help me understand what students are most enjoying and most puzzled by I am asking for 100- to 200-word email responses to the readings for each meeting.  These responses should be emailed to me before 9:00AM on the day for which they are assigned.  [Please embed your comments directly in the email message rather than include them as attachments: it is amazing how much extra time it takes to look at and print out 40-50 messages when they are attachments.] Responses should do one of three things: (i) (default mode) indicate the most interesting or important thing you learned from the reading and the most interesting or important question that was raised but not answered; (ii) disagree with some point made in the reading and explain why I should take your disagreement seriously; or (iii) connect some issue raised in the reading to something in your life. 

Each response will be graded on a 2 point scale:  2 points for a thoughtful, thought-provoking response; 1 point for a response that demonstrates some attempt to engage the subject matter; zero points for a response that does not indicate an attempt to engage with the subject matter or if there is no response.  The best 18 of 26 responses will be averaged.  An average > 1.66 will get an A grade; 1.65 - 1.34 points will get a B grade; 1-1.33 points will get a C grade; and <1 will be an F.  [There are no "D" grades for this portion of your grade.]  These responses will count for 25% of the total grade. Please note: reading responses received after the class meeting will not be counted for credit.

Research Paper (25%):  Each student will write one 5-10 page paper on a topic of his/her choice approved by the instructor.  The paper will be due on Monday, April 16 ¹. The paper will count for 25% of the grade.

Final Examination (25%):  A comprehensive. three-hour "take home" essay final examination based on a set of study questions handed out at the beginning of the semester will be handed out on the last day of class, April 25.  Seniors may elect not to take the final exam and accept the grade they have before the final exam; or if they choose to take the final exam, it is due by noon on Friday, May 4.  Non-seniors finals are due at noon on Tuesday, May 8.
Students are encouraged to form study groups to prepare for the final; but the final is to be taken individually, during a single 3-hour sitting, closed book and closed notes.  [The only thing open should be your mind!]

¹  _{Please note: this is two weeks before HMC's Presentation Days, so get an early start.}

Please note:
HMC students are automatically bound by the college’s Honor Code for research papers and final exams.  Non-HMC students should be aware that when taking HMC courses (of which this is one), they are also governed by HMC Honor Code regulations.

Policy on Work Submitted Late:  Work (except for Reading Responses) will be accepted late as long as it is completed by the last day of class (April 25). HOWEVER, there will be a penalty of 1/3 of a grade for every 24 hours or part thereof after the original due date that the work is submitted.  Please note that college requirements stipulate that all work except final exams must be completed by the last day of classes.

Special Note Regarding Research Papers and Final Exams: Unless students have made prior arrangements with the professor or solicit a "special circumstances" letter from their appropriate college's academic administrator, the professor may choose not to accept these materials after their due dates.

The instructor may raise or lower your grade by one-third (1/3) of a grade (i.e., by a plus or minus) if he judges your contribution to the class discussions to be unusually substantial or unusually negligible.

Recommended Book Purchases (roughly in order of initial use):

• G.E.R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece;
• David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science;
• Plato, Timaeus (any inexpensive edition);
• Richard McKeon, ed., Introduction to Aristotle (2nd edn.);
• Pamela Long, Technology and Society in the Medieval Centuries: Byzantium, Islam, and the West.

Additional readings will be collected in a course reader and made available either on reserve at Sprague Library under Olson, “History 80" or for purchase from the instructor.

Note:  If you do all Common Readings, you will average 82.2 pages/week over the 13 week semester.
The longest reading week will have about 124 pages, and the shortest, about 51 pages.

Important Dates:

• Quiz # 1: February 7
• Quiz # 2: March 5
• Quiz # 3: April 2
• Research paper due: April 16
• Quiz # 4: April 25
• Final exams due (seniors): May 4 (noon) [for seniors who elect to take the final]
• Final exams due (non-seniors): May 8 (Noon)

STS colloquia reviews are due one (1) week after event.

Schedule of Topics and Readings:
The following schedule is provisional.  It suggests topics for each week and coordinates readings with lecture-discussion topics.  The Sources of Additional Perspectives sections are for those who might want to follow up special lines of interest and for use in getting started on paper topics.  PLEASE do readings before the class  session for which they are appropriate, if you possibly can.

Meeting 1 — January 17:
Introduction to the field; What is science?  What is history? Why should anyone care about the history of science?.

Common Reading [no reading response due]:
Lloyd and Sivin, The Way and the Word, pp. xi -15. This short chunk will suggest the attitudes than motivate my approach to the entire course.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
An almost endless number of philosophers and sociologists have addressed the question of what science is.  For a readable survey of traditional perspectives as well as for the development of a point of view that is very close to my own, see Alan Chalmers, What is This Thing Called Science (1982) and Science and its Fabrication (1990).  Charles Alan Taylor’s Defining Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation (1996) offers important insights into the politics of definitions of science..

Very different approaches to the prehistory of science are taken by Gordon V. Childe in Man Makes Himself and by Giorgio DeSantillana in the "prologue" to The Origins of Scientific Thought.  While Childe focuses on material culture, DeSantillana focuses on myth.

Anthropological approaches to scientific thought have recently become increasingly important.  Bronislaw Malinowski's Magic, Science and Religion was one of the first attempts to understand the place of "science" in traditional cultures; in The Savage Mind, Claude Levi-Strauss sought to show the primitive origins of taxonomic systems and abstract systems of thought.  Currently he most widely cited anthropological approach is Stanley J. Tabiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality.  Recently, historians of science have also been especially influenced by the analysis in Robin Horton's "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," Africa (1967).

PART I – TECHNOLOGIES AND SCIENCES
IN THE EARLIEST CIVILIZATIONS

Meeting 2 — January 22:
Environment, Technology, and Social Structure in the Earliest Civilizations
 
Common Reading:

• Chapter 1 [draft] of R. Olson, Technologies and Sciences in Ancient Civilizations (in course reader);
• Selection from J. Donald Hughes, Ecology in Ancient Civilizations, Ch. 4, “Early Civilizations and the Natural Environment,” pp. 29-42 (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Thomas C. Patterson, Foundations of Social Archaeology: Selected Writings of V. Gordon Childe;
• V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself;
• Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism;
• C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, ed., Hunters, Farmers, and Civilizations;
• Stuart Piggott, ed., The Dawn of Civilization: The First World Survey of Human Cultures in Early Times;
• N. Smith, Man and Water: A History of Hydro-Technology (1976).

Meeting 3 — January 24:
Food, Shelter, and  Clothing: The Big Three

Common Reading:
James McClellan II and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, Ch. 3, “Pharaohs and Engineers,” pp. 31-54 (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology (9 vols., 1955-1964);
• Charles Singer, et. al., A History of Technology, Vol. 1, From Early Times to the Fall of Ancient Empires (1957);
• M. Daumas, A History of Technology and Invention, Vol. 1, The Origins of Technological Civilization (1969);
• B. Cottrell and J. Kamminga, Mechanics of Pre-Industrial Technology (1990);
• O. Wickander, Handbook of Ancient Water Technology: Technology and Change in History (1999);
• L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (1974);
• Robert I. Curtis, Ancient Food Technology (2001).

Meeting 4 — January 29:
Monuments, Metallurgy, Transportation and Minor Arts

Common Reading:
Henry Hodges, Technology in the Ancient World, Ch. 4, “Of Monuments, Ships, Metallurgy, and Military Technology,” pp. 90-133 (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
See sources for Meeting 3 above, plus the following:
Paul T. Nicholson, ed., Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology (2000).
Warning: There is a huge amount of largely junk literature on pyramid construction and numerology.  Only trust sources published since 1960 by major academic presses.  Two exceptions are J.P. Lepre, The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference (Jefferson, NC, 1990) and I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt (Penguin Books, 1995).

Meeting 5 — January 31:
Writing and Mathematics in Ancient Civilizations - Part I: Simple Arithmetic, Contexts and Content

Common Reading:

• Chapter 2 [draft manuscript] of R. Olson, Technologies and Sciences in Ancient Civilizations  – all sections through the 4 basic arithmetic operations (to be distributed in class);
• Sir Leonard Woolley, The Beginnings of Civilization, UNESCO History of Mankind, Cultural and Scientific Development, Vol. 1, pp. 666-676 (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• On ancient Mesopotamian mathematics, see Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity and B.L. Van der Waerden, Science Awakening--I.
• On ancient Egyptian mathematics, in addition to Neugebauer and Van der Waerden, see R. S. Gillings, Mathematics in the Time of the Pharahos (1982).
• On ancient  Chinese Mathematics see Jean-Claude Martzloff, A History of Chinese Mathematics (1997) and Li Yan and Dj ShírBn, Chinese Mathematics: A Concise History (1987)
• On ancient Indian mathematics see Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, History of Science and  technology in Ancient India: The Beginnings, (1986) especially Chapters 3, 5, 6, and 7, and T.R.N. Rao and Subhash Kak, Computing Science in Ancient India (2000)
• On early New World mathematics, see Michael P. Closs, ed., Native American Mathematics (1996) and Floyd Lounsbury, “Maya Numeration, Computation, and Calendrical Astronomy,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XV, pp. 759 -819.

Meeting 6 — February 5:
Writing and Mathematics in Ancient Civilizations - Part II: Geometry, Algebra, and Special Developments

Common Reading:
Complete Chapter 2 [draft]

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
In addition to sources for Meeting 5 above, add the following:

• Michael Mahoney, "Babylonian Algebra; Form vs. Content," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science,1 (1971):369-380, offers an interpretation of a critical question regarding the "purity" of Mesopotamian mathematics;
• Frank J. Swetz and T. I. Kao, Was Pythagoras Chinese (1977) deals with early Chinese propositions about right triangles.

Meeting 7 — February 7:
Quiz # 1 on material through Meeting 6;
Lecture topic: Astronomy, Astrology, Calendars and Religion - Part I: The Special Mesopotamian Case

Common Readings:

• Sir Leonard Woolley, The Beginnings of Civilization, UNESCO History of Mankind, Cultural and Scientific Development, Vol. 1, pp. 676-690 (in course reader);
• R. Olson, Science Deified and Science Defied, Vol. 1, pp. 34-61 (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
Mesopotamian Astronomy is covered in Neugebauer's The Exact Sciences in Antiquity and in Van der Waerden's Science Awakening--II: The Birth of Astronomy.  A more popular, but still very insightful treatment is in Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield's Fabric of the Heavens.  More detailed treatments include Franchesca Rothenberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (2000) and  David Brown, Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology (1999).

Meeting 8 — February 12:
Astronomy, Astrology, Calendars and Religion – Part II: Early Systems in China, India, Egypt, and Mesoamerica

Common Reading:
Nathan Sivin, “Cosmos and Computation in early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy,” reprinted in Nathan Sivin, Science in Ancient China (1995) II, pp. 1-73 (in course reader)  [Do not panic – this is by far the most technical reading of the semester  and I do not expect many to follow all the details; but I did want to expose students to the sophistication of the Chinese calendrical tradition]

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• For a more contextual reading of ancient Chinese Astronomy, see Christopher Cullen, “Motivations for Scientific Change in Ancient China: Emperor Wu and the Grand Inception Astronomical Reforms of 104 B.C.” Journal for the History of Astronomy, 24: 185-203. 
• For a Japanese comparison, see Shigeru Nakayama, A History of Japanese Astronomy.
• On Indian astronomy in its context, see Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, History of Science and  Technology in Ancient India ; III,  Astronomy, Science, and Society (1996).
• For a fascinating New World comparisons, see Floyd Lounsbury, “Maya Numeration, Computation, and Calenderial Astronomy,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XV, pp. 759-819.
• Marshall Clagett's Ancient Egyptian Science Volume 2, (1995) contains the most complete account of Egyptian Calendrical Astronomy, including translations of all known relevant documents.

Meeting 9 — February 14
Medicine in the Earliest Civilizations with Special Emphasis on Egypt, India and Mesopotamia

Common Reading:
Francis Zimmerman, “The Scholar, the Wise Man, and Universals: Three Aspects of yurvedic Medicine,” pp. 297-319 in Don Bates, ed., Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions (1995) (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• On Near Eastern medicine, see Henry Siegerist, A History of Medicine, Vol. I: Primitive and Archaic Medicine;
• Jurgen Thorwald's Science and Secrets of Early Medicine is particularly good on Egypt;
• Robert Biggs' "Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia," History of Science, 8 (1969):94-105 is one of the few brief treatments of an immensely complex subject;
• S. Bahita, Medical Sciences in Ancient India, 1972 is the only extended discussion of Ancient Indian Medicine of which I am aware, though M.S. Rau, “The History of Medicine in India and Burma,” Medical History, 12 (1968): 52-61, provides a short introduction.

PART II:
COSMOLOGY/NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE 
IN CHINA AND GREECE -- C600BCE –300CE

Meeting 10 — February 19:
The Social and Cultural Frames for Chinese and Greek Cosmology and Natural Philosophy

Common Reading:
Lloyd and Sivin, The Way and the Word, pp. 16 -81.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• On the content and context of Pre-Socratic Philosophy, see G.E.R. Lloyd,  The Revolutions of Wisdom (1987), Science, Folklore and Ideology (1983), and Magic, Reason and Experience (1979).
• For additional comparative works on Chinese and Greek science and medicine see G.E.R. Lloyd, Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science (1996) and The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China (2002). 

Meeting 11 — February 21:
Presocratic Natural Philosophy, Part I

Common Readings:

• Lloyd and Sivin, The Way and the Word, pp. 82-140;
• David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 21-35.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• C.H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (1960);
• __________, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (1979);
• D.J. Furley and R.E. Allen, eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy (Vol. 5, 1970);
• W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (1972);
• T. Cole, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (1967);
• R. Olson, "Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in Hellenic Athens: A New Whig Approach," History of Science,16 (1978):179-199.

Meeting 12 — February 26:
Pre-socratic Natural Philosophy, Part II; Hippocratic Medicine

Common Reading:

• David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 111-119,
• Lloyd and Sivin, The Way and the Word, pp. 141-187.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Owsei Temkin and C.L. Temkin, eds., Ancient Medicine (1967);
• Ludwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein;
• Hippocrates (selections) in The Theory and Practice of Medicine;
• D.W. Amundsen, "The Liability of the Physician in Classical Greek Theory and Practice," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 32 (1977):171-203;
• C.P. Warren, "Some Aspects of Medicine in the Greek Bronze Age," Medical History,14 (1970):364-377.

Meeting 13 — February 29
Plato’s Cosmology, Platonism and Neoplatonism

Common Reading:

• Plato, Timaeus, at least through 69a;
• David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 35-45. 

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
Gregory Vlastos' Plato's Universe (1975) is my current favorite treatment of Platonic science for those with some degree of philosophical sophistication.  This should be supplemented with J. Anton, ed., Science and the Sciences in Plato (1980).  Paul Friedlander's four volume Plato also contains several excellent sections on scientific topics.

Meeting 14 — March 5:
Quiz #2 on material from Meetings 7 through 13;
Lecture topic: Han Cosmology, Science, and Medicine

Common Reading:
Lloyd and Sivin, The Way and the Word, pp. 188-238.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Ahe Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (2002);
• Nathan Sivin, Science in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections (1995);
• __________, Medicine, Philosophy, and Religion in Ancient China (1995);
• Derk Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society, and Science (1991).

Meeting 15 — March 7:
Aristotle and Aristotelian Science

Common Reading:

• David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 47-68,
• Introduction to Aristotle , selections from “Posterior Analytics,” “Physics,” and “De anima.”
• Becker numbers:  71a-84b, 192b-200b, 412a-424b

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• G.E.R. Lloyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought (1968);
• Richard McKirahan, "Aristotle's Subordinate Sciences," British Journal for the History of Science, 11 (1978):197-220;
• Frederick Solmsen, Aristotle's System of the Physical World (1960);
• J.M. Barnes and R. Sorabji, eds., Articles on Aristotle, Vol. I (1975);
• John P. Lynch, Aristotle's School (1972);
• Phillip Wheelwright's editor's introduction to Aristotle is an excellent short introduction that extends beyond Aristotle’s theoretical sciences.

SPRING BREAK — MARCH 11-18

Meeting 16 — March 19:
Hellenistic Science: the “Other” Athenian Schools and Natural Philosophy – Epicureans and Stoa

Common reading:
David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 69-83, 119-131.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• S. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (1959);
• D.H. Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (1977);
• Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (1936?);
• E. Asmis, Epicurus' Scientific Method (1984)

Meeting 17 — March 21:
Alexandrian Science with Some Chinese Comparisons

Common Readings:
Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 85-110.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• J. Longrigg, "Superlative Achievement and Comparative Neglect: Alexandrian Medical Science and Modern Historical Research", History of Science, 19 (1981):155-200;
• Wilbur Knorr, The Ancient Tradition of Geometrical Problems (1986);
• A.M. Smith, "Saving the Appearances: The Foundation of Classical Geometrical Optics," Archive for History of the Exact Sciences, 24 (1981):73-99;
• G.J. Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest (1984);
• R.R. Newton, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (1977);
• O. Pedersen, A Survey of the Almagest (1974);
• O. Pedersen and Mogen Phils, Early Physics and Astronomy (1976).

Meeting 18 — March 26:
Roman Society  And Engineering Compared With That Of The Indus Valley

Common Reading:

• Selection from Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture (in course reader);
• Zaheer Baber, "Science, Technology, and Social Structure in Ancient India," Ch. 2, pp. 14-52, in The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization And Colonial Rule in India (Albany, 1996) (in course reader);
• David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 133-149.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
J.G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World (1978) provides a survey of the engineering literature.  A.G. Drachman, The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity (1963) covers mechanical devices.  John Humphrey, et. al., eds., Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook (1998) provides a wide range of translations from primary sources.

Meeting 19 — March 29:
Roman and Early Christian Science

Common Reading:

• Edward Grant, Science and Religion, 400B.C. - A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (2004), Ch. 4, “The First Six Centuries of Christianity,” pp. 97-135 (in course reader);
• Cicero, “The Dream of Scipio” (in course reader).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• William Stahl, Roman Science: Origins, Development and Influence (1952) is the only reliable survey of Roman Science that I know;
• Richard Olson, Science Deified and Science Defied, Vol. 1, Ch 5, pp. 146- 180;
• David C. Lindberg, “Science and the Early Church,” in Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, God and Nature (1986), pp. 19-48. [Lindberg’s footnotes provide an excellent bibliography on this topic.]

PART III:
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE ISLAMIC EMPIRE AND THE CHRISTIAN WEST

Meeting 20 — April 2:
Quiz # 3 on material from Meetings 14 through 20;
Lecture topic: Islamic Science and the Appropriation of Greek, Indian, Persian, and Chinese Knowledge to the 10th Century ce. – the Standard Argument

Common Reading:
David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 161-182;

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (1998);
• Henry Winter, "Formative Influences on Islamic Science," Archives Internationale d'histoire des sciences, 6 (1953):171-92;
• David A. King, Islamic Mathematical Astronomy (1986);
• Hossein Nasr, Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (1956);
• Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (1962);
• Siddigi Zubayr, Studies in Islamic and Persian Medicine (1959);
• A. Guillaume and T. Arnold, eds., The Legacy of Islam (esp. pp. 239-398).
• Two recent books survey Islamic Science and Technology and are superbly illustrated.  These are Donald Hill, Islamic Science and Engineering (1993) and Howard R. Turner Science in Medieval Islam (1995).

Meeting 21 — April 4:
The Originality of Islamic Science and Technology

Common Reading:
Begin reading Pamela Long, Technology and Society in the Medieval Centuries to p 39.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• A.Y. Al-Hassan, Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, Vol. 4.  Science and Technology in Islam, Part 1: The Exact and Natural Sciences (2003);
• Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, eds., The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives (2003);
• George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam (1994);
• Gurulu Necipoglu and Mohammad Al-Asad, The Topkapi Scroll – Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995), esp. Ch. 8.

Meeting 22 — April 9:
European Technologies in the Middle Ages

Common Readings:
Finish Long, Technology and Society in the Medieval Centuries.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Franchesca Bray, “Technics and Civilization in Late Imperial China,” Osiris; Vol. 13 (1998): 11- 33;
• Lynn White Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (1963);
• Francis and Joseph Gies, Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Innovation in the Middle Ages (1995);
• Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolutionm of the Middle Ages (1976).

Meeting 23 — April 11:
The Rise of European Universities and the Transmission of Arabic Knowledge to Europe

Common Reading:
David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 182-244.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• David Lindberg, "Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition," Isis, 78 (1987): 518-536.
• David Noble, A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science (1992) addresses a key issue which has been seldom discussed: some of the institutional reasons for the "masculine" character of Western science.
• Richard Dales, The Scientific Achievement of the Middle Ages contains a brief sampling of Medieval Scientific texts with some explanatory glosses.
• Edward Grant's A Sourcebook in Medieval Science is more comprehensive and scholarly.
• On the transmission of scientific ideas into the Latin West, Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, pp. 3-140, and A.C. Crombie, Medieval and Early Modern Science, Vol. I, pp. 33-64, are classics.
• On the universities and Aristotelian Scholasticism, see Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the 13th and 14th Centuries; Joseph Ben David, The Scientists Role in Society; and Guy Beaujouan, "Motives and Opportunities for Science in the Medieval Universities," in A.C. Crombie, Scientific Change, pp. 219-236..

Meeting 24 — April 16:
Research Paper Due Today**;
Lecture topic: Medieval Latin Science, Part I: Mechanics and Natural Philosophy

Common Readings:
Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 245-315.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• On medieval mechanics, see James A. Weisheipl, The Development of Physical Theory in the Middle Ages; Marshal Clagett, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages; and William Wallace, "Mechanics from Bradwardine to Galileo, "Journal of the History of Ideas, 32 (1971): 15-28.
• On the relations between medieval science and technics, see Lynn White, Jr.,  Machina ex Deo: Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture.

NO CLASS ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18:
HMC HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ADVISING DAYS

Meeting 25 — April 23:
Medieval Latin Science,  Part 2: Natural History, Medicine and Alchemy

Common Reading:
Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp. 317-368.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Roger French, Medicine Before Science: The Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (2002), esp. Part 2, “The Latin Tradition”;
• Nancy Siriasi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (1990);
• John Kirkland Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades: A Study of the History of Medieval Science and Tradition in Western Europe (1925);
• Jerry Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1999).

Meeting 26 — April 25
Last meeting of this class due to HMC Presentation Days next week
Quiz # 4 on Meetings 21 through 25; course evaluations; distribution of final examinations.

May 4 (for seniors taking the final exam); May 8 for all others:
Final examination due at noon - 3 hour take home exam, closed book, closed notes
All students bound by HMC Honor Code