Mar 28, 2024  
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024 
    
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024
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HIST 2755 - Nature, Science and Religion in premodern Europe to 1750


This course explores the evolution of scientific ideas from the work of the ancient Greeks to the medieval world of European and Arabic scientists to participants in the Scientific Revolution of seventeenth-century Europe. The course examines how pre-modern scientists explored all facets of their existence: the natural world, the cosmos, the “races of man,” and the relationship between celestial bodies and natural phenomena. This course introduces the topics of scientific investigation and the methods used to explain the natural world from the time of the early Greeks to the death of Isaac Newton and investigates how scientific inquiries and explanations developed as a result of changing social, political, and economic contexts in the pre-modern era. The first half of the course explores how ancient and medieval scientists sought to explain the workings of the natural world, the divine, and humankind’s role in the world. The second half focuses on the period known as the Scientific Revolution (1450-1750) when ancient and medieval concepts of nature were challenged, reinvented, and discarded in favor of the new science characterized by the modern scientific method and experimentation

Credit Hours: 3
OHIO BRICKS Arch: Constructed World
General Education Code (students who entered prior to Fall 2021-22): 2HL
Repeat/Retake Information: May be retaken two times excluding withdrawals, but only last course taken counts.
Lecture/Lab Hours: 3.0 lecture
Grades: Eligible Grades: A-F,WP,WF,WN,FN,AU,I
Course Transferability: OTM course: TMAH Arts & Humanities
College Credit Plus: Level 1
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to describe how cultural values, ideals, and social mores influence the development of scientific thought in the past and today.
  • Students will be able to explain the position of historical actors and their ideas within social, economic, political, and religious systems.
  • Students will be able to identify and explain the role economics, social structures, and political ideas play in historical explanations of terrestrial and celestial realms.
  • Students will be able to critically evaluate primary sources and identify the influence of social, political, or economic systems on the author’s perspective and position.
  • Students will be able to investigate empirical evidence and then compare and contrast various explanations for terrestrial and celestial phenomenon in the past.
  • Students will be able to define ‘science’ and explain scientific methods and objectives at different points in Western history.
  • Students will be able to construct thesis-driven arguments backed by evidence and will understand their arguments as reflecting, in part, their own historical experience.
  • Students will be able to evaluate evidence-based claims and communicate rational conclusions to peers and within the broader community.
  • Students will be able to describe major events and individuals associated with the history of early science.
  • Students will be able to explain primary terminology, concepts, and findings of the discipline of history of science.



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