Final Project: My So-Called Scientific Revolution

I wanted to create a History of Science learning module online, so that my Western Civ I and II students can use the primary and secondary resources there in a unit project.

The idea was to create a timeline with important people, their works, and events between approximately Copernicus to Newton (maybe earlier to later--depends). Each person would be linked to a mini-biography and each important text would be linked to images of that primary source, a page or two of the text--probably from EEBO (Early English Books Online--a database of all the books printed in English up to 1650? 1700?. Authors and natural philosophers living outside of England were often translated by the leading English philosophers--giving good primary sources in English, even for non-English texts.

I'd also like to include, a very brief historiography of the HoS--also with images of those sources.

The goal is to radically condense the work that a historian does, from survey knowledge from the textbook, to reading and analyzing primary sources AS THEY ORIGINALLY LOOKED, to the study of the historiography of the subject. Many students don't have an understanding of the true nature of historical research, going into high level graduate classes. It certainly is a difficult feat to accomplish in an introductory survey course.

While the NOVA libraries don't have access to EEBO, I found that the Mason library does. I will have to go to the library and be entered into their system. I will then inquire if I will have an online, off-campus, portal access to the Mason resources. My suspicion is probably not--as the login is a Mason email.

So. That was the idea. It's pretty ambitious, but I'm also thinking that I would really like to combine it (or just change it) to a History of Science and Technology course syllabus with individual units laid out, textbooks, and assignments. I really like that the way that Professor Evans has the Digital History Syllabus online, and linked to each week's units. If I choose to do this option, I will also try to include interesting articles, podcasts, and videos in each week's unit (I really should do this idea with Western Civ I and II, as I actually teach those courses).

I don't know if a history of science and technology history course counts as a STEM course--but it may be worth it to wait, apply for grants, and make HoS websites later. I'm interested in hearing what my classmates and Prof. Evans thinks. In the mean time, I've got a LOT that I can work on and continue to investigate.