Wrong For Good Reasons: An Introduction to the History of Science

Lavoisier! Galileo! Newton! According to widespread narratives: heroes of science and progress. These heroes, we are told, triumphed over the obdurate fools who held back the march of science out of deliberate ignorance. But things are not so simple, for their objectors often had good reasons to be “wrong”. Through the study of landmark examples selected from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era in what we would call today the fields of Chemistry, Cosmology, Astronomy, and Optics, students will reevaluate received narratives of “science” and “progress”. Students will read (in English translation) primary sources ranging from ancient Babylonian astronomical texts to excerpts of Huygens’ treatise on light. There are no prerequisites.