EC.050
Re-create Experiments from History: Inform the Future from the Past
Offers students alternative exploratory experience in teaching, learning, and researching. Through collaborative activities with open-ended experiments from diverse origins, participants re-create historical instruments and discoveries that challenged assumptions and sparked new investigations. Student curiosity and questions shape specific course content. Assignments include observations, experiments, readings, journal writing and sketching, and a final reflective paper. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
January IAP 2010 · Recreate Experiments from History: Inform the Future from the Past: Galileo
2010 marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's astonishing sightings of features on the moon, stars, and moons around Jupiter that no one had seen before. Recreate these new ways of seeing and exploring from the materials and techniques Galileo had on hand, while you reflect on the times and works of Galileo. What was it like to improvise new ways of seeing and exploring from the materials and techniques on hand? What do we notice? What surprises us? How can we relate to past experience and ideas? What are we curious to research? How does our experimenting grow into our learning? Let your own curiosity drive your explorations.
Readings
- READINGS: Topic: Galileo Motion
- Galileo. “Introductions by J. L. Heilbron.” In Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems . New York, NY: Modern Library, 2001. ISBN: 9780375757662.
- Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967, pp. 24-25, 126-167, 175-186, 230-23, and day 4 dialogue and figures.
- Settle, Thomas B. “An Experiment in the History of Science;: With a Simple but Ingenious Device Galileo Could Obtain Relatively Precise Time Measurements.” Science 133, no. 3445 (1961): 19-23.
- Galileo. On Motion and On Mechanics, Comprising De Motu (ca. 1590) and Le Meccaniche (ca. 1600) (Publications in Medieval Science) . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960, chapters 1-23. ISBN: 9780299020309.
- ———. Two New Sciences . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974, Sections 140-141.
- Aris, Rutherford, et al. Springs of Scientific Creativity . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1983, chapter 1. ISBN: 9780816668304.
- McMullin, Ernan. Galileo: Man of Science . New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1967, chapter 15.
- Settle, Thomas. “Galileo’s Experimental Research.” Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 1996.
- READINGS: Topic: Sunspots
- Blackwell, Richard J. Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, chapter 6. ISBN: 9780268010270.
- ———. Behind the Scenes at Galileo’s Trial: Including the First English Translation of Melchior Inchofer’s Tractatus syllepticus . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008, chapter 4. ISBN: 9780268022105.
- Galilei, Galileo. “Letters on Sunspots.” In Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo . Harpswell, ME: Anchor, 1957. ISBN: 9780385092395.
- READINGS: Topic: Powers of Ten
- Boeke, Kees. Cosmic view: The universe in 40 jumps . New York, NY: J. Day, 1957.
- Cavicchi, Elizabeth. “Witness Account of Solar Microscope Projections: Collective Acts Integrating Across Personal Memory and History.” British Journal for the History of Science 41 (2008): 369-383.
- Morrison, Philip, and Phylis Morrison. The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know . New York, NY: Random House, 1987. ISBN: 9780394556635.
- Morrison Philip, Morrison Phylis, and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe . New York, NY: Scientific American Books, 1982. ISBN: 9780716714095.
- READINGS: Topic: Galileo Instruments
- McMullin, Ernan. Galileo: Man of Science . New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1967, chapter 13.
- Galileo. Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass, 1606 . Washington, DC: Smithsonian Inst Pr, 1978. ISBN: 9780874743838.
- Galileo. Sidereus Nuncius . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 34-87. ISBN: 9780226279039.
- Kepler, Johannes. Kepler’s Conversation with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger. First Complete Translation, With an Introduction and Notes, by Edward Rosen. The Sources of Science, No. 5 . New York, NY: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1965, pp. 9-25.
- Biagioli, Mario. Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006, chapter 2. ISBN: 9780226045610.
- Cavicchi, Elizabeth. “Painting the Moon.” Sky & Telescope (1991): 313-315.
- READINGS: Topic: Galileo Biography
- Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Scienc: A Historial Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love . New York, NY: Penguin, 2000, chapters I-VIII and XXI - XXIV. ISBN: 9780140280555.
- McMullin, Ernan. Galileo: Man of Science . New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1967, chapter 2.
- READINGS: Topic: Galileo Sound
- READINGS: Galileo. Excerpts from The Assayer In Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo . Harpswell, ME: Anchor Publishing, 1957. ISBN: 9780385092395.
- Galilei, Vincenzo. Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music (Music Theory Translation Series) . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780300090451.
- READINGS: Topic: Early Telescope and Spectacles
- Pelling, Nick. “Who Invented the Telescope?” History Today 58, no. 10 (2008): 26-31.
- Willach, Rolf. The Long Route to the Invention of the Telescope (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society ). Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2008, chapters 1 - 11. ISBN: 9781606189856.
- Helden, Albert Van. “The Invention of the Telescope.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 67, no. 4 (1977): 1-67.
- READINGS: Topic: Brecht’s Galileo
- Brecht, Bertolt. “Forward, Introduction, Scenes 1-6.” In Life of Galileo . New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2008. ISBN: 9780143105381.
- ———. “Introduction.” In Galileo . New York, NY: Grove Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780802130594.
- READINGS: Topic: Galileo Affair - Politics
- Blackwell, Richard J. “The Legal Case at Galileo’s Trial: Impasse and Perfidy.” In Behind the Scenes at Galileo’s Trial . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780268022105.
- Biagioli, Mario. Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994, chapter 6. ISBN: 9780226045603.
- Finocchiaro, Maurice A. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (California Studies in the History of Science ). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989, chapter IX. ISBN: 9780520066625.
- ———. Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992 . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007, chapters 3, 9, and 17. ISBN: 9780520253872.
- READINGS: Topic: Educational Readings
- Cavicchi, Elizabeth. “Perspectives on Science.” Perspectives on Science 14, no. 1 (2006): 66-96.
- ———. “Experimenting with Magnetism: Ways of Learning of Joann and Faraday.” Am J Phys 65, no. 9 (1997): 867-882.
- ———. “Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment with a Spiral Conductor.” Technology and Culture 49, no. 4 (2008): 1097-3729.
Prerequisites & course information
Subject meets with EC.090 Prereq: None U (Fall, IAP, Spring) 1-3-2 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗January IAP 2010
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.