Philosophy & Science in Latin

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course examines specimens of philosophical, scientific, and technical writing, both prose and poetry, composed in Latin from antiquity through modernity. The class will pursue two parallel themes. The first will be to appreciate the role of the sampled authors and their writings in Western intellectual history. The second will be to appreciate the contribution of the expressive resources of Latin to their several intellectual agendas. Topics to be considered include: the development of technical vocabularies; the influence of Greek; and the contribution of rhetorical form to technical writing. Areas of technical writing to be considered include moral philosophy (Cicero, Horace), Epicurean physics (Lucretius), architecture (Vitruvius), Stoic ethics (Seneca's letters), Christian philosophy (Boethius, Anselm), Scholasticism (Anselm), Thomism (Thomas Aquinas), astronomy (Copernicus), linguistics (Dante, de vulgari eloquentia), and logic (Francis Bacon).