Honour School of Natural Science

Supplementary Subject

History and Philosophy of Science

Lecture programme for Michaelmas Term

2012
 Supplementary Subject
History and Philosophy of Science

Lecture programme for Michaelmas Term 2010

The Origins of Modern Science

Week 1 The shock of Galileo (Professor Pietro Corsi)
Week 2 Continuity and change in the scientific revolution
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
Week 3 The Newtonian achievement (Professor Pietro Corsi)
Week 4 The chemical revolution (Professor Pietro Corsi)
Week 5 The history of life: Cuvier to Darwin (Professor Pietro
Corsi)
Week 6 The Darwinian revolution (Professor Pietro Corsi)
Week 7 Science and religion: recent debates (Professor Pietro
Corsi)
Week 8 Scientific Instruments and Museums
(Dr Stephen Johnston)

The lectures will be held in the Tanner Room, Linacre College, on

Tuesdays at 12.00. If you wish to take the course, you should make sure
that you attend the first lecture on Tuesday 9 October 2012 at 12.00.
Tutorial arrangements will be made immediately after this lecture, at
which further details of the course will also be distributed.
See page 18 on the alternative series of lectures, to be given in the
History Faculty in George Street on Wednesdays at 11.00. Please note
that there can be no guarantee that such an alternative series will be
available for the second half of the course in Hilary Term.

ENTERING FOR THE EXAMINATION

The examination for the course will take the form of a
single three-hour paper that you will sit on the Saturday
of Eighth Week in Hilary Term. Please note that you are
responsible for entering for the examination. The
deadline for this is noon on Friday, 25 January 2013.

Cover illustration: A rather satisfied Charles Darwin,

depicted in a cartoon from the magazine Vanity Fair

2
 History and Philosophy of Science
This course provides an opportunity of standing back from the work of
the laboratory and considering, in general terms, the history of science
and the nature and methods of the scientific enterprise. It offers an
introduction to styles of thought and analysis not encountered in normal
scientific studies, and training in writing essays with a different structure
and purpose. We believe that by adding a new dimension to
undergraduates experience, the subject can be illuminating to those
who aim to become professional scientists, while parts of it will be
especially useful as a foundation for careers in the media, school-
teaching, government, or industry.
The course is structured around sixteen weekly lectures distributed
over Michaelmas and Hilary terms, together with a programme of
tutorials or classes. For the tutorials, reading will be assigned and
essays (a total of three or four in each term) will be written. The
arrangements for tutorials in Michaelmas Term will be made immediately
after the first lecture of the term. The tutorials will be conducted this term
by Dr Graham Baker (Balliol College), Dr Allan Chapman (Wadham
College), Mr Jed Foland (History Faculty), and the lectures will be given
by Professor Corsi and Dr Stephen Johnston. The students coordinator
of the class will be Mr Ardigo (fabiano.ardigo@kellogg.ox.ac.uk).
Arrangements for the classes that accompany the Hilary Term lectures
will be made after the first lecture in that term. The examination consists
of a single three-hour paper set on the Saturday at the end of Eighth
Week of Hilary Term.
The course begins, in Michaelmas Term, with an historical survey of
the development of new sciences, new increasingly sophisticated
scientific methods, and new conceptions of nature in both the physical
sciences and the life sciences. The chief architects of a series of
revolutions in science to be studied include Galileo, Francis Bacon,
Harvey, Descartes, Newton, Lavoisier, Lyell, and Darwin. The second
half of the course, in Hilary Term, is more explicitly concerned with
philosophy, both with the impact of science on philosophy and with
philosophical theories about the nature of science: its methods, the
status of scientific claims, and the aims and limits of science. Professor
Simon Saunders, Faculty of Philosophy, will be in charge of the class.
We try to preserve as much flexibility as possible in the orientation of
your work. Topics on which you may wish to focus your reading and
essays include: the work of individual scientists, in particular of those
mentioned above, along with the ideas of historical figures in philosophy,
such as Descartes, Hume, and Kant; the relations between science and
religion in which historical and philosophical perspectives may help to
3
illuminate current debates; and more specifically philosophical
questions, concerning the rationality of science, the relationship of
evidence to theory, and the question of whether scientific theories can
be true.
A good introduction to both the historical and the philosophical aspects
of the course is provided by Thomas Kuhn, The structure of scientific
revolutions (first published in 1962, but subsequent editions, the most
recent of them costing about 8, are available in paperback form).
Books and Reading
It is not anticipated that you will read more than a small selection of the
items suggested in this course booklet. Although rather full reading lists
are given for each lecture to assist you in the writing of essays, you
should always be guided by your tutor in determining what you should
read for a particular assignment. Most of the books and articles that we
suggest for Michaelmas Term are available on the open shelves in the
Upper Reading Room, Bodleian Library, and in the History Faculty
Library section in the Radcliffe Camera. The History Faculty Library in
the Radcliffe Camera is not only well supplied but also allows books to
be borrowed. Other copies are often to be found in college and (less
frequently) departmental libraries, and can usually be located through
SOLO. For works on the philosophy of science, the collection in the
library of the Philosophy Faculty, Woodstock Road, former Radcliffe
Infirmary building, is particularly helpful.
Do explore the possibilities of the collections in the History Faculty
Library. In addition to the works recommended for reading in the coming
term, you will find both libraries well stocked with general works of
reference. The most useful of these for the historian is the Dictionary of
scientific biography (16 vols, New York, 197280) (easily consulted in
the main entrance hall of the RSL, for example, and cited throughout this
booklet as DSB). Also valuable, and available in both libraries, is Robert
C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the history of modern science
(London, 1990).
There are no entirely satisfactory textbooks for the course, but the
following two items will be useful and are particularly recommended for
purchase.
Thomas Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions (Chicago,
1962, and subsequent editions)
James Ladyman, Understanding philosophy of science
(Routledge, 2002)

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Additional references

History of Science
John Hedley Brooke, Science and religion. Some historical perspectives
(Cambridge, 1991)
David Cahan (ed.), From natural philosophy to the sciences (2003)
John Henry, The scientific revolution and the origins of modern science
(Basingstoke and New York, 1997; 2nd edn, 2002)
David C. Lindberg, The beginnings of western science (Chicago and
London, 1992)
Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Servants of nature. A
history of scientific institutions, enterprises and sensibilities (London,
1999)

Philosophy of science
All of the following items are in the library of the Philosophy Centre
Alan F. Chalmers, What is this thing called science? (2nd edn, Milton
Keynes, 1982)
Donald Gillies, Philosophy of science in the twentieth century. Four
central themes (Blackwell, 1993)
Larry Laudan, Science and relativism. Some key controversies in the
philosophy of science (University of Chicago Press, 1990)
John Losee, A historical introduction to the philosophy of science (3rd
edn, Oxford University Press, 1993)
Israel Scheffler, Science and subjectivity (2nd edn, 1982, Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Co.)

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WEEK 1: The shock of Galileo
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
Copernicus and 'the book that nobody read'. Astronomical achievements
of Tycho, Kepler and Galileo. Galileo's 'new sciences'. The responses to
Galileo and his Copernicanism. Galileo and the scientific 'revolution' of
the seventeenth century.
Copernicus
Copernicus, on the revolution of the heavenly spheres, trans. A. M.
Duncan (Newton Abbot, 1976); also an edition, translated and with
commentary by Edward Rosen (Baltimore, Md., and London, 1992):
Entry on Copernicus, in DSB, vol. 3, pp. 40111
Edward Rosen, Copernicus and his successors (London, 1995

Galileo
Galileo, Dialogue concerning the two principal systems of the world,
trans. Stillman Drake (Berkeley, Ca., 1953): Galileo, Discourse on two
new sciences, trans. Stillman Drake (Madison, Wis., 1974)
Discoveries and opinions of Galileo, ed. Stillman Drake (1957)
Mario Biagioli, Galileo, courtier: the practice of science in the culture of
absolutism (Chicago, 1993)
Richard Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible (Notre Dame, IN,
1991)
John L. Heilbron, Galileo, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010
Stillman Drake, Galileo, DSB, vol. 5, pp. 23749
Stillman Drake, Galileo, pioneer scientist (Toronto, 1990)
Edward Rosen, ed., Kepler's conversation with Galileo's Sidereal
Messenger, New York ; London : Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965
Owen Gingerich, The book nobody read : chasing the revolutions of
Nicolaus Copernicus, London : Heinemann 2004

6
Peter Apians representation of the geocentric universe,
from Apian, Cosmographia (Ingolstadt, 1529)

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WEEK 2: Continuity and change in the scientific revolution
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes as the architects of new scientific
methods in the seventeenth century. Descartess replacement of a
biological model of explanation by a mechanical model. The impact of
the mechanical model: the heavenly bodies lose their souls, magnets
circulate streams of particles, animals become machines, the cosmos
loses its purpose. The Cartesian programme of research. William
Harveys discovery of the circulation of the blood. The contrast between
the physiology of Descartes and Harvey.
Francis Bacon
The works of Francis Bacon, ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. Heath
(London, 18579) Vol. 3 New Atlantis, Vol. 4 The Great Instauration
and the New Organon
John C. Briggs, Francis Bacon and the rhetoric of nature (Cambridge,
Mass., 1989)
B. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific
Revolution (New Haven, 2007)
Descartes
Ren Descartes, Discourse on method. Meditations of the first
philosophy. Principles of philosophy, ed. by John Veitch (New York,
1978)
Desmond Clarke Descartes: a biography (Cambridge, 2006)
James Collins, Descartes philosophy of nature (Oxford, 1971)
Alistair C. Crombie, Michael S. Mahoney, and Theodore M. Brown,
Descartes, DSB, vol. 4, pp. 5165
Harvey
William Harvey, The circulation of the blood and other writings, trans.
K. J. Franklin (London, 1990)
Jerome Bylebyl, William Harvey, DSB, vol. 6, pp. 15062
Jerome J. Bylebyl (ed.), William Harvey and his age : the professional
and social context of the discovery of the circulation (London, 1979)
Marjorie ORourke Boyle, Harvey in the sluice: from hydraulic engineer-
ing to human physiology, History and Technology, 24 (2008), pp. 1-
22

8
WEEK 3: The Newtonian achievement
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
The origins of Newtonian gravitation. Newtons creation of the science of
mechanics and dynamical astronomy. Newtonian optics. Newtons
scientific method and his concepts of space and time. Newtonian natural
theology. The impact of Newton.
Niccolo Guicciardini, Isaac Newton. On mathematical certainty and
method, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2009
Robert Iliffe, Newton. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007)
John Fauvel, R. Flood, M. Shortland, and R. Wilson (eds.), Let Newton
be (Oxford, 1989)
Mordechai Feingold, The Newtonian moment: Isaac Newton and the
making of modern culture (Hardcover) (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004)
Isaac Newton, Principia, trans. A. Motte and F. Cajori (1687; English
translation, Berkeley, Ca., 1962)
R. S. Westfall, Never at rest. A biography of I. Newton (Cambridge,
1980)

The University Museum, Oxford soon after its opening in 1860. The museum, which
was designed to provide facilities for all the sciences on a single site, reflected the
vision of a unified body of scientific knowledge in accordance with the principles of
Charles Daubeny and Henry Acland. It was on the first floor of the building, in what
was then the library, that Thomas Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel
Wilberforce, engaged in their heated debate about Darwins theory of evolution by
natural selection in June 1860.

9
10
Lavoisier performing quantitative experiments on human respiration. The oxygen consumed and the carbon dioxide
given off are being measured by Lavoiser and his assistants, including Madame Lavoisier, seated at the table
WEEK 4: The chemical revolution
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
Recent research on the history of eighteenth-century chemistry has
brought out the diversity of beliefs about the nature of combustion and
calcination in the period before Lavoisiers crucial year of 1772. It has
also stressed diversity in the problems that Lavoisier tackled, on the
nature of elements and the gaseous state as well as the overthrow of the
paradigm of phlogiston for which he is best-known. What do we know
about Lavoisiers thought processes and experimental practices, and
how do we know what we know? Was there an experimentum crucis?
What role did the new nomenclature play? And what can we say about
the processes by which Lavoisiers chemistry was diffused and
eventually accepted beyond the borders of France?

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri (eds.), Lavoisier in

European context. Negotiating a new language for chemistry
Marco Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter (Canton, MA, Science
History Publications, 1993)
William H. Brock, The Fontana history of chemistry (London, 1992),
chapters 2 and 3
Arthur L. Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier. Science, administration and
revolution (Cambridge, 1993)
Jan Golinski, Science as public culture. Chemistry and Enlightenment in
Britain, 17601820 (Cambridge, 1992)
Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier. The crucial year. The background and origin
of his first experiments on combustion in 1772 (Ithaca, NY, 1961)
Frederick Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the chemistry of life. An
exploration of scientific creativity (Madison, Wis., 1985)
Frederick Lawrence Holmes, Antoine Lavoisier. The next crucial year
(Princeton, N.J., 1997)
Jean-Pierre Poirier, Lavoisier. Chemist, biologist, economist, trans. From
French edition of 1993 by Rebecca Balinski (Philadelphia, Pa., 1998)

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WEEK 5: The history of life: Lamarck to Darwin
(Professor Pietro Corsi)

In the early nineteenth century, interpretations of the history of the earth

and of life were dominated by the principles of natural theology,
according to which the surest way to an understanding of God was
through the use of natural reason. This providentialist world view,
expounded most clearly in William Paleys Natural Theology (1802), was
challenged by increasing evidence of the changes that had occurred
over long periods of geological time, but Cuviers doctrine of revolutions
and Bucklands of catastrophes were quickly integrated in a new
theistic natural theology that still had a broad following on the eve of the
publication of Darwins Origin of Species.
Peter J. Bowler, Evolution. The history of an idea (Berkeley, Ca., 1984)
John Hedley Brooke, Science and religion. Some historical perspectives
(Cambridge, 1991), chs. 6 and 7
E. Janet Browne, Charles Darwin. Voyaging (London, 1995), and Charles
Darwin. The power of place (London, 2002)
Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the natural history of creation, and other
evolutionary writings, ed. James A. Secord (Chicago and London,
1994); the text of Vestiges, with a useful introduction by Secord
Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck. Evolutionary Theories in France, 1790
1830 (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1988)
Pietro Corsi, ed. www.lamarck.net
Pietro Corsi, Science and Religion. Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate,
18001860 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988): Part IV,
The question of species
Pietro Corsi, Before Darwin: Transformist Concepts in European Natural
History, in Journal of the History of Biology, 38, 2005, pp. 6783.
Adrian Desmond, The politics of evolution. Morphology, medicine, and
reform in radical London (Chicago and London, 1989)
Charles Lyell, Principles of geology, ed. James A. Secord (London, 1997);
at least Secords useful introduction
Adrian Desmond and James R. Moore, Darwins sacred cause Race,
slavery, and the quest for human origins (London, 2009)
Martin J. S. Rudwick, Minerals, strata and fossils, in Nicholas Jardine,
J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (eds.), Cultures of natural history
(Cambridge, 1996), pp. 26686

12
 William Buckland lecturing in the old Ashmolean Museum,
now the Museum of the History of Science. The lecture shown
in this print, by the Oxford artist Nathaniel Whittock, was given
on 15 February 1823. In the lecture, Buckland announced the
recent discovery of a female human skeleton, now known to
be 26,000 years old, in the Paviland Cave in South Wales.
The audience was in reality larger than it appears to be in
Whittocks depiction. Many of those attending are
recognizable, notably Professor Charles Daubeny, the
diminutive figure standing behind Buckland

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WEEK 6: The Darwinian debate
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
The publication of Darwins Origin of Species in 1859 is recognized as
one of the most momentous events in the history of modern thought. But
it is important to identify the elements of continuity as well as the
originality in Darwins theory. Evolution had certainly been in the air
since the 1840s, as the writings of Chambers, Tennyson, and Spencer
show. Natural selection, on the other hand, was at once novel and the
source of the most bitter opposition to the doctrines of the Origin. Few
contemporaries were immediately convinced of the truth of all of
Darwins ideas, and as late as the 1880s even A. R. Wallace, who
advanced a theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time as
Darwin advanced his, doubted whether natural selection could account
for the evolution of distinctively human mental attainments.
Peter J. Bowler, Lifes splendid drama. Evolutionary biology and the
reconstruction of lifes ancestry, 18601940 (Chicago, 1996)
Brooke, Science and religion (cited for Week V), ch. 8
Pietro Corsi, Recent studies on French reactions to Darwin and Recent
studies on Italian reactions to Darwin, in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. By
D. Kohn (Nova Pacifica et Princeton University Press, Wellington and
Princeton, 1985), pp. 698729
Charles Darwin, On the origin of species (London, 1859); reprinted in
facsimile and many other editions. N.B. The Penguin paperback edition
reproduces the first edition with a useful introduction by John Burrow;
see especially the last chapter of the book (Chapter XIV in the first
edition) Recapitulation and conclusion
Adrian Desmond and James R. Moore, Darwin (London, 1991)
Adrian Desmond, Huxley, the devils disciple (London, 1994), and Huxley,
evolutions high priest (London, 1997)
James R. Moore, Wallaces Malthusian moment: the common context
revisited, in Bernard Lightman (ed.), Victorian science in context
(Chicago and London, 1997), pp. 290311
Frank Miller Turner, Between science and religion. The reaction to scientific
naturalism in late Victorian England (New Haven and London, 1974),
chapters 2 and 4

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WEEK 7: Science and religion: recent debates
(Professor Pietro Corsi)
The debate over the relationship between science and religion has
developed in several interesting directions during the past twenty years.
A moribund natural theology has been stimulated by the Anthropic
principle and by environmental challenges; historians have discovered a
far more complex and less adversarial relationship than is commonly
supposed to exist; distinguished scientists actively supporting
Christianity have achieved prominence; and a materialist interpretation
of nature has been championed aggressively by certain scientists, while
other groups of scientists with equal vigour have pursued an attempted
justification of creationism.
Sources
Charles Darwin, On the origin of species (any edition, e.g. the Penguin
paperback edition or the Oxford University Press edition published in
1998). Many other editions too, widely available
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, London, Black Swan, 2007
Stephen J. Gould, Rocks of ages. Science and religion in the fullness of
life (New York, 1999): Bod Bookstack M01.F04446; Theol.Fac.Lib.
19.11c21
Peter Harrison, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Science and
Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010

Historical studies
Brooke, Science and religion (cited for Week V); RSL Hist. A 206
Gary B. Ferngren et al. (eds.), The history of science and religion in the
western tradition: an encyclopedia (London, 2000)
David Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, God and nature. Historical
essays on the encounters between Christianity and science
(Berkeley, Ca., 1986)
Ronald L. Numbers, The creationists. The evolution of scientific
creationism (Berkeley, Ca., 1993)

15
16
 Richard Owen,
caricatured in
the magazine
Vanity Fair,
1 March 1873.
The accompanying
commentary on the
drawing is reproduced
on the facing page.
For a detailed study of
Owen, see Nicolaas A.
Rupke, Richard Owen.
Victorian naturalist
(New Haven and
London, 1994)

17
WEEK 8: Scientific Instruments and Museums
(Dr Jim Bennett and Dr Stephen Johnston)

A visit to the Museum of the History of Science in Broad Street, in a

building designed to introduce the new experimental philosophy of the
seventeenth century to the University. It was the site, not only of original
Ashmolean Museum, but also of the first laboratory in the University, and
a school or teaching space for demonstrating natural philosophy through
instruments and experiments. Today it houses one of the worlds great
collections of scientific instruments, and the session will illustrate how
they can be used as evidence in the history of science.

A. J. Turner, Early Scientific Instruments (London, 1987)

Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (eds), Merchants & marvels : commerce
and the representation of nature in early modern Europe (2002)
Jan Golinski, Making natural knowledge: constructivism and the history of
science (Cambridge, 1998), chapter 5

Alternative lectures:

Those of you who find it difficult to attend the lectures

on Tuesdays at 12.00 will be welcome to attend a
similar, though not identical, series to be given by
Professor Pietro Corsi on Wednesdays at 11.00,
beginning in Week One.
If you choose to follow these lectures, it would be
advisable for you to join one of the weekly tutorial
classes: to do so, please contact Professor Corsi,
pietro.corsi@history.ox.ac.uk
Please note that the Wednesday lectures will take place
in the History Faculty, the Old Boys High School,
George Street and not in Linacre College.

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NEXT TERM . . .
The second part of the course, mainly devoted to the philosophy of science,
will be taught in Hilary Term. The lectures will explore the impact of science on
philosophical thinking, along with questions on the foundations and validity of
scientific knowledge, introducing the thoughts of philosophers on these
subjects from Descartes and Hume to Popper, Kuhn, and Quine. These
lectures will be accompanied by classes for which you will write essays on
selected topics and readings, as stated in the weekly lecture notes. For further
details of this part of the course, please contact Professor Simon Saunders at
simon.saunders@philosophy.ox.ac.uk. The arrangements for the Hilary Term
classes will be made after the first lecture in that term. Over the vacation, in
preparation for Hilary Term, you should read the first and second of
R. Descartess Meditations on first philosophy, available from the Philosophy
Library.

. . . AND AFTER
Both the history of science and the philosophy of science are well-established
disciplines at Oxford. Work in these fields is supported not only by the
internationally important collections of printed sources and manuscripts in the
Bodleian Libraries but also by the resources of the Museum of the History of
Science in Broad Street and of other Oxford museums, notably the University
Museum of Natural History.
Opportunities for advanced study in the history of science and the
philosophy of science exist in Part II Chemistry and Part II Biochemistry, in
which context a thesis may be written on an historical or philosophical subject.
At the postgraduate level, one- and two-year taught courses leading to the MSc
or MPhil are offered, in addition to the research degrees of MLitt and DPhil
Physics students may also be interested in the new MSt in the philosophy of
phsyics.
Further information can be found at:
https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/humdiv/histfac/postgrad/masters_prog/hsmt
and www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate; a list of completed theses
(all available in the History Faculty Library) can be found at
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/hsmt/courses_reading/chemistry/theses.htm.
If you are interested in pursuing postgraduate work in the history of science
or philosophy of science, speak to your tutor for the Supplementary Subject
course or contact Professor Corsi, who can be contacted at the History Faculty,
George Street, by E-mail: pietro.corsi@history.ox.ac.uk.

19
 Frontispiece to Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society
(London, 1667), representing Francis Bacon (on the right) as the
inspiration of the society, with Lord Brouncker (the first president)
and, in the centre, Charles II being crowned by Fame