2/26/2024: week 1

헤겔, 역사를 과학적으로 접근

Leopold von Ranke (1794-1886)

Histories of Latin and Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514

Sources: memoirs, diaries, personal and formal notes, etc

(observational science)

Historian’s task:

“how it really was”

“wie es eigentlich gewesen”

Empirical perspective

History in academic field appeared in 19th century in Germany

Benedetto Croce (1866-1952)

History consists essentially in seeing the past through the eyes of the present
and in the light of its problems.

The main job of historian: to evaluate.

 All history is contemporary history.

Whig History: justifying present based on the past.

E.H. Carr (1892-1982)

“it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an
unending dialogue between the present and the past”
2/28/2024 Prof. Victor Seow from Harvard

Title: Does technology drive history, and, if so, how?

1. What is technology?
2. Technological determinism?
3. What (else) do historians of technology study?

1. What is technology?
My answer: technology is an application of engineering or science which
has practical intentions.

Other answers:

 makes human life convenient + efficient.

 drawn from the knowledge + insight of science.
 Skills + information to tackle something of accumulated experience.
 All kinds of artificial objects that interact with humans/non-humans and
other objects.

Karl Marx: Technology disclosed mans life with nature …

2. Technological Determinism

Technological Determinism vs Social Constructivism

Technological Momentum

Social Constructivism, Thomas P. Hughes (1923-2014)

Q: what could be the alternative value for (in East Asia in particular) the typical
definition of history

Q: Motivation of being a historian

3/4/2024: week 2

Science is about inquiry.

All scientists are sort of historians. (e.g. all articles contain history of its field)

Importance of STP

Constant dialogue between the past and the present.

“Critical understanding of the past for multiple futures”

State-Market-Oil-Labor-Surveillance (visible, invisible)

Galileo, “novel hypotheses”

Newton, “Gravity must be caused by an agent, … but whether this agent be

material or immaterial I have left…”, (Newton to Richard Bentley, 1692)

God necessarily exists, and by the same necessity he is always and everywhere.”
(2nd edition of Principia, 1713)

Newton spent 70% of his time studying alchemy and biblical interpretation.

What is a scientific revolution?

J.D. Bernal, the social Function of Science (1937)

“The renaissance enables a scientific revolution which let scholars look at the
world in a different light. Religion, superstition, and fear were replaced by reason
and knowledge.”

Alexandre Koyre (1939)

Coined the

Herbert Butterfiled, The origins of …

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thoms S. Kuhn

Steven Shapin, The Scientific revolution

3/6/2024

Topic: Science-religion relationship in Islam, 김윤정

Success of science in Islamic culture until 14th century

Greek literatures to Islamic countries

Channel of knowledge

Ptolemy’s Almagest

 Islamic scholars: theory of earth rotating.

Newton’s Alchemy Note

 Islamic scholars: against the Quran, Allah

Required to pray five time a day to mecca  developed compass studied moon
phases.

Ibn Sina: proof of the Truthful

Contingent things: a thing that needs an external cause to exist.

Non-contingent things = God

“All praise belongs to God, lord of the worlds.” – Quran

“Travel throughout the earth and see how He brings life into being” (Q 29:20)

 Determined to find out the meaning of Quran

Why not successful after 15th century

The Gutenberg Bible published in the mid 15th century vs Quran manuscript dated
to 1510

“There is nothing fundamental in Islam against science.” Nobel Chemistry Prize

winner
Topic Galileo

- Background

Scholasticism: based on Aristotle philosophy

Ptolemaic system

Galileo: the most prestigious scientist

Reformation: corrupt catholic  revolution

Timeline

- 1610 ‘Sidereus Nuncius’ Published,  some celestials rotating around

Jupiter
- 1613 Letters on Sunspots sent  against the belief that sun is perfect
- 1616 The first Judgement
- 1632 Dialogue published.
- 1633 The final Judgement: was house arrested to death
- 1642 Galileo’s death
- 1990 Speech of Pope Benedict XVI
- 2018 Discover of The Letter to Castelli

Controversies

Three issues

Implication

- Telescope
- The unfinished
- Padaigm shift
3/11/2024

Descarte: Human body = machine, human brain = not machine

Changes in scientific instruments. Copercnicus’ compass, kepler’s compass

Galileo’s telescope

Boyle’s airpump

Bacon’s new organon

1) Knowledge is power
A. Man, being the servant and interpreter of nature,…,
B. Human knowledge and human power meet in one; Nature to be
commanded must be obeyed
2) Separation of theology and science
3) Method od acquisition is induction
4) Sciene is collective

The English evolution

The English civil war (1640-60)

The restoration (1660-1688)

The glorious revolution (1688)

Thomas hohbs – reviathan

3/13/2024

Scientific revolution not in china

3/18/2024

“The degree of certainty”

Order in nature, order in politics

Leviathan and the air-pump