hsci 3023 || spring 2016 || professor katherine pandora

Welcome to our online workspace for “The History of Modern Science since the Age of Newton”! You’ll find the syllabus and schedule here as well as other materials as we use them — if there is anything that seems to be missing, just let me know!

Most importantly, the website serves as our “blog hub,” putting the ideas of those of you thinking through the historical issues front and center for this semester. When students publish posts on their individual blogs, they’ll also be copied here through the rss feeds, which allows me to collect everyone’s contributions and bring them together in one place. In addition, there will be occasional posts from me and our teaching assistant, Carolyn Scearce, and perhaps a visitor or two as well. We’ll use categories and tags for the posts so that they can be sorted for quick reference.

Why blog? I promise you that we’ll discover a number of important reasons as we experiment with this new form of writing, thinking, and communicating over the next sixteen weeks. But to start with, here are three provocative perspectives for your consideration:

We are the people formerly known as the audience. ≡

90% of the universe is made of dark matter—hard to see, but so forceful that it seems to move every star, planet, and galaxy in the cosmos. And 90% of the Internet is made up of dark matter too—hard for institutions to see, but so forceful that it seems to move humanity itself. ≡ 

Even the worst bloggers are making us smarter. ≡