Readings and Viewings

Check out our Spotify shared playlist Cosmology and the History of Wonder. Feel free to add to it! All styles and genres welcome. The only ground rule: no profanity. (You might have to be a Spotify subscriber to add to playlists, but you can always send me the suggestion by email if that’s an issue, and I’ll add it for you.)

Books for the course:

Primary texts:
  1. The book of the cosmos: imagining the universe from Heraclitus to Hawking, D.R. Danielson.
  2. The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, by Michael Strevens.
  3. The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), Katie Mack.
Weekly schedule of readings and activities
Key: If a direct link is not provided to an online resource, the readings can be found in [D] = Danielson, [B] = Blackboard, [Blog] = posted on this site
Week 0 – (Jan 26) Part 1: Seeking Sources

Wednesday, January 26:

Week 1 – (Jan 31- Feb 2) Part 1: Seeking Sources (cont.)

Monday, January 31: Humans as storytellers and artists

 Wednesday, February 2: Lost worlds and stories of how the world began.

  • Archaeoastronomy, Giulio Magli [B]. Please read Chapter 4: Astronomy and Architecture at the Roots of Civilization.
  • Some fairy tales might be 6,000 years old, David Schultz, Science Magazine (2016).
  • Skywoman falling, Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
  • From our Blackboard site, please read: The beginning of this world, a creation story from the Marshall Islands. Read pps. 11-15, up to the passage on the RHS column: “And thus the light increased and everything could be seen.”
  • From Danielson, please read: The Heavens Declare, pps. 6-10 of Danielson [D].
Week 2: February 7-9

Monday, February 7: We pick up the Greek thread with the pre-Socratics

  • “How Wikipedia works and how to become an editor,” [Now on Blackboard].
  • “Introduction: Telescopes for the mind,” pps. xxv-xxxiii [D].
  • “Pythagoras,” Bertrand Russell [B].
  • “Twice Into the Same River?” Heraclitus and Permenides [D].
  • “Zeno’s Paradoxes: the Arrow,” Prof Angie Hobbs video. [5:56]
  • “The Things of the Universe are Not Sliced Off With a Hatchet,” Empedocles and Anaxagoras [D].
  • “Atoms and Empty Space,” (read the short sections on Leucippus and Democritus) [D].

Wednesday, February 9: We continue by exploring Plato’s moving image of eternity and the enduring interest of the Greek story

Week 3 – (Feb 14-16) Part 1: Seeking Sources (cont.)

Monday, February 14: The Triple-A Threat: Aristotle, Aristarchus, and Archimedes

  1. “The Potency of Place,” Aristotle [D].
  2. “Bowling balls, hammers, and feathers,”[Blackboard].
  3. “He Supposes the Earth to Revolve,”Aristarchus and Archimedes [D].
  4. “Aristarco di Samos,” short video from “Stephen Hawking’s universe” [3 mins.]
  5. “A Geometrical Argument,” Eratosthenes [D].
  6. “On Things That Should Never be Forgotten,” Tracy blog.

Wednesday, February 16: The Legacy of Alexandria; the Ancient World Forgotten?

  1. Today, I will give a sample ‘What?/So What?’ talk entitled “Should we aspire to travel to the stars?”. [3 mins.]. I’ll be posting a sign-up sheet and some suggested formats for your talks, too. Stay tuned.
  2. As background reading for our work on presentation skills, please read: “Trees, maps, and theorems,” by Jean-luc Doumont. [Blackboard] (you can find this PDF in the Readings/Viewings folder, in the folder named ‘Communication skills’).
  3. “The Peculiar Nature of the Universe,” Ptolemy [D].
  4. “Agora: Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria,” [Blackboard].
  5. “Greek Astronomy and the Medieval Arabic Tradition,” Saliba, PDF [B].
Week 4 (Feb. 21-23) Part 1: Seeking Sources (conclusion)

Monday, February 21: A Medieval Sampler

  • “From this point hang the heavens,” Dante Alighieri [D].
  • “The medieval senses were transmitters as much as receivers,” Wollgar, Aeon.
  • “If a man were in the sky and could see the Earth clearly,” Nicole Oresme [D].
  • “A single universe in which each star influences every other,” Nicholas Cusanus [D].

Wednesday, February 23: The Copernican Revolution’s quiet beginnings

  • “Almost contrary to common sense,” Nicolas Copernicus [D].
  • “The poetic structure of the world,” Hallyn and Kuhn [D].
  • “A star never before seen in our time,” Tycho Brahe [D].
  • “This little dark star wherein we live,” Thomas Digges [D].
  • Note: here’s an example of a draft webpage for your mock encyclopedia article. I chose the topic The Joy of Asparagus Soup! at random, based on the first image that came up on Wikimedia Commons.
Week 5 (Feb. 28-Mar. 2) Part 2: The Martian Catastrophe and its Aftermath

Note that any Blackboard materials for this part of the course will now be found in the Part 2 folder.

Monday, February 28-Wednesday, March 2: The hard work of learning to see in new ways

Week 6 (March 7-9) The Martian Catastrophe (Cont.)

Monday, March 7: Descartes and Newton

  • “Descartes,” Bertrand Russell [B].
  • “A very liquid heaven,” René Descartes [D].
  • “I feel, therefore I am,” Margaret Wertheim.
  • “Into the celestial spaces,” Isaac Newton [D].

Wednesday, March 9: Mid-term exam.

March 12 – 20: SPRING BREAK! Enjoy.

Week 7: For the week of March 21, please read the following:

  • The Introduction and Part 1 of The Knowledge Machine, by Michael Strevens.
  • “Must we then reject the infinitude of stars?” HWM Olbers [D].

Week 8: For the week of March 28 – 30, please read the following:

  • Part 2 of The Knowledge Machine.
  • “Astronomers mark time,” Schaffer PDF [Blackboard].
  • Please sign up for a citizen science team project. The sign-up sheet is available on Blackboard in the folder ‘Assignments/Team Projects’. Links to the various projects are included in the sign-up sheet.
  • For fun: Listen to the podcast “Connecting physics to the world of experience,” where physicist Sean Carroll and philosopher Jenann Ismael discuss free will.
Week 9: For the week of April 4-6, please read the following:
Week 10: April 11-13, please read the following:
  • “The shadow! The shadow!” Maria Mitchell [D].
  • “Astronomy still young,” Agnes Mary Clerke [D].
  • “The architecture of the celestial mansions,” Annie Jump Cannon [D].
  • “The quickening influence of the Universe,” Cecelia Payne-Gaposchikin [D].
  • “The fourth dimension in 19th century physics,” Bork [PDF]. This reading can be found in the Blackboard folder Interlude: Into the 4th dimension.
  • “The time machine,” HG Wells. Read the first chapter.
  • On Wednesday, each citizen science team should prepare a short PowerPoint presentation that summarizes the scientific goals of their project, and the team goals for the month of April. This will be your ‘pitch’.
Week 11: April 18-20. Please read/view the following
Week 12: April 25-27. Please read the following:
  • “The realm of the nebula,” Edwin Hubble [D].
  • “Prisons of light,” Kitty Ferguson [D].
  • “What we cannot see yet know must be there,” Vera Rubin [D].
  • Also, please read the first four chapters of The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), Katie Mack.
  • On Wednesday we’ll quickly touch base on the status of your Team Projects. Please appoint a spokesperson, who will be expected to give a one-minute update to the class.
  • By Wednesday, please review your mock Wikipedia article and make sure you have a full draft with embedded media. Also, make sure your media respects copyright, or that you created it yourself (which means you own the copyright).
Week 13: May 2-4. Please read/listen/view the following:
  • “Did the expansion start from the beginning?” Geoges Éduard Lamaitre [D].
  • “Science, religion, and the Big Bang,” Maria Popova, Brain Pickings. Be sure to watch the embedded video, which is a great quick summary of why “Big Bang Theory” should instead be called the “Everywhere Stretch Theory”. (video is 5:19 long)
  • Please read the rest of The End of Everything, by Katie Mack.
  • Please listen to the Sean Carroll interview with Adam Riess “On the expansion of the universe and the crisis in cosmology.” (1:18:18 in length) Riess was one of three people (Perlmutter and Schmidt were the other two) who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery that the universe appears to be accelerating, which is is the best evidence we have for the existence of what’s called ‘dark energy’.
  • Final Team Presentations will be on Wednesday, May 4.
  • Also, if you want to give your final Mock Wikipedia presentation on Wednesday, just let me know. I still ask that you attend the other presentations on May 11, to show support for your fellow students and see what they’ve been up to.
Reminder of upcoming dates:
  • Wednesday, April 27, I will take another look at your Mock Wikipedia articles to see how they are coming along. Please update them.
  • Wednesday, May 4, our last day: Citizen Science Team presentations.
  • Friday, May 6: Last day of classes
  • Wednesday, May 11, 2-5 PM: Mock Wikipedia final presentations. If some of you wish to go early, we can arrange for that on May 4 after the team presentations.