Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Science and Society
- 2 The Legacy of the “Scientific Revolution”: Science and the Enlightenment
- 3 Science, the Universities, and other Public Spaces: Teaching Science in Europe and the Americas
- 4 Scientific Institutions and the Organization of Science
- 5 Science and Government
- 6 Exploring Natural Knowledge: Science and the Popular
- 7 The Image of the Man of Science
- 8 The Philosopher’s Beard: Women and Gender in Science
- 9 The Pursuit of the Prosopography of Science
- Part II Disciplines
- Part III Special Themes
- Part IV Non-Western Traditions
- Part V Ramifications and Impacts
- Index
- References
3 - Science, the Universities, and other Public Spaces: Teaching Science in Europe and the Americas
from Part I - Science and Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Science and Society
- 2 The Legacy of the “Scientific Revolution”: Science and the Enlightenment
- 3 Science, the Universities, and other Public Spaces: Teaching Science in Europe and the Americas
- 4 Scientific Institutions and the Organization of Science
- 5 Science and Government
- 6 Exploring Natural Knowledge: Science and the Popular
- 7 The Image of the Man of Science
- 8 The Philosopher’s Beard: Women and Gender in Science
- 9 The Pursuit of the Prosopography of Science
- Part II Disciplines
- Part III Special Themes
- Part IV Non-Western Traditions
- Part V Ramifications and Impacts
- Index
- References
Summary
To date there has been little detailed research into the history of institutionalized science teaching in the eighteenth century, apart from work done on the British Isles, France, and the Netherlands. The paucity of data reflects the fact that until recently historians of eighteenth-century natural philosophy have taken little interest in the history of science in the classroom, assuming the subject of small importance. This chapter aims to demonstrate that such a judgment is misguided even if the conclusions of such a study must necessarily be provisional. The history of science teaching in the Age of Reason throws light on the speed and manner with which new theories and discoveries became part of the European cultural inheritance. More important, it also advances our understanding of the way in which distinctive natural sciences came to be defined and stabilized and distinctive national scientific traditions began to emerge at the end of the period.
AROUND 1700
Traditionally, public teaching in the natural sciences was the preserve of the universities, where the resposibility for teaching the gamut of human knowledge was divided among the faculties of arts, theology, law (sometimes divided into separate canon and civil law faculties), and medicine. By 1700, after three centuries of expansion, the number of Europe’s universities had grown from 40 to some 150, and they were to be found in all parts of the continent except Russia. A further fifteen or so universities or university colleges had also been founded in the New World, including three in the then English North American colonies: Harvard, Yale, and the College of William and Mary at Williamsburg.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 44 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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