Overview
Reading response #1
In at least 500 words, write a response to the primary source reading following the criteria below. You should incorporate insight, arguments, and information from the secondary source readings as well, when and if appropriate. You should also incorporate your own judgment in these short papers. You must write on the sources we read for the class meeting on which the assignment is due.
Reading responses are meant to give you the opportunity engage directly with the primary source readings and critically analyze them through a very short response essay.
Reading responses should critically engage with the primary source material to in order analyze the ideas presented, to raise issues related to the themes of course, and when possible, to put the readings “in conversation” with one another to gain an understanding of the different interpretations of the historical sources and the historical period in question. For example, you may write a response paper on Andreas Osiander’s Preface to Nicolas Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus in which you explain why Osiander suggested that Copernicus was simply describing a mathematical model rather than a physical reality by quoting from Osiander’s text and reinforcing it with substantive commentary from Shapin, Poskett, or Bowler and Morus on the topic. You should be able to answer basic questions through these responses that explain what you can learn from the historical period in question based on the primary and secondary source texts.
These responses should not be mere summaries of the readings (though brief summary may occasionally be necessary to make your point). Typically, the best technique is to form the response around a question you have about the reading or to find a short, especially interesting passage from the reading (probably no more than a paragraph) and do a close, analytical reading of it. Think of yourself as having a conversation with the author in an attempt clarify ideas that may not make sense at first glance or pretend that you are attempting to convince a friend with whom you disagree about the merits of a particular authors’ ideas. Ideally, these responses will form the foundation of the questions we will explore in class discussion.
Please refer to some of the examples I've posted in the Modules and Files sections of Canvas if you have any questions about what a model reading response looks like.
Keep in mind some of the basic questions you should ask of the texts:
Who is writing this and why?
What is the text about? When and where was it written? What can the time and place (and culture, religion, institution, or economic status) of the author tell us about the text?
What sorts of aspects of the natural world are they trying to explain or theorize about?
What can this reading tell us about the state of the sciences at the time it was written and their development over time?
PRIMARY SOURCE: Nicolaus Copernicus, Preface, in On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/hc/prefaces-and-p...
PRIMARY SOURCE: Andreas Osiander (originally published anonymously), Foreword to Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), https://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/ossiander_...
James Poskett, Horizons: A Global History of Science (Viking, 2022), 46-70 (hereafter “Poskett”)
Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 2007), 15-30 (hereafter “Shapin”)