This mini-course is designed to comprise a series of presentations of individual milestones in the development of Western science and the modern worldview. Far from being an exhaustive (and by extension tedious) historical lecture process, the idea is one of synergy. By allowing students to work through key components of each "milestone" discovery themselves, one simultaneously conveys knowledge of both the scientific content (which remains equally valid, albeit elaborated today) and the all important method behind its development. The course is therefore intended to satisfy two major functions. By presenting students with personal facts regarding the lives of eminent scientists, some more exposed to the public at large than others, one finds a ready-made framework for teaching both the science and the scientific method to which each individual contributed. In it's current form, this course is divided into eight segments, each dealing with one of the following individuals: Archimedes of Syracuse (the father of physics), Galileo Galilei (who placed the authority of observation above all else), Isaac Newton (founder of mechanics; example of science motivating mathematical innovation), Charles Lyell (champion of uniformitarianism, the notion on which modern geology is founded), Charles Darwin (who extended scientific investigation to the origins of humans), Albert Einstein (who moved physics well beyond the intuitive), Alfred Wegener (who built the case for the radical notion of continental drift), and Thomas Gold (a modern scientist full of radical ideas).

State and federal curriculum guidelines for science education continue to expand and include more modern science topics, probably at a rate faster than ever before in U.S. history. Students, through state systems such as the Regents in New York, or national institutions like the SATs, are required to "master" a panoply of scientific topics. What this generally translates into, in practical terms, is the memorization of large volumes of scientific "facts". This is truly unfortunate. It is irrefutable that science is a dominant component of our industrialized society and that our successive generations need to be scientifically savvy. They are best served in attaining this savvy, however, not through memorization of facts but mastery of technique. Science is too often presented not for what it is, a very tightly characterized epistemology or method of investigating the universe, but rather as a body of knowledge. This course is an attempt to correct for this deficit by presenting in as much clarity and in as interactive a way possible, the method of science. This is done in the framework of the history of Western science. By illuminating the life and work of key individuals throughout scientific history, both the human and methodological aspects of the scientific endeavor may be explicated. Each session of this mini-course is designed to present one individual in the history of science, making clear their biographical and historical context. The science lessons to be gleaned form each session are always two-fold: (1) What can this person's work tell us about the method of science? (2) What can this person's work tell us about our modern scientific world-view? The former is primary and, by the tend of the mini-course, it is hoped that any student could look at a given explanation for an observable phenomenon and label it as science or not. This critical faculty is what most needs development.

There are three major goals that this course is intended to address:

1. Illuminate the lives of a variety of key scientific figures.
2. Explain a variety of fundamental concepts in the modern scientific worldview.
3. Make clear the processive nature of science and the specific method by which it operates.

This course is about the scientific method and the human element that created it. The specific scientific concepts that feature in each session are really secondary to the nature of the science they help illuminate. Thus, the course can readily be adapted to any level of mathematical and scientific background and these factors should not be considered limiting in matching this course with a specific group of students.

After four years of study at the Pennsylvania State University, Benjamin Jantzen received bachelors degrees in both physics and biology in 1999. That year, he began work towards a doctorate in physics at Cornell University. He has dedicated a great deal of time to outreach projects since the middle of his undergraduate career.

Each session is expected to take approximately one-hour.

Learning Objectives:

• Mathematics preceded science and is the cornerstone of scientific inquiry.
• Archimedes was the first to apply mathematically derived results to a variety physical systems, essentially creating modern physics.
• Archimedes, unlike his predecessors, used mechanical systems to give mathematical insight, what we would call the method of modeling.

Scientific content:

• law of the lever
• principle of buoyancy
• estimation of the weight of extinct vertebrates

Activities:

• student groups will attempt to empirically determine the law of the lever
• the law of the lever will be derived as Archimedes did to illustrate the application of mathematical reasoning
• student groups, using balances and containers of water, will estimate the masses of a variety of dinosaurs

• Galileo established the primacy of observation, the empirical cornerstone of the scientific revolution, making it the sole arbiter of choice between conflicting worldviews.
• The empirical method demolished reasoned views of man's centrality in the universe.

Scientific content:

• law of inertia
• refinement of the telescope
• discovery and tracking of sunspots and of the Galilean satellites

Activities:

• multimedia presentation on Galileo's astronomical discoveries will be given
• student teams, belonging to one of two major groups, will work with worksheets that guide them through two alternative interpretations of an alien artifact modeled after the plaque on the Voyager probe (an analogy to the contest between Ptolemaic and Copernican cosmologies)

• The study of physics required the invention of mathematics, rather than the converse .
• Newton employed mechanics universally, postulating the stars to be subjected to the same rules of motion as rocks.
• The laws of gravity and mechanics for the first time formed a theoretical basis for cosmology, predicting the motions described empirically by Kepler and necessitating the Copernican view.

Scientific content:

• laws of mechanics and gravity
• basic spectroscopy and use of diffraction gratings
• calculus

Activities:

• students will use diffraction gratings to investigate the spectra of common light sources
• students will work through a worksheet in groups that will let them find the size of the first detected extra-solar planet

• Lyell championed the extension of empiricism to historical sciences (geology, paleontology, etc.). By suggesting that the processes we can observe on earth today occurred much the same way in the past (uniformitarianism), geology was brought into the realm of experimental inquiry. What's more, the age of the earth was then an empirical question and a potentially infinite quantity.

Scientific content:

• Steno's principles
• Uniformitarianism
• Principle of cross-cutting relationships
• Origin of fossils
• Geological history of Ithaca

Activities:

• This entire session will be conducted as a field trip, during which students will observe each of Steno's and Hutton's principles in the field as well as a variety of local fossils.

• Darwin extended the realm of scientific inquiry to the origins of Homo sapiens with the empirically testable theory of natural selection. Though not the first theory of biological descent, Darwin's ideas would do for biology what Newton's mechanics did for physics.
• What distinguishes a scientific theory from other sorts of ideas?

• Fossil evidence for biological evolution
• Concept of natural selection
• Modern Darwinism

• Most of the session will comprise a game-show where students identify statements, theories, and hypotheses as scientific or pseudo-scientific. The reason for this exercise is that Darwinian science cannot be introduced without reference to Creationism. Thus, it seems apropos to address such topics directly.

• Einstein's theories encompassed a great many phenomena and exhibited the drive in science to attain the simplest explanation of the widest range of empirical data possible.
• Einstein's theories, through the application of mathematics, extended well beyond the intuitive realms of mechanics. Much of modern physics is this way.

• Brownian motion
• The photoelectric effect
• Special relativity

• A demonstration apparatus will be constructed to exhibit the Brownian motion of suspended micron-sized spheres.

• Wegener's hypothesis of continental drift provided an excellent and very recent test of the scientific method in historical sciences.

• Continental drift
• Mountain-building, oceanic ridges, and subduction
• Paleomagnetism
• Global fossil distribution

• Gold's theories serve as wonderful examples of scientific hypotheses that have not yet been empirically addressed. They serve as exciting examples of how the scientific process is going on now and what distinguishes it from other philosophical approaches.

• Canonical and abiogenic theories of petroleum formation
• Nature and variety of microbial life
• Extreme environments in which life is found
• RNA-world hypothesis
• The Urey-Miller experiment
• A.G. Cairns-Smith's and T. Gold's theories on the origins of life

• A combined multimedia presentation and series of demonstrations will illustrate the above topics.
• Student groups will construct small arches in a hands-on illustration of powerful evolutionary metaphor.