This will be a take-home final. The exam has two parts:

A. Choose three figures studied in the course and, for each, give a short account (less than a page) of his contributions to the Scientific Revolution. Unlike part B, these three accounts can be entirely independent.

B. Choose three other figures and write a short essay (of 2-3 pp.) that gives an account of their relation to one another as part of the Scientific Revolution.

One natural approach in the second part, is an account of how X came to be followed by Y and Y by Z; but the relation might be a different one. For example, Y and Z might both be influenced by X but go in different directions. Or two of the three might simply represent approaches to science that are opposed in some respect with the third somewhere between. And there are many other possibilities. The key thing is only that, unlike part A, you should give an account of some interesting relation among the three figures.

In all answers, you should cite your sources for the information you present. That's partly because it's the scholarly convention, but it's mainly to force to look back through the texts even if you remember a lot about one of these figures. Although the amount of information you provide is relevant to the quality of your answer, you won't gain anything by presenting more than will fit naturally in the number of pages I've noted. So don't go for quantity; use your time instead to select the information you present and to work to present it clearly.

Your chief sources for information will naturally be Dear and Kuhn, but you can find things in the introductory material in the Matthews anthology and in Descartes. When you are looking for information, I strongly encourage you to use indexes; that's especially important for Dear, who often divides his account of a given figure between different chapters.

You will have a fair amount of choice in who to write about. You have a good bit of information about at least Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hooke, Boyle, Huyghens, and Newton; and, of course, you shouldn't feel limited to these figures. Still, it might be wise to plan your answer to part B first and then choose the figures for part A from those who remain.

As usual, I will be happy to accept these on paper but I encourage you to submit them electronically. You can send them as attachments to e-mail messages (my address is helmang@wabash.edu) or use the Blackboard drop box for the course.