Write a paper of about 6-8 pp. (or 1800-2400 words) in which you explore further some aspect of the Scientific Revolution. One of the classes after Thanksgiving break will be devoted to discussion of some reading related to this paper.
The aspect of the Scientific Revolution you explore should be tied to some philosophical issue concerning the nature of scientific knowledge, either how it is that scientists come to know things or what it is that they come to know. One way to do this is, of course, to explore some aspect of the views on such issues that were held during the scientific revolution, but you might instead consider some aspect of scientific work of the time that you see as tied to such an issue whether or not the tie was made explicitly during the period.
For instance, scientists during the period had views concerning such things as the role of experiment and the importance of mechanical theories of nature; and we can look back at this period as a source of examples when considering our own views of these matters. The period can also be important for our discussions of issues, such as the nature of scientific change, that were not central topics of discussion at the time.
In any case, you should address some specific example from the period, an example either of scientific work or of views about science. Although there are other possibilities, the natural way of doing this is to choose one figure and one work by that figure as the locus of your exploration. This might be a scientific work, such as an experimental report or a presentation of a theory, or it might be a more philosophical discussion. This is not a long paper so you will be able to consider only one aspect of even short works; and, in any case, your aim should be to explore something in depth, not to summarize.
If you are exploring an aspect of a particular work, that work (or part of it) would be a natural choice for the reading used for class discussion. But another possibility would be to read someone since that time who writes about the topic you are exploring. Although it can be valuable to reread something already read, our opportunities for a variety of texts in the class are limited enough that we probably should not read again exactly what we have read. Since most of the things we have read from the period have been very short selections, we might simply read more. The exception is Descartes' The World; if you want to work on those ideas, you might consider looking other works of Descartes, which cover similar material (speak to me about possibilities).
There are a number of ways to look for a text. The lists of references and bibliographical notes at the end of both Kuhn and Dear are one resource. Matthews provides a bibliography in each of the introductions in his anthology. However, many of the sources listed in these places won't be readily available, so you should also do a subject search in Lilly's catalog. The latter is the best way to look for translations of non-English works of the period. There are a number of sources in different forms on line. I have put a few texts on the Blackboard site. More extensive collections with lots of material on science from this period can be found at the following sites:
http://shelf1.library.cmu.edu/Posner/browse.html
http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/toc/toc.cgi
(the Posner collection at Carnegie-Mellon Univ. and the Archimedes Project--on the latter page, the small triangles are the links to individual works). Another source for the period is the transactions of the Royal Society on JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/journals/03702316.html
JSTOR is also a good place to search for recent writing about the Scientific Revolution. In all cases, don't hesitate to get my help in finding material to explore and to read with the class.
As in the case of the weekly assignments, 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.