Resources 1: Science and Technology

 

1. Galileo

Background:

Ptolemaic Astronomy

Ptolemaic explanation of retrograde motion

Contemporary Geocentrists

Galileo

Rice University’s Galileo Project

The Law of Falling Bodies (video from “The Mechanical Universe”)

The Copernican Revolution

John Donne’s take on the emptiness of the “New Philosophy”

 

The Scientific Method

Fact, Hypothesis, Theory

Sir Karl Popper on Falsification

 

Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo (drama)

Summary of the play

Changes to the play

 

 

2. Technology

Samuel Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering

Technology and the Tragic View