Final Post of History of Science Course

Although I have not quite finished the course work, and have to schedule one final visit to the Collections, I wanted to begin my final post partially so I could begin to document my general observations as they occur to me, but also because it is not clear when I will return to the Collections. I have visited three times already, and as I progress through my program at OU I hope to continue to make use of the Collections, as well as take at least one general survey course of the history of science during a regular semester. I also wanted to again thank Dr. Magruder and everyone at the Collections and OU libraries who have helped me. I wish to remind any readers of this blog that OU has a world-renowned History of Science Collections of which we should be proud, and to utilize it whenever possible. I cannot relate in words the impression and impact of holding and reading some of the original works at the Collections. I also wish to thank the readers of this blog, particularly those who provided feedback.

One of the main points I learned this summer is to be aware of pseudoscience, pseudohistory, Whiggism, hagiography, rational reconstruction, and "shoe-horning". I feel I am not only more aware of these potential pitfalls, but have learned ways to avoid and defeat them, with an emphasis on the use of original sources whenever possible. I have also been exposed to many new sources and methods of research, which I will continue to utilize. Some of the high points for me were obviously Darwin, Mendel, and Watson and Crick. The Double Helix in particular has immediately become one of my favorite books, in or out of science. The sequence of books and essays dealing with evolution, creationism, and how we as a society are dealing with it has importance then and now, and provided fascinating thought and reading. It was also stimulating and refreshing to learn more about some people and subjects that I knew much less of, such as Aristotle, Galen, Dobzansky, the mechanical philosophists, Harvey, Huxley, and far too many others to list them all. Some topics, such as spontaneous generation, quickly made me realize that there is so much more to learn for everyone, including me. In the same vein, I have a renewed interest in learning more about Newton, Einstein, Galileo and others like them who worked mostly outside the realm of biology, as well as more about the history of physics, chemistry, and geology in general. I think another main point I learned is to be more open-minded about the nature of science itself, that it is a collective process carried out historically in a variety of ways, and is not always cleancut, and by its nature there are a lot of twists and turns and even dead ends.

I should also add that I last attended school when I finished a master's degree in 1994, and the technology and methods of teaching and learning have changed a lot in a relatively short period of time. Courses that are all or partially online, blogging, and greater use of laptops in the classroom have all come to change my perspective this summer on education. and the various ways it can be accomplished. It has also been reinforced for me that one is never too old or accomplished to stop learning, and that getting stale and bogged down is dangerous both personally and professionally. One of my former supervisors advised me that changing jobs, furthering one's education, and other major shifts in one's career should take place fairly frequently, as this helps to cut down on complacency and getting in a rut. This is especially true for teachers, because it is the students that get short-changed when teachers are lackadaisical, bored, or under-prepared.