CHEMISTRY: Recalls of the history of scientific thought from the Pre-Socratic to the Renaissance. The birth of Chemistry, Alchemy, Phlogiston, Caloric. The atomic theories and the development of Chemistry from the 17th to the 20th century.
J.R. Partington, A short history of Chemistry, 3rd edition, Dover Publ.
Learning Objectives
Physics module:
Provide a comprehensive picture of the development of physics between the nineteenth and early twentieth century, outlining the main figures of scientists and the different currents of thought that intertwined and contrasted at that time. In particular, it is intended to highlight the profound link between developments in the physical sciences and the cutural and productive context in which they fit. It is also intended to highlight how the relationship between science, culture and the world of production evolved along paths that led post-Newtonian physics to a progressive abandonment of the mechanistic foundations of scientific explanation and to the development of theoretical models that created the basis for the definitive overcoming of mechanicism, up to the foundations of modern science, represented by quantum theories and relativity.
Chemistry module:
Present an overview of Chemistry from Alchemy to the 20th century, outlining the main themes and conceptual acquisitions that have characterized its evolution. We will briefly illustrate the assumptions of the development of scientific thought from the Pre-Socratic period to the Renaissance, the historical and cultural implications of the context in which Chemistry developed, also in relation to Physics and other experimental disciplines.
Prerequisites
none
Teaching Methods
frontal/online lectures
Further information
-
Type of Assessment
Exam
Course program
Contents of the History of Physics module
- Introduction to the post-Newtonian scientific heritage in 18th century Europe: the contributions of Bernoulli, Eulero and the experimental research of Dalton and Boyle.
- The development of technology during the English Industrial Revolution and its influence on the physical sciences: Smeaton, Watt, Rumford, Babbage and Ure.
- The professionalization of science during the French Revolution and the birth of new disciplines: Laplace, Lavoisier, Lagrange, Monge, L. Carnot.
- The Napoleonic period and the development of a model of technocratic society through the creation of scientific institutions closely linked to political and cultural power: Fourier, Laplace, S. Carnot.
- Britain's reaction to French scientific development: the birth of the Royal Institution and the role of self-taught scientists: Davy, Faraday, Joule.
- Development of positivism in the continental scientific context during the Restoration period and the primate of France: Ampere, Coulomb.
- The birth of electromagnetism as a discipline inspired by the study of new phenomena: Oersted, Faraday, Maxwell.
- The era of Romanticism and its influence on scientific thought in a reaction to positivistic mechanicism.
- The development of the physical sciences at the turn of the mid-nineteenth century: thermodynamic electromagnetism as an object of main interest not only scientifically, but also applicatively: the induction motor and electrolytic cells.
- The preparation for the second industrial revolution: the progressive shift of the cultural centre of gravity towards the German-speaking states:
Von Humboldt, Helmholtz, Mayer, Clausius.
- Developments in kinetic theory and the crisis of mechanicism: Maxwelll, Boltzmann, Ostwald and Mach.
-the leap forward of the German chemical industry at the turn of the 19th century:
Haber, Kekulé.
-The British science at the end of the 19th century: the birth of the Cavendish Laboratory and the interest in electromagnetic phenomena and the physics of radiation and radioactivity.
-The assumptions of the definitive overcoming of mechanicism towards quantum mechanics and relativity: Planck, Einstein, De Broglie.