HON 395H - Newton and the Scientific Revolution

Prerequisite, acceptance to the University Honors Program. This course will account for the intellectual complexity and apparent contradictory aspects of one of the main, if not the main champion of Western science and culture, Newton. The course will study the complexity of Newton figure and activity, for the apparent contradiction of his intellectual activity, for his works on the interpretation of prophecies and the philosopher’s stone, for his anti-trinitarsm, for his apparently strange (and today totally dismissed) “historical conception of the origins of civilization, for his tyrannical direction of the Royal Mint and the Royal Society. While expounding and discussing Newton major scientific outcomes (including infinitesimal calculus, theory of light and colors, rational mechanics, and universal gravitation), it will also reconstruct Newton’s views on the Holy Scripture, his conception of God as supreme master, his anti-dogmatic (before than anti-trinitarist) theology, his adhesion to alchemic tradition and practice, his views on the history of humanity, and his political ambition and thirst for wealth and power. ” (Offered as needed.) 3 credits