Scottish Enlightenment at OpenLearn

Open University makes many of its courses available through OpenLearn. One extremely interesting course is Science in the Scottish Enlightment.

This is a good introductory course, a jumping off point to more indepth study for lifelong learners.

Getting Ready for Year of Science 2009

The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) Year of Science 2009 is a great resource for lifelong learners and offers a way for us to get involved in the promotion of science in our society.

Don't miss the COPUS Blog. And you can sign up for updates from COPUS.

Also, launching in October 2008 is Understanding Science at the University of California at Berkeley. According to Understanding Science, speaking of the first phase of this project, "This content will be appropriate for teachers themselves and for the general public and will clarify what science is, how it works, and misconceptions about science. Concepts will be illustrated with both historical and modern exemplars."

Looks like something to keep an eye through the Year of Science.

Centre for Editing Lives and Letters

Some great work is being done over at CELL, the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. Of special note to lifelong learners, is the material available on the CELL Projects page. The Hooke Folio Online is an exceptional project. The introduction to it states, "In May 2006 a long lost manuscript of the papers of Robert Hooke was returned to the archive of the Royal Society. Lisa Jardine played a significant role in the recovery of the folio, which she described as 'an absolute treasure trove of new information about the day to day activities of the early scientific establishment'."

Lisa Jardine has done some great work, including On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life and Tumultuous Times of Sir Christopher Wren, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution and Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance.

Ingenious Pursuits is an excellent choice to start with, if you aren't familiar with her books. The biography of Christopher Wren was so welcome because it filled a gap in readily available materials on this most intriguing player in the history of science.

There are also some very interesting podcast titles available on the CELL Podcast page. However, I am having trouble opening them, so I'll have to get back to you on that.

History of Science at Princeton

Take a look at History 398 Technologies and Their Societies: Historical Perspectives, taught by Professor Michael S. Mahoney.

This 2006 course website offers an enormous amount of information on the history of science, focusing on technology. Almost all of the links are active, though sadly, a few are broken. Each week has extensive readings and links to material pertinent to the current topic.

One link of note is to The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920 at Duke University. I was not familiar with this archive that contains over 9,000 images in this one collection, plus many more collections. One area which I found very interesting was the collection of advertising cookbooks from 1878 to 1929.

Lifelong learners should find this course an interesting addition to learning resources.

History of Science at University of Delaware

Lifelong learners who are looking for history of science resources should add this website to their learning toolbox. It is at the University of Delaware Library, under Subject Guides, Internet Resources for History of Science and Technology.

There are so many Internet resources here that I won't even try to give an overview. Go have a look. It should keep us all busy for awhile. Enjoy!

Galileo Project

Portrait of Galileo

Justus Sustermans circa 1639

This is what Connexions says of its approach, "Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons 'attribution' license."

Here's just one course, the Galileo Project by Albert Van Heldon at Rice University. He and his students have been working on the Galileo Project for many years. He presents several in-dept modules, including Introduction to Galileo, his family, his science, instruments, theories and observations.

An excellent overview for independent scholars interested in the history of science.