Shakespeare and the Nature of Science: Examining Scientific Inquiry Through Time

The resource is available as an adaptable .doc attachment following this description.

Overview

This undergraduate resource explores the cultural context of scientific inquiry through an interdisciplinary lens. Students follow two characters from William Shakespeare’s play King Lear who debate the cosmos with various scientists from the 17^th – 20^th centuries, including Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Marie Curie. The joined scientific / literary lens models how intellectual questions about knowledge and analysis often draw from interrelated traditions of thought and practice, and asks students to consider the nature of their own intellectual questions.

More specifically, the resource is designed to help students:

·       Analyze how knowledge about the cosmos is mediated through cultural texts and beliefs

·       Articulate shifting norms and beliefs of scientific inquiry in the last 500 years

·       Identify and explain core tenets of the nature of science

·       Compare representations of scientific knowledge in Shakespeare and modern culture

To answer these questions, students will deploy skills and strengthen their familiarity with approaches and frameworks from the humanities, the sciences, and scientific history.

Classroom Use:

The assignment, structured in modules like an interrupted case study, can be used and adapted for college-level introductory (CLI) science courses, CLI literature courses, and upper level Shakespeare courses. It may also benefit upper level high school courses. The resource supports group or individual work, and can be accomplished entirely in class or partially as take-home.

Accessing Resource:

Simply click the first attachment to access the teaching resource. We have also attached Teaching Notes that walk instructors through the assignment. The Notes include significant historical background and a prose translation from the brief passage used from King Lear.

The resource is licensed as CC BY-NC-SA, allowing users to use and adapt the resource non-commercially, provided they cite the original and license their version as BY-NC-SA as well. Citation should run as follows: Vitale, Kyle and Tracie Marcella Addy. 2018. "Shakespeare and the Nature of Science: Examining Scientific Inquiry Through Time." Teaching Resource. OER Commons.

A key providing sample answers to questions posed throughout the resource is also available upon request: please contact either Kyle Vitale at kyle.vitale@yale.edu or Tracie Marcella Addy at addyt@lafayette.edu.