Objectives of Programme's Learning Outcomes

• Apply high quality scientific methodology.
• Critically reflect on the impact of chemistry in general and projects to which they particularly contribute.

Content of UE

This course is based on two observations: first, there is today a general questioning of science (from alternative facts to the denial of reality), which goes hand in hand with a crisis of the scientific research model itself (the crisis of reproducibility); second, scientists are generally unaware of the historical circumstances that prevailed in the invention and the often difficult acceptance of scientific concepts as we use them daily. This should not surprise us, because the engine that drives scientific knowledge is controversy, which can be resolved for a time until new discoveries challenge the established model.

The course follows 2 threads:
1°) ideas circulate with the peoples who convey them, thus fertilizing new areas of human thought over the centuries and millennia in lineages that sometimes reach the present time
2°) the texts that underlie them are also, for some of them, perfectly accessible literary works, and of great beauty.

The course covers the long term, going back to the written civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, and ending with the latest developments in transhumanism in Europe and the United States. It attempts to put into perspective the great developments in (pre-)scientific thought in relation to the political and religious, and even social and economic, context of each era.

It is impossible to address a complete vision of this theme in a 15-hour course, and unfortunately choices had to be made. We will not deal with science in the Chinese, Indian or Arab cultural spheres. We will limit ourselves to what we call today physics and chemistry, excluding the other scientific fields, in particular mathematics and biology.

The course is intended to be rather interactive: explanation of the context alternating with readings, by the students, of selected pieces, followed by a discussion on the understanding and the lessons to be drawn from it.

Table of contents:

Chapter 1: The Setting, Antiquity
Chapter 2 : The world is a sphere
Chapter 3 : The occult philosophy of the Renaissance
Chapter 4 : The emergence of the first modern science
Chapter 5: Science, Networks and Empires
Chapter 6: Heat, Electricity and Industry
Chapter 7: The Second Revolution of Modern Science
Chapter 8: The Ideology Behind Emerging Technologies (Enhancing human performances)

Prior Experience

Not applicable

Type of Assessment for UE in Q1

• Oral examination

Q1 UE Assessment Comments

The exam consists of an exchange of views on a theme of the course chosen by the student, and the reading of a work selected from a list of about fifteen references.

Type of Assessment for UE in Q3

• Oral examination

Q3 UE Assessment Comments

The exam consists of an exchange of views on a theme of the course chosen by the student, and the reading of a work selected from a list of about fifteen references.

Type of Resit Assessment for UE in Q1 (BAB1)

• N/A

Q1 UE Resit Assessment Comments (BAB1)

not applicable