Learning on ScreenEnlightening Science
The Enlightening Science Project was established to create an educational resource to inform and engage users on the core concepts behind Isaac Newton’s scientific achievement. Professor Rob Iliffe provides an overview.
About the Author: Rob Iliffe is Professor of Intellectual History and the History of Science in the Department of History at the University of Sussex. He has published a number of articles on early modern history and the history of science, and has written the Very Short Introduction to Newton (Oxford University Press 2007). He has edited the Eighteenth Century Biographies of Newton (Pickering 2006). He is Editorial director of the online Newton Project, director of the AHRC Newton Theological Papers Project and is also editor of the journal History of Science. Prof. Iliffe’s main research interests include: the history of science 1550-1800; the role of science and technology in the ‘Rise of the West’; techno-scientific and other roots of the current environmental crisis; historical interactions between science and religion; the theological and scientific work of Isaac Newton; and the implications for academic work posed by the increasing digitisation of the scholarly infrastructure.
E-mail: R.Iliffe@sussex.ac.uk
With the discovery of Universal Gravitation and calculus to his name, the scientific and mathematical achievements of Isaac Newton laid the foundations for the classical physics that was developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To this day they form the core of the science that is taught in schools and universities around the globe. Funded by JISC, The Enlightening Science website offers readers different opportunities for understanding Newton’s achievements along with their impact on science and culture. It builds on the success of the Newton Project, which makes freely available online high quality transcriptions of Newton’s personal, scientific and religious manuscripts.
Visitors to Enlightening Science can access all of Newton’s published scientific works, along with written introductions. However, the resource is primarily built around filmed interviews with historians of science and curators of scientific instruments that allow both general and expert users to understand the central concepts of his scientific achievements. There are also recreations of eighteenth century lecture courses in which Newton’s doctrines were explained for genteel and academic audiences, along with modern reproductions of the experiments that made up the core of these experiments. The site is thus both a means of informing a number of audiences about Newton’s life and work, and also a way of teaching physics to schoolchildren and others. A similar site aimed at informing audiences about Newton’s chemical interests (along with transcriptions of Newton’s writings) is currently housed at the University of Indiana.
Historians now recognise the key role played in the eighteenth century by the performance of what were often spectacular experiments. Giving lectures in European capitals and selling books based on them became a lucrative employment for many individuals, and brought together booksellers, instrument-makers university dons and a public that could not get enough of the Newtonian philosophy. Until the late eighteenth century, audiences at popular lectures were likely to get the same level of presentation as undergraduates would receive at university. In each case, Newtonianism could not have been as successful as it was without the ability to portray the central tenets of his scientific discoveries through exciting displays of prismatic lights, electric shocks, and representations of the solar system in planetaria.
What worked for the Enlightenment is worth trying three hundred years later. One innovation has been to use an actor in contemporary regalia to play the role of John Theophilus Desaguliers, Newton’s right-hand man in the early eighteenth century. This was one of the most popular features of the site and we would have extended the conceit further had the cost of hiring Desaguliers’s wig not been prohibitive.
There are some limitations in using the site for teaching science. Historians now place great stress on the centrality of instruments to the development of modern science, and virtual representations cannot replace the unique experience given by hands-on engagement with the physical devices themselves. Although this is a limitation of the digital form, the judicious use of filmed interviews in which the vital importance of instruments is emphasised can compensate for this. In any case, video greatly enhances what is otherwise a static and – in the case of Newton — forbidding medium of text. Another point worth making is that the site has been developed in conjunction with teachers who advised us that it was best to create chunks of material that could easily be copied for use in lessons. Thus, the materials are supposed to be used in conjunction with other teaching methods.
… the site has been developed in conjunction with teachers
The interdisciplinary aspect of the resource is supported by existence on the site of features that deal with what are strictly non-scientific aspects of Newton’s life and work. Films about Newton’s alchemical and theological interests, all of which involve members of the Newton Project, are already available on Google Videos. The Newton Project site itself has a ‘tour’ of the major non-scientific materials on the main site. However, Enlightening Science offers users even more accessible routeways into the same resources, with interviews on aspects of Newton’s religious beliefs and access to the millions of words written privately by Newton on religious topics such as early Christianity and the End of the World. There are also interviews relating to the biographies that were written in the decades following his death, and readers can freely access all written biographies, published or unpublished, that were written about Newton in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Finally, a series of vodcasts give a detailed picture of the culture of instrument-making and lecturing in eighteenth century London.
Like the experiments and lecture courses of the eighteenth century, which circulated between genteel and scholarly locales, Enlightening Science is aimed at scholars and the general public, and is intended to be both informative and entertaining. The resource was created with three specific audiences in mind. Early on in the implementation of the materials on the site, we tested them on a group of schoolchildren and undergraduates in Sussex. By the time most students reach the age of 15 in the British school system, they have already begun to specialise in either humanities or STEM subjects. Obviously, this process is more deeply ingrained by the time they study A-levels, or arrive at university. In the course of the project were able to introduce humanities students to the basic laws and concepts of physics, while engaging students of the natural sciences in the historical contexts and nuances of the basic features of Newtonian physics.
Secondly, we presume that the broader public can learn from the materials on the site in much the same way as students. They also provide a much more palatable way of accessing the more abstruse written resources that are on the Newton Project site. The scientific and mathematical papers are especially forbidding since they are in Latin and composed in a notation that has long been obsolete. It is a longer term aim of the Newton Project to overlay these original materials with modern versions/translations of the originals along with the conventional accoutrements of introductions and commentaries. Nevertheless, a general lesson learned from the process of implementing Enlightening Science is that video introductions to textual materials, whether 2, 5 or 30 minutes, are quicker to produce, more entertaining, and more informative than written commentaries. Initial feedback shows that the scholarly community, the final audience for the resource, can derive great benefit from the interviews and demonstrations and also use the site as a gateway to the textual resources.
These are early days in the formation of the website, and we hope to build on what we have done so far by creating a forum where a broad and interdisciplinary community of users can add to and comment on the resources that already exist. Ultimately, we hope this will help lessen the gulf that currently divides the humanities and the sciences.
Professor Rob Iliffe
www.enlighteningscience.sussex.ac.uk
