PHY 264 DisCERNing Leonardo: Art, Science and the Renaissance Man
This course will place the history of physics in the cultural context in which it was developed from the earliest Babylonian mathematicians through the classical world into the Renaissance. The course will also examine the dichotomy that often exists between scientists and artists and lay people as a symptom of a highly specialized and compartmentalized world. Students will be able to discuss the modern parallels between the persecution of Galileo by the church and the current divide between science and religion. Students will visit sites in Florence, Italy and the course culminates with a visit to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.