|
Description: |
This course is a general introduction to the intersecting histories of exploration, science, and adventure from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present. After a preliminary look at the idea of "exploration," what it means, and what distinguishes it from mere travel and/or adventure, we will focus each week on a discreet episode of scientific exploration, beginning with the epochal Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook and concluding with the Apollo missions to the moon. Other notable cases will include the South American travels of Alexander von Humboldt, the transcontinental journey of Lewis and Clark, Robert Scott's fateful journey to the South Pole, and early scientific exploration and mountaineering in the Himalaya. Our emphasis throughout will be on the complex relation between exploration and science, and on the ways in which exploration has shaped for good and ill our modern, globally interconnected world. |