HIST2208 - Dialogue: Communicating Science and Knowledge from Socrates to Today (SNF Paideia Program Course)

From Socrates in the fourth century BCE to Galileo in the seventeenth, the dialogue—a form of writing that stages a conversation or debate between two or more speakers—was one of the most popular genres for disseminating observations and opinions about the world, particularly when they were new or controversial. Although scientists no longer use written dialogues to share their research today, discussion, disagreement, and debate remain important tools for advancing scientific knowledge, at least in theory if not always in practice. The aim of this course will be to explore how dialogue as a genre and a principal was and still is a critical tool not just for productively communicating scientific knowledge but also for developing and creating it. In the first part of the class, we will look at a range of ancient, medieval, and early modern scientific dialogues to understand better how and why premodern authors employed the genre to advance and share their opinions even as the nature of science changed dramatically over these periods. In the second part, we will explore scholarly works on the institutional, intellectual, and technological changes from the seventeenth century onwards that led to the dialogue falling by the wayside as a genre of scientific writing. We will look at the principles and practices that have emerged in its place and to what degree they have succeeded or not in creating authentic dialogue. In short, this course will trace the (sometimes bumpy) journey of dialogue from page to principle.