 Our journey into the history of science (and Joy Hakim's text) began today with an overview of ancient civilizations and their quest to make sense of the world around them.
 We discussed how ancient civilizations attempted to answer these questions using a combination of Creation Myths, superstition, and astrology. Students completed a workbook assignment to better understand what distinguishes a Myth from Science. Both begin with careful observation - and that is a skill that the ancient stargazers had in spades. After all, the world's first "science lab" was their night sky! However, as we will continue to understand as we move forward in our journey, science relies on logic, proof and the scientific method, in addition to observation.
Students also spent some time in class today getting familiar with the geography of the ancient world by completing a map of the Fertile Crescent. We tied this in with a timeline to help orient students to the time span we will be covering on our history of science journey (5000 BCE - 1500 CE). We will continue to develop these timelines as we move through the text, adding important dates, discoveries, and scientists. Students should review both the map and the timeline at home this week.
Homework: Please read Chapters 3 and 4 in the text in preparation for our next class, and complete the Quest Sheet about ancient calendars on page 6 in the Student Quest Guide (workbook). **General note: Students are not required to complete every workbook page that accompanies each chapter. I will assign some workbook quest sheets as homework and others we will do together in class. Unfortunately, we will not have time to finish every workbook activity as part of this course. Feel free to do those that interest you on your own! Comments are closed.
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