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HIST294: Nature and culture 1500-1700: Themes from the Renaissance

This is a rare opportunity to study a revolution in ideas about the world we live in. It begins in the Renaissance (1500), when blood-letting was a common treatment for diseases, when no-one suspected that the earth moved around the sun, when witches were executed for performing diabolic magic, and when students thought that the best authors on their reading lists had to have died two thousand years ago.

The module ends in the early modern period (1700), and with “modern” thinkers like Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. But these people believed, respectively, that new inventions would recreate Paradise on earth, that the laws of billiards proved the existence of God, that the ocean’s tides proved that the earth moved, and that alchemical manuscripts encoded the deepest secrets of matter.

You will find out why Renaissance men and women believed what they did, discuss how modern the “moderns” really were, and which historians have the best explanation of this exciting period in the history of ideas. Past students have enjoyed the weekly "lecture + workshop" form of delivery.

For further information on HIST294 visit the Lancaster University Online Courses Handbook.

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