Natural Science - Year I

Preparation

Preparation

• History Web Lecture:

  This time we looked at some of the people who contributed to the rise of the University system in Europe, which provided training in the medieval quadrivium, the four sciences of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. A medieval masters degree from any one of these universities required the student to be proficient in these for sciences and able to teach them. As a result, basic concepts about the shape of the Earth (which the Greeks, the Arabs, and medieval scientists all recognized as spherical), its size, the seasons, and the speed of rotation of the heavens and the movements of the planets, the sun and the moon were common knowledge, to the point that Dante could refer to them in his poetry intended to be read for the entertainment of the court ladies.

  This crossover between the sciences, theology, and literature led to the conceptualization of an integrated cosmology, an effort which reaches its height in the works of Thomas Aquinas, before fracturing into separate subjects again with the onslaught of information and new knowledge in the scientific revolution in the age of exploration.

• Science Web Lecture:

  We revisit concepts of motion in this unit. It is easy to see velocity as the rate at which our displacement or position relative to some point changes. It is harder to see acceleration as the rate at which velocity itself changes. The mathematics of acceleration when it is uniform is simple. Try to find examples in which velocity is changing at differing rates!

• Homework: The homework asks students to identify the major players in this period with the chief accomplishments, and reviews the basic concepts of displacement, the loss of the, and acceleration and their mathematical relationship.
• Discussion: Our discussion will focus on how our preconceptions and our own worldview shaped the way we observe nature, interpret evidence, and create scientific theories.

© 2005 - 2025 This course is offered through Scholars Online, a non-profit organization supporting classical Christian education through online courses. Permission to copy course content (lessons and labs) for personal study is granted to students currently or formerly enrolled in the course through Scholars Online. Reproduction for any other purpose, without the express written consent of the author, is prohibited.