This project has been altered as of March 19 for the purpose of adding extra “B” Project options, since
the class is being made “on-line”. You
may annotate up to TWO books total, to count for up to TWO “B” Projects. All books count equally—there is no
preference for the “original” book for this project versus the “additional”
books.
Book Annotation Project
(original book) Annotate Setting Aside All Authority by C. M.
Graney
Your professor writes and publishes a lot on
astronomy. You have a textbook required
for this class, The Known Universe,
by your professor. The Known Universe is the class textbook and
was written for this class. Setting
Aside All Authority was not written for this
class, but it was written in large part because of this class. Various concepts discussed in class are also explained in Setting
Aside All Authority, and the book may be of help to students in the class
in the same way as the various videos or web resources that are posted on the
class web page may be of help.
But aside from just being a help, Setting
Aside All Authority also documents what your
professor has learned because of this class. And, since the book
has been reviewed by scholars and published by a major academic press, it
documents what your professor has learned that people outside of the class find
to be interesting. Here is work from Jefferson
Community & Technical College in general, and your class in particular,
that the wider world finds interesting.
Therefore, it may be of interest to students for
that reason alone. And
of course in reading Setting Aside All
Authority students will learn more about science and how it works.
Your project assignment is to read Setting Aside All Authority and to
annotate it thoroughly with your comments as you read. Here are the specifics:
q Put your name on the inside front cover, in blue pen only.
q You are to read and annotate Chapters 1-10 (you are not required
to read and annotate the title page, table of contents, acknowledgements, end
notes, etc.), plus one of the two Appendices.
Regardless of which Appendix you choose, you only need to annotate Parts
1 & 3 of that Appendix, not Part 2 (which is in Latin in both cases).
q You must make your notes and comments in the margins or empty
white space of the pages you are reading, in blue pen only. Notes and
comments must pertain to the text of the page on which they are
written. There are no “correct”
or “incorrect” comments – they are just your thoughts on the material in the
book – but they must pertain to the material.
Adding a note that “LeBron James tops Michael Jordan”, for example, does
not count.
q You should have a note or comment no less than every third page (and more is
better). You are to mark up the book
thoroughly with your notes and comments!
The JCTC book store often stocks a few
copies of Setting Aside, and you can get it through bookstores and on-line
sellers. Click
here for direct information from the publisher.
Setting Aside All Authority:
Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against
Copernicus in the Age of Galileo
by Christopher M. Graney
288 pages, 6.00 x 9.00
Paperback | 9780268029883 | April 2015
Additional Book Annotation Options, added as
of March 19.
Annotate one of the
following books:
·
Discoverers of the Universe: William and
Caroline Herschel by Michael Hoskin
·
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the
Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
·
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the
Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
·
Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of
NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson by Katherine Johnson
One weakness of studying
astronomy from an historical standpoint is that many (but not all) of the
people we learn about are the “Big Idea” people. Science is good at recognizing the people
with the Big Ideas, and not so good at recognizing the great number of people
who did a lot of the important hard work that made the Big Ideas possible. Think, for example, of Tycho
Brahe. Had you ever heard of him before
this class? You probably had heard of
Isaac Newton before this class. But Newton built on the ideas of Kepler, and Kepler built on
the work of Brahe. Without Brahe to make
all those observations of the sky, Kepler could not have worked out the
elliptical nature of orbits, and Newton would not have been able to work out
his Laws of Motion and of Universal Gravitation based on those elliptical
orbits.
Recently historians of science
have become more interested in all the other people who help make the Big Ideas
in science possible. So,
for our additional annotation books we are going to look at books about those
people. This will provide an opportunity
for you to learn still more about science
and how it works.
Your project assignment is to read one of these additional books
and to annotate it thoroughly with your comments as you read. Here are
the specifics:
q Put your name on the inside front cover, in blue pen only.
q You are
to read and annotate the entire book (you do not need to annotate the table of
contents, indexes, glossaries, appendices, etc.).
q You must
make your notes and comments in the margins or empty white spaces of the pages
you are reading, in blue pen only. Notes and comments must pertain
to the text of the page on which they are written.
There are no “correct” or “incorrect” comments – they are just your thoughts on
the material in the book – but they must pertain to the material. Adding
a note that “LeBron James tops Michael Jordan”, for example, does not count.
q You
should have a note or comment no less than every third page (and more is
better). You are to mark up the book thoroughly with your notes and
comments!
The JCTC
bookstore might be able to order one of these books for you, and you can get
them through bookstores and on-line sellers.
·
Discoverers of the Universe:
William and Caroline Herschel Hardcover
by Michael Hoskin
Click here for direct information
from the publisher.
·
The Glass Universe:
How the
Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
by Dava Sobel
Click here for direct information
from the publisher.
·
Hidden
Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women
Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Margot Lee Shetterly
Click here for direct information
from the publisher.
·
Reaching
for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson
by Katherine Johnson
Click here for direct information
from the publisher.
What to turn in:
·
Your
annotated book