I think I left my motivation in Vancouver.
Either that or I'm having trouble writing an essay (Topic: "Was natural science really affected by the Enlightenment in any fundamental way, or did the Enlightenment depend on science while science itself pursued an unaltered course, fixed by the Scientific Revolution?" --I think the professor is fucking with his class) based on a week's worth of lectures, a twenty-three year old text I don't care for, in a unit focusing on a time period that makes me want to smack the relevant scientists and philosophers upside the back of the head with a haddock.
I was obviously not meant to be an Enlightenment scholar.
I am also really not looking forward to writing a takehome exam on Thursday, before I fly to the other coast (my other options are to take my textbooks and etc with me, and write the takehome while I'm in the swamp visiting friends, or write the exam the morning it's due).
Example questions (there are four, with a two-hour time limit):
"What would you nominate as the classic 'Enlightenment science,' and what makes it so?"
"Hankins points out that upon becoming controller general of France in 1774, Turgot told the King that the nation was 'a society composed of different orders badly united . . . . Almost no one bothers to fulfill his duties or know his relation to others.' Did science provide a model for addressing these concerns, what was it, and did it work?"
My resources for said exam: two weeks of lecture notes, a textbook I don't care for, two primary sources and two secondary sources (one technically in the 19th Century and thus not terribly useful here).
My argh, let me show you it.
I was obviously not meant to be an Enlightenment scholar.
I am also really not looking forward to writing a takehome exam on Thursday, before I fly to the other coast (my other options are to take my textbooks and etc with me, and write the takehome while I'm in the swamp visiting friends, or write the exam the morning it's due).
Example questions (there are four, with a two-hour time limit):
"What would you nominate as the classic 'Enlightenment science,' and what makes it so?"
"Hankins points out that upon becoming controller general of France in 1774, Turgot told the King that the nation was 'a society composed of different orders badly united . . . . Almost no one bothers to fulfill his duties or know his relation to others.' Did science provide a model for addressing these concerns, what was it, and did it work?"
My resources for said exam: two weeks of lecture notes, a textbook I don't care for, two primary sources and two secondary sources (one technically in the 19th Century and thus not terribly useful here).
My argh, let me show you it.