NEH Enduring Questions Course on "What is Nature?"

FAIN: AQ-50221-10

Keene State College (Keene, NH 03435-0001)
Mark Long (Project Director: September 2009 to September 2012)

The development of an upper level humanities course focusing on the study of changing concepts of nature from the ancient world to the age of Darwin.

What is Nature? How have past cultures conceived of the natural world and ways of knowing about that world? This course traces the history of changing experiences and concepts of nature from the ancient world to the age of Darwin. Students will read a sequence of major texts from the Western tradition alongside supplemental treatises and excerpts from religious and scientific documents to understand the broad contours of thinking about the natural world in the Western cultures of Europe, the Eastern cultures of China and India, and the Arab-World and Africa. "What is Nature?" will be offered as an upper-level humanities course at Keene State College, New Hampshire's Public Liberal Arts College. The course will be offered in the Integrative Studies Program (ISP), has no disciplinary prerequisites and is open to all students at the College.