Course on the nature of physical science

There is increasing student and administrative demand for courses in the natural sciences that are accessible to undergraduates who are not majoring in a science. As the current trend to reimpose academic distribution requirements continues, the demand will increase still further. This paper describes a course that legitimately serves such a demand, and provides the nonscience student with an understanding of the methods and nature of natural science. The course is a seminar organized around a detailed examination of the Copernican revolution, in part through Copernicus’s original writings and in part through contemporary historical and philosophical analyses. The authors conclude that the course provides a successful model for achieving the aim of deepening the nonscientist’s understanding of what science is and how it proceeds.