Abstract

A course, ‘Physics, history and society’, has been taught primarily to college freshmen since 1972. Disciplinary lines are sharply drawn, thereby teaching the subject in the same fashion as research is done. The course is about the way physics and history became disciplines and how they have developed, as well as about the rhetoric of physics/history. The main topics are the physicist's/historian's personality as it is related to his work. The history of physics is used to show how a scientist's personality is related to his work. The nature of physics and history is taught as a preliminary to other courses in these subjects