Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
There are a few general points to be made here. The first is that
the topic list will help you to find books, but you will discover
that many of these books will not be useful to you as they don’t
directly discuss your topic. I personally suggest that you:
a) Spend a few hours on the internet searching for library
books and articles about your subjects.
b) Spend a day in the library finding these books and
skimming them before checking them out, rather than
taking out one or two at a time, or taking out a ton of
books at once
As I said, there are no set in stone guidelines for the number of
books or articles you are required to use. I would expect you to
look at 2-3 books and 1-2 articles for each subject. For a topic
with more related subjects, I would expect more sources.
Bernal’s book is a general history of science that uses the underlying economic
and political circumstances of each time period to explain the direction and development
of science. Starting with the ancient civilizations and going up to the end of the Medieval
period, Bernal links key scientific developments (discoveries, institutions, ideas) to the
demands created by the economic structures of society. For example, he argues that the
This book will be useful as Bernal claims that the feudal economy was local,
scattered and expanding, rather than centralizing. Medieval Europe lacked centralized
government since the collapse of the Roman Empire, new agricultural technologies
was not tied to single, large floodplains as was the case in the ancient civilizations.
Holland were generally stable, by arguing for large scale land sublimation due to
to create farmland out of swamp led to greater flooding, and the need for more advanced,
large-scale hydrological engineering. The Dutch ended up with a complex system for
useful as it shows how a complex, large scale technological system can exist outside of a
Conclusion
The point of this assignment is to get you reading for your essay
earlier in the term, and to demonstrate to me that you have made
a good faith attempt to read and understand a number of sources
related to your topic. I fully expect that your thesis and your
sources will change as you go along. In general, it is better to
have a flawed thesis, start work early and change that thesis as
you read the literature, than to spend half the term trying to
come up with the ideal thesis, and waste weeks of writing and
editing time.
You are not familiar with the literature, that’s why you are
taking the course, so the chances of you coming up with a whiz-
bang thesis without reading more of the literature are pretty
slim. The annotated bibliography is a work in progress, but it
will give you a head start on your essay, and it will help you to
improve your thesis as you discover more about your subject.