Caltech Library News

Teaching with Rare Books

Caltech undergraduates enrolled in the course Books, Readers, and Science in Early Modern Europe, which explores how books of the period popularized new scientific and humanistic discoveries through text and images, had an opportunity to delve into early editions of some of these works during a recent class session held in the Caltech Archives. An array of richly illustrated and intricately crafted 16th–18th century atlases and related reading materials greeted them in the Archives Rare Book Room, where they spent an hour looking through and discussing the volumes with Teaching Fellow Mateusz Falkowski and Archives head and historian of science Peter Collopy, who curated the display. A previous Archives visit focused on first editions of foundational texts in physics and astronomy, including works by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Each year, Archives and Special Collections hosts visits by undergrad classes in the history of science, visual culture, and literature. They offer students a firsthand look at early editions of works published in the formative stages of the Scientific Revolution, helping to enlarge their understanding of how and for whom these volumes were produced, how natural philosophers used them to share the scientific ideas of their time, and how shifting political, cultural, and religious environments shaped their contents and public reception.