1. Michael Frayn’s title Copenhagen refers to the place where Heisenberg met (and studied with) Niels Bohr, but also to a basic principle of quantum physics: that light can appear as a wave or as a particle, depending on the conditions under which it is encountered. The historical episode depicted in the play is also like this. The actors recall Heisenberg’s fission project as well as his meeting with Bohr in strikingly differently from one another, and cannot agree on what happened or what it means. Your assignment is to compare the uncertainties and disagreements in the play with the different views taken by historians about the nuclear project Heisenberg directed. Be sure to take into account Frayn’s postscript on how historians have understood the German nuclear project. 2. Eugenics (under that name) was widely understood for decades as the brainchild of Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton–at first as a great discovery, and now almost always as something quite bad. Galton associated it most closely with biological evolution and with statistical mathematics, but we have seen that it had multiple sources, some of which preceded Galton’s earliest investigations. Almost all of these roots of eugenics were understood in their time as scientific, but they were also linked to a range of social and political concerns. How can we best understand the origins and development of eugenics up to the 1920s from the standpoint of the forms of knowledge involved and the social ambitions and anxieties that animated these eugenic efforts? Your essay should be 3-4 double-spaced pages, between 1000 and 1200 words. Your essay should be historical, and draw from readings as well as lectures. Rules. We expect you to answer the questions mainly on the basis of lectures and required readings. There is no need to footnote these, but when you quote or refer to something specific from one of them, you should put the page or slide number in (parentheses). If you use a recommended reading, put the author in parentheses. It’s fine if you interpret a reading differently from your lecturer or TA, but it is a good idea to make clear that you have not simply misunderstood. You are welcome to read anything you want as you think about these questions. If you use an idea from a non-course reading, you should footnote it. If you quote from it, you MUST use quotations marks. Be warned that material from encyclopedias like Wikipedia are almost never specific enough to support a good essay. Any unattributed quotation or use of specific content from such texts is plagiarism, and will be turned over to the dean of students.
