We started our project with the idea of working together on a website. Next, we had to find a topic that matched the theme of "Turning Points in History". At first, Nick had the idea of writing about Francis
Bacon and the invention of the scientific method. This topic was natural
because of Nick's interest in all things scientific, and the
Philosophy class we were both taking. But after doing some preliminary
research we realized that while Francis Bacon did indeed cause a
turning point in the history of 'natural philosophy', there weren't
enough visual supplementary materials to adequately and interestingly
fill a website.
When we needed to come up with a new topic, we looked to the Great Courses series "Turning Points in American History" for inspiration. One of the lectures was about the birth of the modern environmental movement. This seemed like an interesting subject to make a website about, and, because it happened after the invention of photography, there would be pictures available. We now had a general idea, but we still didn't know what our
thesis was going to be.
Valerie had some books at home about environmentalism, but
Nick had to go to the library. While doing some research there, he found
a potential primary source written during the period we were
concentrating on - and that source was Silent Spring, published in 1962
and written by someone called Rachel Carson.
This source seemed pretty important, so we looked up the book
and where it fit into the bigger picture. To our surprise, many people
were calling Silent Spring the root cause of the entire environmental
movement. We decided that, given the evidence, this claim was correct.
More than that, it would work well as the main thesis of our project.
Many of our secondary sources were books, while the primary sources were mostly found
online. We used a lot of online databases that keep records of
newspaper articles from decades ago, which provided us with news
from when Silent Spring first came out and various images to include in
the website. Also, our access to materials at a local college library helped us a lot with our project. One of the most helpful books we found there compiled primary sources relating to Silent Spring and the time period it was published in. We used this book to learn more about how the chemical industry reacted to Carson's
claims against them, and how the government changed its policy in
response to growing evidence that pesticides were dangerous.
All of the sources we found supported our main thesis very well.
Silent Spring took the disorganized fragments of environmentalism and
unified them into one coherent movement that was able to force major
changes in society and government.
Bacon and the invention of the scientific method. This topic was natural
because of Nick's interest in all things scientific, and the
Philosophy class we were both taking. But after doing some preliminary
research we realized that while Francis Bacon did indeed cause a
turning point in the history of 'natural philosophy', there weren't
enough visual supplementary materials to adequately and interestingly
fill a website.
When we needed to come up with a new topic, we looked to the Great Courses series "Turning Points in American History" for inspiration. One of the lectures was about the birth of the modern environmental movement. This seemed like an interesting subject to make a website about, and, because it happened after the invention of photography, there would be pictures available. We now had a general idea, but we still didn't know what our
thesis was going to be.
Valerie had some books at home about environmentalism, but
Nick had to go to the library. While doing some research there, he found
a potential primary source written during the period we were
concentrating on - and that source was Silent Spring, published in 1962
and written by someone called Rachel Carson.
This source seemed pretty important, so we looked up the book
and where it fit into the bigger picture. To our surprise, many people
were calling Silent Spring the root cause of the entire environmental
movement. We decided that, given the evidence, this claim was correct.
More than that, it would work well as the main thesis of our project.
Many of our secondary sources were books, while the primary sources were mostly found
online. We used a lot of online databases that keep records of
newspaper articles from decades ago, which provided us with news
from when Silent Spring first came out and various images to include in
the website. Also, our access to materials at a local college library helped us a lot with our project. One of the most helpful books we found there compiled primary sources relating to Silent Spring and the time period it was published in. We used this book to learn more about how the chemical industry reacted to Carson's
claims against them, and how the government changed its policy in
response to growing evidence that pesticides were dangerous.
All of the sources we found supported our main thesis very well.
Silent Spring took the disorganized fragments of environmentalism and
unified them into one coherent movement that was able to force major
changes in society and government.