1. PAPER tale Sheets of paper were once handmade from discarded cloth. For the course ''Medieval and Renaissance Literature,'' at the University of Washington in Seattle, students envision the papermaking process, and how an apprentice might have swept up a cloud of dust, fly included, that then settled into an open vat of paper pulp. The paper -- and the fly -- ended up in the university's copy of ''La Civil Conversazione,'' a book of etiquette printed in Venice in 1579. 2. THE EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE Because it was large, decorative and expensive, the Nuremberg Chronicle, a world history published in Germany in 1493, was treasured and preserved. About 700 copies remain from a print run of perhaps 2,100. How many of the 1,804 illustrations were colored by hand after printing depended on how much the owner could afford to pay an artist. The pictured drawing, based on a second-century map by Ptolemy, makes a teaching point for ''The History of Science'' at Smith College: though seafarers had long known otherwise, the belief that the world was limited to portions of Europe, Asia and Africa prevailed. Direct observation would soon replace the authority of classical learning, laying the basis for modern science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]