Courses

As everyone knows, the claim that Darwinian Evolution is a mere theory and the assertion that Intelligent Design should be given equal billing has become a major issue in American public education. Where did this confrontation originate, and is it representative of the relationship between science and religion over the long term? Have religion and science always been at loggerheads, and are they fated to remain so?

The aim of this class is to look at the relation between science and religion (mainly Christianity) from both a historical and a philosophical perspective. It intends to show that the relation between science and religion is extremely complex and impossible to understand with the use of simplistic conceptualizations like ‘conservative religion vs. progressive science.’ We will examine the relation between natural knowledge and theology during the Middle Ages and see that the latter were not the ‘dark’ period once thought to be. We will look at the revolutionary developments in both science and religion during the course of the 16th and 17th centuries and examine closely the events that led to Galileo’s trial. Further, we will consider the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the religious responses to it as well as the complex relation between Evolution, Creationism, and Religion in modern day America.

Seemingly simple experiments, observations, and calculations sometimes have had profound effects on our conceptions of the natural world and ourselves. Examples include Galileo’s view of Jupiter through his telescope; Rosalind Franklin’s X-Ray diffraction images of the DNA molecule; Darwin’s find of a South American “ostrich”—on his dinner plate; Michelson and Morley’s experiments on the relative speeds of light; and Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction images of the DNA molecule. The meanings of such cases, however, were not always obvious or uncontroversial. By presenting a selection of such crucial cases and debates about them, this course poses fundamental questions about what science is, how it is practiced, and how scientific knowledge interacts with larger cultural contexts. In short, it introduces students to the field of History and Philosophy of Science.

How did various thinkers from the past explain the physiology of sex? This course addresses that question in a survey from the Hippocratic corpus in Ancient Greece to Victorian science in the 19th century. Topics we address include the study of anatomy, explanations of the orgasm, discovery of the clitoris, varying theories of seeds, and debates about what contribution the female makes to reproduction. We will also look at problems with disease and its treatment, most notably Hysteria and Syphilis. During the course, the class will take a trip to both the Lilly Library and the Kinsey Institute.

Where did modern science come from? Is it a stockpile of technique and knowledge that has accumulated slowly and steadily over the centuries? This course presents a more complex and dynamic picture, in which the history of science also takes unexpected twists, turns and conceptual leaps, in response to changing social, political and religious interests, and to shifting scientific assumptions, methods, and forms of organization. The course introduces the most important formative steps in the scientific tradition, each of which overturned earlier ways of investigating and understanding nature. These include Aristotelian physics, Ptolmaic astronomy and Galenic medicine in the ancient and Medieval world; the scientific revolutions of the 15th- through the 18th centuries that ushered in Copernican astronomy, Newtonian physics, and new ideas about physiology and medicine; the chemical and Darwinian revolutions; and the rise of modern physics and other 20th-century innovations and problems.

Science is the most successful way humans have found to produce knowledge of the world. But the success of science lies in the fact that it is not just a collection of facts and theories -- science's success comes from critical attitudes and methodologies.

This course covers topics essential for understanding scientific reasoning. By the end of the course, students will understand the concepts of logical validity and soundness, laws of nature and scientific models, causation, principles of statistical reasoning, experimental design, and pseudoscience. Other topics may include ethics in science, decision theory, and scientific realism.

“Clocks and Catapults” is a course in the history of premodern technology. Beginning with the art and artifacts of the Palaeolithic Chauvet caves recently memorialized by Werner Herzog in his documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the course will look at episodes in the artisanal history of mankind up until the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Particular weight will be placed on dispelling the commonplace idea that the European period from the fall of Rome up until the Renaissance comprised the “Dark Ages,” since in reality this was a time of great technological advancement. Along with a number of other topics, the course will look at the development of technologies of warfare such as trebuchets, armor, fortifications, and gunpowder devices, and at the invention of timekeeping devices such as the astrolabe, the clepsydra, and the mechanical clock. Other topics will include the development of architecture, navigational tools and methods, mining, metallurgy and alchemy, and the perspectival techniques of Renaissance painting. Where possible, hands-on teaching techniques will be employed, as in the building of working models of medieval astrolabes and clocks.

This is an introductory course designed for all students with an interest in the history of the science and their cultural contexts. We will cover select topics from Greek, Medieval, and early modern science, emphasizing both primary sources and contemporary historiographical debates. We will include aspects of natural philosophy, astronomy, the medical disciplines, and the development of experiment. Students from a broad variety of backgrounds will be welcome and their varied expertise in the science, humanities, or languages will be valued highly.

In this course, we will explore a number of the central issues in the recent and contemporary philosophy of science. How should we understand the progress of science? How are scientific theories tested or confirmed? Does social bias affect the content of science? Do scientific theories aim at giving the deep reality of the world? Or are they more oriented towards successful prediction and technology? Our readings will include T.S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, as well as selections from Carnap, Hempel, van Fraassen, Nagel, Longino, Hacking and Boyd, among others.

Experimentation is the core activity of science. But what exactly is the nature of experiments, and how can we characterize their roles in the generation of scientific knowledge? What do experiments prove and what kind of knowledge do they yield? Has the nature and role of experimentation changed over time? Do experiments have lives of their own? How do experiments shape the way in which we experience the world?

In this course, we will explore epistemological, conceptual, historiographical, and historical issues related to experimental practice. Topics include: Experimental philosophy in the 17th century, Newton and Newtonianism, 19th-century debates about methods of experimental inquiry, the functions of experiment (exploration, model-building, experimental test), validation and reliability of experimental results, laboratory anthropology and experimental systems.

Since the ancient Greeks wondered about the problem of the one and the many, knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular, have typically aimed at systematic unification. But why? Because God is One? Because the world is One? Or, with Kant, because the I is One, and concepts and representations are unifiers and knowledge has its objects constituted through synthesis? Or as a prerequisite of our understanding it is a matter of mental cognitive economy? Or...? How is knowledge actually unified? And, if unification guides research, how is knowledge to be unified? The ideals unification have captured the imagination of scientists and lay people alike. Should disciplinary boundaries be crossed or redrawn? Much innovation relies on crossing boundaries or cooperating at boundaries. But grander questions about principle and practice remain. What is the virtue of autonomy of disciplines? What is a discipline and what about them is involved in unification schemes? Does unification require reduction for explanation? Does reduction require replacement? Should economics follow physics? Can physics replace biology? Does biology explain psychology and sociology? Should it? Why has disunity-talk become fashionable? Why does it matter? Discussions of pluralism and localized forms of integration and collaboration are replacing grand schemes.

Science is not one thing or one kind of thing. Yet knowing whether something is scientific often matters. This course addresses the question of the nature of science by surveying a broad range of aspects of that complex world that for centuries has been identified as science from different perspectives that focus on specific ideas and questions, and different methodologies: from facts to values, from evolving basic notions of what we know (scientific models of matter, mind, life and society) and how we know it (methods of inquiry) to a number of aspects of science that reveal its important links to many aspects of human nature and culture (ethical, religious, political, cognitive and aesthetic values and interests). In fact, science could not survive and develop without them. Science is radically human, so it is no surprise that it expresses what characterizes our humanity: the myriad of human capacities and conflicts, interests and resources, strengths and limitations. Science is an enduring part of our world, our history and our civilization. To ignore it is to dismiss and neglect all that, and to diminish our role and responsibilities in it. This course will prepare students to discover and appreciate a variety of factors and perspectives in the complex and ever changing course of science in the society they live. It will stimulate their awareness and curiosity and their motivation to explore these issues and others in more depth and from different disciplines.

Vision is one of the elementary processes of life, but at the same time deeply mysterious: How exactly does vision work? Can we really trust our eyes? What is the mind’s role in seeing? Are our eyes passive receptors or active contributors to sensory perception? How do insects see? And how can we find out what our own eyes and brains are doing when we see? Anatomists and physiologists, philosophers of various stripes, psychologists, mathematicians and physicists, artists, and physicians have grappled with such questions. Beginning in the Renaissance, this course will survey a wide range of approaches to the study of vision. We will examine what anatomists learned from dissecting eyes and physicians from pathologies of vision; how telescopes and microscopes revolutionized the understanding of perception; why philosophers cared about pure sensations; how painters employed the science of perspective to create visual effects; why physiologists became interested in kaleidoscopes and stroboscopes; and how all these endeavors have contributed to our understanding of this complex, elusive, and yet so basic activity: vision. The course will integrate transformations in the study of vision with broader scientific, socio-political, and cultural changes in society.