Department of

0427/CLASS 0330 Myth and Science
Gyenis, Balazs
T 6-8:30pm
How can we understand our world? In western culture, science dominates all our answers to this question. But there are other ways. They can be found in the mythologies of ancient and modern peoples. This course will compare the scientific and mythological ways of seeing the world and their more subtle connections. In particular, we will turn to the remarkable events in Ancient Greece of 800-400 B.C. and discover how the scientific approach actually grew slowly out of mythological thought itself.

0430 Galileo and the Creation of Modern Science
Palmieri, Paolo
T/H 9:30-10:30
The Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the decisive figure in the rise of modern science. First, he ushered in a new era in astronomy when he aimed a 30-powered telescope at the sky in 1610. Second, he revolutionized the concept of science when he argued that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. Finally, he astounded the theologians, who eventually condemned him to life imprisonment, when he claimed that the scientist's search for the truth cannot be constrained by religious authority. This course will study Galileo in the broader intellectual, social, and religious context of early modern Europe.

0437 Darwinism and Its Critics
Snyder, Laura
M/W 12-12:50
This course examines the history of the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection and considers its context, its structure and the various responses to that theory in its own day. The course will conclude with a review of recent attacks on evolutionary theory but forward by proponents of 'intelligent design'. We will look at the contemporary controversy in light of the historical issues in terms of what constitutes a scientific theory and how evidence is related to theories.

0515 / HIST 0089/13196 Magic, Medicine and Science
Anders, John
M 12-2:25
This course is a partial survey of some important strands in the Western intellectual history. We will start with ancient Greek speculations in cosmology, philosophy, and medicine. Then we will look at some important subsequent developments in these areas and how they were influenced by the Greek tradition. These include, among other topics, the magical tradition that flourished during the Renaissance period. The latter half of the course will focus on the profound intellectual transformations in the 17th century which constitute what we often call The Scientific Revolution. The great scientific achievements of figures such as Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton will be discussed in detail. Overall, this course is meant to provide a broad picture of some of the most important elements in the Western intellectual tradition and their interactions in history.

0605 Nature of Emotions
Lennox, James
M/W 10-10:50
Joy, sadness, fear, anger, love, hate-it would be hard to imagine life without them. Our emotions are both extremely important to our lives as human beings, and at the same time extremely baffling. Philosophers, artists, and scientists throughout history have tried hard to understand, and HPS 0605 begins by a careful study of what some of history's greatest thinkers have had to say about the emotions. In the second half of the course, we will consider whether recent work in neuroscience-the study of the brain-has helped us to better understand the emotions. Throughout the semester we will be thinking about how our beliefs and values are related to our emotions, why different people have different emotional responses to the same events, why we respond emotionally to works of art like poetry, music, films and paintings, and what goes on in the brain when we feel the emotions, and whether, and if so how, scientists and philosophers can explain our emotions.

0613 Morality and Medicine
Schaffner, Kenneth
M/W 1-1:50
Ethical dilemmas in the practice of health care continue to proliferate and receive increasing attention from members of the health care profession, ethicists, policy makers, and the general public as health care consumers. In this course we will examine a number of ethical issues that arise in the context of contemporary medical practice and research by analyzing articles and decision scenarios. Topics to be covered typically include the physician-patient relationship; informed consent; medical experimentation; termination of treatment; genetics; reproductive technologies, including cloning and stem cells; euthanasia, including the recent Sciavo case; resource allocation; and health care reform. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to identify and analyze different philosophical approaches to selected issues in medical ethics; have gained insight into how to read and critically interpret philosophical arguments; and have developed skills that will enable them to think clearly about ethical questions as future or current health care providers, policy makers, and consumers. This course is part of a core sequence leading to certification in the Conceptual Foundations of Medicine Certificate Program, and is a companion course to HPS 0612 (Mind and Medicine) but may be taken independently. The course is of particular interest to pre-medical and pre-health care students.

0616 Artificial Intelligence & Philosophy of Science
Machery, Edouard
T/H 1-2:15
Artificial intelligence has been and still is one of the core disciplines of contemporary cognitive science. It raises fascinating questions: Can robots think? Is artificial intelligence really intelligence? Could artifacts be conscious? What can we learn about the human mind from building robots? How should intelligent robots be built? We will survey the main controversies that artificial intelligence has provoked.

0621 Problem Solving
Sytsma, Justin
H 6-8:30
A scientist announces that the sun contains a new, so-far unknown chemical element, even though there is no hope of getting a sample. Another is sure that a famous predecessor has faked his data, even though he has seen nothing but the perfect, published results. Astonishingly, both claims prove to be sober and sound. We will explore the approaches and methods that make such miracles part of the routine of everyday science. This course is intended for students with little or no background in science.

1605 Aesthetics and Science
Machamer, Peter
T/H 4-5:15
What are the experiences that make up our appreciation of literature, painting or music? Does knowing about a work of art preclude really appreciating it? Is there a peculiar aesthetic experience? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Is smut? This course examines certain psychological and social aspects of human perception and thought as they relate to various arts. We will deal with how the psychological processes of perception and cognition can help us understand men's peculiar attraction to artworks. Is there a specific cultural or social dimension to works of art? Can we explain why humans react to and evaluate the works they do? How much is emotion? How much understanding? Movies, television, literature, painting, music and poetry will be examined, as well as the concepts of metaphor, interpretation and artistic style.

1620 / PHIL 1650/18979 Philosophy of Biology
Mitchell, Sandra
T/H 2:30-3:45
Philosophy of Biology will consider foundational conceptual issues in biology like the nature and structure of biological explanation, the possibility of laws in evolutionary theory, the relationship between different causal components of biological processes (genetics and development),the explanatory character of ascription of biological function, and the biological explanations of animal cognition. It is designed for both the philosopher who can explore central epistemological and metaphysical issues in the context of biological science and for the biologist who wants to explore the conceptual foundations and presuppositions of her science. The students will read primary historical and philosophical texts, engage in discussion and write essays. The format of the course will be a combination of lecture and discussion.

1653 / PHIL 1610/12142 Introduction to Philosophy of Science
Earman, John
M/W 11-11:50
This course explores the principal ways in which scientific knowledge is attained in the natural sciences and in the behavioral/social sciences, and it examines fundamental philosophical questions concerning the reliability and limits of scientific understanding. The major topics of discussion include: Explanation, confirmation, realism and the nature of theories, the growth of scientific knowledge, space and time, and causality and determinism.

1690 Topics in Philosophy of Science
M/W 3-4:45
The course is an overview of the ways in which major revolutionary developments in mathematics (non Euclidean geometry, arithmetization of analysis, Cantor's set theory) and in physics (relativity theory, quantum mechanics) induced major changes in the philosophy of the 20th century. The course will start by presenting a very short outline of Kant's epistemology --taken to be the reigning view around the 1900's as concerns the philosophical understanding of science. Then we will survey in a non technical way (in language understandable by everybody) what the main scientific developments were, and why the Kantian framework was perceived as incapable of accommodating them. The second part of the course will explain the ways in which linguistic analysis, on the one hand, and logical positivism and logical empiricism, on the other, attempted to set up a philosophical perspective adequate to the scientific developments in question. The third part of the course will describe the main challenges mounted against logical empiricism and logical positivism from the inside (Popper's falsificationism, the Duhem - Quine thesis and Hanson's theory ladeness of observation) as well as the radical change of the overall philosophical landscape brought about by the historicists (Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan). The course will close with a summary presentation of the main ideas of social constructivism and of the major controversies more or less contemporary with it (rationality versus relativism, realism versus antirealism).The course is designed for undergraduate students who are not experts in either science or philosophy. The grade will be based on class participation and two take-home exams, one at mid term and the other when the term closes.

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