Department of

0410 Einstein
John Norton
M & W 11-11:50
Do astronauts age more slowly?  Can a finite universe have no edge?  Is time travel possible?  Can time have a beginning?  Does the moon change because a mouse looks at it?  Surprisingly, modern science answers yes to all these questions.  This course provides simple-to-understand explanations of these and other related questions, their broader philosophical significance and their histories.  The course is suitable for students with no science background but with an interest in the world of modern science.

0515 / HIST 0089/12542 Magic, Medicine and Science
Benny Goldberg
H 6-8:30
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.

0515 / HIST 0089/12905 Magic, Medicine and Science
Paolo Palmieri
M & W 10-10:50
This course investigates magic, medicine and science in early modern Europe. The course will be based on original sources. We will teach and learn magic, medicine and science as if we were professor and students in an early modern European setting.

0610 Causal Reasoning, web-based course
Jonathan Livengood
H 6-8:30
Do school vouchers really help inner city students become better educated? Do gun control laws really make society safer? This course examines how scientists reason about causal claims like these. It considers use of scientific statistical data that informs our public policy debates. The course uses an interactive, web-based text and exams. In addition, there is an on-line virtual "Causality Lab" in which students will set up, run, and then analyze simulated experiments. They will construct causal theories, use the lab to derive predictions from these theories, and then test the predictions against the simulated data. While course materials are delivered on-line, students will still attend two sessions per week; one for addressing questions about the material and the second for case study analysis.

0612 Mind and Medicine
Kenneth Schaffner
M & W 12-12:50
Mind and Medicine deals with fundamental problems and questions that arise in considering the nature of mental health, mental illness, and branches of medicine that aim to promote mental health and treat mental illness. We will begin by considering the concepts of 'health', 'disease' and 'illness' in general, and several different models of medicine. From there we will move on to a consideration of the nature of explanation in medicine generally. We will examine some explanatory successes in the domain of physical health and disease, and consider how those successes were achieved. In the second half of the course we will look at controversies over the question of whether there is such a thing as mental illness, and if so, how one is to define, diagnose and treat it. In order to better understand what is at stake, we will explore these controversies by focusing on a specific mental illness, schizophrenia. Looking at recent research on schizophrenia will allow us to see the extent to which the kind of understanding we have achieved in physical medicine is or is not to be expected with serious mental illness. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to identify and analyze different philosophical approaches to selected issues in medicine and psychiatry; have gained insight into how to read and critically interpret philosophical arguments; and have developed skills that will enable them to think clearly about foundational questions as future or current health care providers, policy makers, and consumers. This course is also part of a core sequence leading to certification in the Conceptual Foundations of Medicine Certificate Program, and is a companion course to HPS 0613 (Morality and Medicine) but may be taken independently. The course is of particular interest to pre-medical and pre-health care students.

0613 Morality and Medicine
Holly Andersen
S 12:30-2:45
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; euthanasia; 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.

0623 Explanations of Humans and Society
Peter Machamer
M & W 4-4:50
This course will look at some of the original writings of the three "giants" of modern psychology: Freud, Skinner and Piaget.  The three movements of psychoanalysis, behaviorism and developmental cognition will be explored through their most articulate and well known proponents. Topics to be discussed include the nature of the emotions, the structures of behavior and the forms of human thought. Specifically, we will discuss how the concepts of desire, love, jealousy, homosexuality, skilled actions, language, and logical and moral reasoning can be used to understand human beings.

1508 Classics in History of Science
James Lennox
T & H 1-2:15
In the 17th century, William Harvey revolutionized our understanding of the movement of the heart and blood, and declared "Aristotle is my leader...". Approximately two centuries later, Charles Darwin revolutionized the scientific study of life with his theory of evolution by natural selection, and declared "Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere school boys to old Aristotle." In HPS 1508 we will begin by looking back, as these two giants did, to the very origins of the scientific study of life, Aristotle, to learn what it was that so impressed Harvey and Darwin. We will then study Harvey's great work On the movement of the heart and blood in animals with the following question in mind: how could one of the great experimentalists of the scientific revolution consider himself a follower of Aristotle? And finally, we will turn to On the Origin of Species, the great work in which Darwin presented his 'long argument' for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Throughout we will be looking for continuity as well as innovation in the history of the sciences of life.

1600 / PHIL 1600/13727 Philosophy & the Rise of Modern Science
James McGuire
T & H 11-12:15
It is generally agreed that what happened in the 17th century changed the human landscape irrevocably.  The Religious Reformation was consolidated; divinely ordained kingship was decisively uprooted; upheavals across Europe ushered in non-traditional political and constitutional formations; and the forces of transformation forged new sociocultural contexts in which life was lived.  Lying at the core of these transformations was the impact of early modern science as it emerged in the 17th century.  This course will examine the dynamics of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ paying close attention to such figures as Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Newton.  We will be concerned with the philosophical consequences of their thought within the context of their period, but also with the affect it had on the scientific world-picture of the 18th Century Enlightenment.

1702 JR/SR Seminar
Edouard Machery
W 9:30-12
The goal of this seminar (HPS 1702) will be to introduce you to the cutting-edge research in history and philosophy of science. The seminar is designed to complement the knowledge you have acquired about the classic debates in history and philosophy of science. We will focus on the recent debates in contemporary philosophy of science and on some debates in the history of science that are relevant for philosophy. We will read articles that have been published in the last ten years in the major philosophy of science and history of science journals. We will also read some classic papers that provide a background for the current debates.

1703 Writing Workshop for HPS Major
Edouard Machery
TBA
This writing workshop is designed to introduce HPS majors to the methods and standards of good scholarly writing in History and Philosophy of Science. It will be offered to HPS majors only in conjunction with HPS 1702, JR/SR Seminar. Evaluation will be based on two short papers that will be rewritten on the basis of the instructor's comments. Must be an HPS Major in Junior or Senior year.

1800 / CLASS 1090/33702 Special Topics in History and Philosophy of Science: Ancient Medicine
Helen Cullyer
T & H 2:3-3:45
The medical writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Soranus and other anonymous physicians are some of the most interesting, if not the most familiar texts that survive from antiquity. These physicians developed "rationalistic" treatments and theories which sometimes complemented, and often conflicted with , religious and magical explanations of and cures for diseases and chronic ailments. They also established medicine as a respected skill, which requires its own specialized knowledge, but which cannot be completely divorced from the other sciences, and from ethics. The course is intended as a survey of the major developments in medical theory and practice from the fifth century BCE to the second century CE. However, we will pay special attention to the following topics: the relationship between medicine, philosophy and religion in the ancient world, ancient theories of gynecology and human reproduction, and ethical dilemmas that physicians faced, and still face today, in their medical research and clinical practice.

1800 / ANTH 1737/34059 / RELGST 1800/34060 Special Topics in History and Philosophy of Science: Islam, Science and Society
Mazyar Lotfalian
T & H 4-5:15
This course will explore the relationship between Islam, science and technology by bringing together scholarly work in science studies, religious studies, and ethnographic cases from the Islamic world. This course will examine the ways in which Islam has interacted with the worlds of technoscientific discursive practices. The aim of this course is to build a critical understanding of the contemporary usage of Islamic views on socio-political aspects of knowledge production in the modern context by focusing on the case of science and technology.                                                                       
SPEN: Special permission from the instructor or department chair is required to register for this course. Ask your Advisor.

UHC:  This is an Honors section of a course. Permission to register must be obtained from the University Honors College, 3600 Cathedral of Learning

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