PHIL 241S: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Science
This course is the core seminar required for the graduate certificate program in the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine (HPSTM). But the course is open to students who are not enrolled in that program.
This year, the seminar has a double focus: first, significant theoretical and methodological problems leading to 20th-century critiques of traditional (realist, rationalist, positivist) conceptions of human knowledge and scientific truth, method and progress; second, the attendant development of alternative (constructivist, interactionist, pragmatist) conceptions of the formation and stabilization of knowledge and the relations between scientific and other cultural and social practices. Readings will include texts by Karl Popper, Ludwik Fleck, Thomas S. Kuhn, Michel Foucault, David Bloor, Bruno Latour, Lorraine Daston/Peter Galison, and Steven Shapin. |
