SCI 101 History and Philosophy of Science

Content

This course will not be offered in 2007-2008.

The course provides insight into the aims, structure and development of science. Main themes in present-day philosophy of science are addressed: the realism-instrumentalist debate; the meaning and form of scientific explanations and reductionism. In the history of science the focus lies on a number of major episodes in the development of science since Antiquity. Among these are the Greek miracle, the Copernican revolution, the Seventeenth Century mechanization of the world picture, Newton and Newtonianism, Darwin’s theory of evolution and its social implications, and Twentieth Century ‘Big Science’.

Track

General

Period

Fall / 2007