Honors/Changing Our Minds: Revolutions in Thought

Catalog description

This course is inspired by Freud’s idea that human self-understanding advances during great revolutions in thought. We study several revolutions in science and belief, from Marx to Darwin, and consider whether a general model applies to them all. How have ideas about the universe and human beings’ place in it changed dramatically at certain points in history? Do revolutions in thought have a common structure? What revolution are we living in today? This course is part of an Honors symposium titled “The Copernican Lens: Dawn and Limits of Certainty in Physical Science and the Humanities”, which runs concurrently with three other “Copernicus Lens” courses in other fields during the same semester. Taking its point of departure from the revolution in astronomy introduced by Nicolaus Copernicus, the symposium explores the intersections of types of thinking about the universe and humanity across history, especially the relationship between scientific and humanistic thinking. The implications of key transformations in scientific and humanistic thought are traced in the realms of philosophical ideas about humans’ place in the world, and historical understandings of the development of science, belief, and truth itself. The course will be run in a seminar, discussion-based format, meeting twice a week for discussion (Mondays & Wednesdays) and once a week (Fridays) for a shared plenary with the other three “Copernicus Lens” courses. Among the requirements of each course in the Honors symposium is participation in plenary sessions when the students from all four courses meet together. The four instructors (Professors Nathan Schwadron [Physics], Subrena Smith [Philosophy], Rachel Trubowitz [English], and Paul Robertson [Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies]) have planned the plenary sessions around common activities and learning materials, approached from the individual…