Seminar in Philosophy of Science

Catalog description

This course reviews the development of philosophy of science in the past century and studies its development once it turns its attention to modern cosmology and biology in this century. We begin with the Vienna School, which took physics to be the most important science, and analyzed deductive thought by means of predicate logic. Then we will look at the work of Thomas Kuhn, who insists on the importance of the history of science for philosophy: we must look at how the sciences develop over time. This makes biology especially interesting: we begin with Darwin, and trace developments to the discovery of DNA and the importance of genetics, and consider the way biology combines the microscopic, the macroscopic, and the study of biological systems. This leads science to interact with politics, as the issue of global warming becomes apparent. How does theory intersect with practical deliberation? The development of modern cosmology also reminds us that the whole universe has a history, and changes our sense of our environment. So it seems that the philosophy of science must include not just deductive thought, but also historical thought and practical deliberation.