Philosophy and Scientific Inquiry.

Catalog description

What can philosophy contribute to the sciences and the sciences to philosophy? This course explores the interplay between these two disciplines. We approach these questions through the lens of the history of philosophy as it interacts with the emergence of the sciences as a distinctive form of inquiry. Each arises from the common human impulse to offer an account of the world of experience. The development of philosophy reveals a dynamic synergy between these disciplines, one that bears upon the substance of the claims forwarded by each. Exploring this synergy reveals a common strategy for discerning the underlying, often hidden, nature of the world in which we live. This shared approach to inquiry produces a unified project of trying to explain the whole of reality.