HPS Colloquium 4:15-5:30 T (Howard)
1 Cr. Hr.
Graduate Students Only
Group Discussion by the HPS faculty and students of a prominent recent work in the field of HPS and research presentations by visiting scholars. Required course for HPS students in first and second years of the HPS Program.
HPS 513
The Computer as a Social Phenomenon 9:00-10:15 MW (Mirowski)
3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: Econ. 513, CAPP 413
Graduate Students Only
Approaches to understanding the computer have until recently tended toward one of two extremes: either as a natural-technical object, generally the province of electrical engineering and/or the computer science departments; or else on the most superficial level, with texts on the "information society" or postmodernist riffs on cyberspace. It is beginning to be the case that individual disciplines are being forced to confront how computational themes might transform their previous research agendas; and some have even begun to worry about how the internet might transform the traditional university education. In this class we begin with the question of technological determinism, proceed through a combined social/technical history of the computer and the internet, and then consider some ways in which computers are changing the definition of the "human" (using my recent book Machine Dreams) and the definition of the economy.
HPS 560
Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science 4:15-5:30 W (Howard)
1 Cr. Hr.
Graduate Students Only
This course is the HPS Proseminar, required of all first-semester HPS graduate students. It serves as a prerequisite for further graduate course work in history and philosophy of science. Concentration will be on the special methodological and historiographic issues in the history and philosophy of science including examination of the post-Kuhnian traditions in the history and philosophy of science, introduction to research techniques, and guest appearances by HPS faculty. Readings will be drawn from current periodical literature in the history and philosophy of science.
HPS 573
The Social Uses of Science: 1800 to the Present 1:30-4:00 M (Hamlin)
3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: HIST 573
Graduate Students Only
This course is a comparative survey of modern scholarship on the normative uses of science. We shall begin in the early modern period, where many of the issues of the construction of this thing called science are delineated unusually clearly. Our main focus will be the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Among the specific questions this topic embraces are the following:
1) Why did people "cultivate" science, join (and start) scientific societies,
acquire scientific education, represent themselves as scientific? In short,
how did science institutionalize in different societies?
2) What did being "scientific" mean? What different styles of science
were embraced? In what ways is the style of science of the early
nineteenth century naturalist different from that of the modern professional
physicist? What kinds of authority came with what kinds of scientific styles.
3) Whence came the need for authority, and how did science come to
be seen as adequate to provide it?
4) How far-reaching is the authority science is asked to provide? How
is it made use of by various groups in support of various interests? How
is it useful in the great ideological battles, for colonialism, socialism,
nationalism, capitalism, modernism, etc? Does science come to have a particular
ideological identity or is it equally accessible to all groups?
5) How do scientists respond to the invitation to be authorities?
Do they relish power and insidiously stimulate demand or reluctantly postpone
real work to accept society's call?
6) How did science become a part of general education, and how and
why has this general scientific education varied in content and pedagogy?
HPS 581
Philosophy of Science 2:00-3:15 TH (Howard)
3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: PHIL 581
Graduate Students Only
A survey of major problems, movements, and thinkers in twentieth-century philosophy of science. The course begins with a look at the historical background to logical empiricism, its rise to prominence, and its early critics, such as Popper. After a study of major problems in the neo-positivst tradition, such as confirmation, explanation, and the nature of scientific laws, historicist critiques of neo-positivism, chiefly Kuhn's will be studied next, followed by a consideration of the realism-instrumentalism debate. The course concludes with a brief look at new perspectives, such as social constructivism and feminist philosophy of science. Requirements: Students will write mid-term and final essay examinations and a fifteen-page term paper on a topic to be chosen in consultation with the instructor.
Readings: Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Additional readings will be contained in a course packet.
HPS 599
Thesis Direction (Howard)
Thesis direction for terminating Master’s students.
HPS 600
Nonresident Thesis Direction (Howard)
Thesis direction for terminating Master’s students.
HPS 697
Directed Readings
Directed Readings carried out under individual HPS faculty supervision.
HPS 699
Research and Dissertation (Howard)
Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.
HPS 700
Nonresident Dissertation Research (Howard)
Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.