Spring 2006 Graduate Courses
  (Previous Semesters)

HPS 83100
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 93632
Francis Bacon & His Intelllectual World MF 1:30-2:45 (Goulding)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: PHIL 93981/HIST 93981
Graduate Students Only

This course examines the life and work of the early seventeenth-century English statesman, scholar and “Father of modern science,” Francis Bacon. Students will read Bacon’s own writings in depth, together with several important modern biographical and historical studies. A central concern will be to place Bacon’s thought in the context of the intellectual currents of the early modern period. We shall examine such topics as ‘scientific utopias’ (including the Rosicrucian manifestos) and search for a new logical ‘method’ by Petrus Ramus and other Renaissance logicians, together with the often contentious modern scholarship on Bacon’s relationship to such intellectual trends and movements.

HPS 93638
British & American Intellectural HIST II R 2:00-4:30 (Turner)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist HIST 93656
Graduate Students Only

Readings in selected topics in British and American intellectual history from the end of the eighteenth century through the late nineteenth. Though suitable for graduate students who intend to offer an examination field in Anglo-American intellectual history, it is by no means intended solely for them.

The subject matter of the colloquium comprises discourses common to Britain and anglophone North America. This focus does not preclude occasional French or German voices. The colloquium will stress problems that were nodes of change rather than provide an even-handed survey. Examples might include evangelical reform movements, Romantic metaphysics, feminism, liberalism, Darwinian biology, and religious unbelief. But topics widely discussed only on one side of the Atlantic are excluded: a policy that eliminates important regional cultures (notably the American South) and major topics (such as African-American nationalism and Benthamite utilitarianism except as refracted through J. S. Mill).  

Requirements : Besides discussion of common assigned readings, essays based on these assigned readings will also be required.

HPS 93743
Economics of Science MW 3:00-4:15 (Mirowski)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist ECON 33270
Graduate Students Only

Economists often fret over whether theirs is a hard science, but of late, they have begun to turn the tables and apply their theories to the operation of the sciences. This phenomenon is related to the increasing commercialization of science since the 1980s. In this class we describe the changing history of the organization and subsidy of scientific research, especially in America; and then we survey the different classes of economic theories applied to the scientific process. The second half of the course is then concerned with issues in the modern globalization and privatization of science, focusing on various case studies.

Requirements : Readings: Philip Mirowski & Esther-Mirjam Sent, eds., Science Bought and Sold National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2004 .

HPS 93752
Imperialism, Health, and Disease W 11:45-2:15 (Pelis)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist HIST 93982
Graduate Students Only

This course will examine certain historical periods during which the expansionist tendencies of western civilization and infectious disease have brought about dramatic collisions. Proceeding chronologically, we will begin in western antiquity; however, our focus will be on the institutions and disease concepts of the 19 th and 20 th centuries. In particular, we will analyze the interrelated ideas of “emerging infectious diseases” and “disease ecologies” in the context of imperialist expansion.

Requirements: Reading, book review, class participation/presentation, final research paper.

HPS 93812
HOPOS from Science Revolution to 1900 W 3:00-5:30 (Patton)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist PHIL 93812
Graduate Students Only

Beginning in the early modern period, with the rise of philosopher scientists such as Newton and Descartes, philosophy has aimed to arrive at a rigorous interpretation and explanation of scientific knowledge. That tradition continued through the 19th century, with the rise of empirical psychology, sociology, physiology and chemistry – for instance, several of the founders of empirical psychology were prominent philosophers as well. But what is the status of the philosophical perspective on science? How are philosophical interpretations, explanations, or models of science justified? What is the proper method for the philosophy of science – can the philosophy of science be, as one of the founders of German epistemology asked, a science itself?

In this course, we will begin by examining the seminal debates and differences between Hume, Kant, Berkeley and Reid on the philosophical interpretation of scientific phenomena in general and Newtonian science in particular. We will chart the development of the philosophy of science, from the early 19th century emphasis on positivism and inductivism (Comte, Mill) to the emergence of rival systems (hypothetico-deductivism, the Scots school’s model-theoretic conception, an neo-Kantianism). We will examine the crucial debates between philosopher-scientists such as Boltzmann, Hertz, and Helmholtz at the close of the 19th century. Finally, we will look toward the twentieth century with an examination of how Mach, Poincaré, and Duhem began to retool the philosophy of science in response to their conceptions of the aims of philosophy and of experimental science.

Readings: A course packet will be made available.

HPS 93831
Phil of the Human Sciences TR 12:30-1:45 (McKim)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist PHIL 93831
Graduate Students Only

This course will explore issues about the nature of persons, groups, institutions, rules and norms; in short, about the ontological status of the 'entities' that constitute social reality. We shall also examine the epistemological credentials of various methodologies advanced by one or another socially oriented discipline as providing its practitioners with privileged expertise in the explanation, understanding and prediction of social phenomena.

A third dimension of the course will focus on the historical 'birth' and subsequent development of major disciplines within the social 'sciences'. Here we will attempt to get a sense of how changing historical circumstances have contributed to the continual reshaping of views about the what the proper study of mankind should aspire to be.

Readings will be drawn from a broad range of works by philosophers, historians and social theorists. There will be a course packet plus a number of paperback texts.

Requirements include a final examination along with a research paper due at the end of the semester. Two or three short (2-3 pp.) writing assignments will also be made during the course of the semester. Classes will consist both of informal lectures and seminar discussion.

HPS 93872
Hist Found of Quantum Theory TR 2:00-3:15 (Howard)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist PHIL 93872
Graduate Students Only

This course is an historically organized survey of major issues in the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics. Working with a mix of primary and secondary texts, we will first survey the development of the quantum theory through the emergence of wave and matrix mechanics in the 1920s, the aim being to understand the context in which Bohr's complementarity interpretation and debates about it first arose. A careful study of the Bohr-Einstein debate over the completeness of quantum mechanics will be followed by a review of the major controversies over interpretation in the second half of the twentieth century, including the measurement problem, hidden variables theories, and Bell's theorem. The course will conclude with a look at new questions of interpretation unique to the context of quantum field theory. The course will not assume advanced training in physics .

HPS 78599
Thesis Direction (Howard)

Thesis direction for terminating Master's students.

Thesis direction for terminating Master's students.

Directed Readings carried out under individual HPS faculty supervision.

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.