Fall 2007 Graduate Courses
  (Previous Semesters)

HPS 83100
HPS Colloquium 4:15-5:30 T (McKim)
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 83801
Philosophy of Science 2:00-3:15 TR (McKim)
3 Cr. Hr.
Crosslist: PHIL 83801
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.

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.

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.

HPS 93631
The Scientific Revolution 9:00-11:30 W (Goulding)
3 Cr. Hr.
Cross-lis: MI 63284

In this course we explore the complicated relationship between the European universities of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and the rise of new natural philosophies, technologies and experimental practices in the same period. We will examine such subjects as: natural philosophy and natural history; the use of mathematics as an explanatory tool; astronomy and optics; classical scholarship and natural knowledge. In all of these areas, revolutionary changes occurred over the period we are studying. As well as familiarizing ourselves with the standard literature on these "revolutions," we shall, in each case, explore the contested role of the universities, principally Oxford, Cambridge and Paris, but also the German and Northern Italian schools. Our goal is to understand the creative tension between the practitioners, craftsmen, and philosophers, on whom historians of the "Scientific Revolution" traditionally focus, and the institutions of higher learning in their midst.

HPS 93753
Medicine & Public Health in America 8:00-9:15 MW (Hamlin)
3 Cr. Hr.
Crosslist: HIST 30626
Graduate Students Only

This is a survey course in the history of American medicine and public health. Its premise is that American medical history is a part of broader issues of American history. In this regard, there are seven main related issues:

• health as freedom in medical practice and individual choice
• the conceptualization of class, race, gender, age, lifestyle, and place in terms of health
• health and hygiene as the means of Americanization
• the expression of cultural and religious diversity in medicine
• health as the American dream
• health care as the battleground in American political economy
• health care as the locus of the American fascination with technology

In addition to participating in the undergraduate course, graduate students will read more deeply in the contemporary historical literature and will be expected to produce either a substantial critical review of the literature on a particular subject or an original research paper.

HPS 93811
History of Philosophy of Science to 1750 9:30-10:45 TR (Joy)
3 Cr. Hr.
Crosslist: PHIL 93811; MI 60366
Graduate Students Only

This seminar focuses on changing conceptions of nature and of scientific knowledge from the Presocratics to the Enlightenment. We will examine the origins of these conceptions in ancient Greek and Hellenistic thought and analyze what happened to them in medieval and modern natural philosophy. Besides the earlier texts, which include Aristotle's Physics, we will discuss modern works by Descartes, Galileo, Boyle, and Newton.

Requirements: Written requirements include two medium-length papers and one exam. Short oral presentations and regular participation in seminar discussions are also important aspects of this seminar.

HPS 93821
Science and Social Values 5:00-7:30 W (Kourany)
3 Cr. Hr.
Crosslist: PHIL 93821
Graduate Students Only

Should science be value free, or should it be shaped by the needs and ideals of the society that supports it? If the former, how can scientists shaped by society contribute to it, and what claim to the resources of the society can scientists legitimately make? If the later, how can scientists still claim to be objective? These are some of the questions we shall pursue in this course. Their pursuit will take us through a varied terrain--e.g., the growing commercialization of science and other ways in which social values leave their imprint on science, the case of Soviet science under Lysenko and German science under the Nazis, and, most importantly, the relation between facts and values, new understandings of scientific objectivity, and new social philosophies of science--especially those offered by Helen Longino, Philip Kitcher, and Miriam Solomon.

The style of the course will be discussions, seminar style, with students leading the discussions, and these will be informed by readings drawn from a variety of sources, including natural and social scientists as well as historians and philosophers of science.

Thesis direction for terminating Master's students.

Thesis direction for terminating Master's students.

HPS 96697
Directed Readings

Directed Readings carried out under individual HPS faculty supervision.

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.