Fall 2008 Graduate Courses
  (Previous Semesters)

HPS 83100 HPS Colloquium Howard

T 4:15-5:30 1 credit hour

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 83601 History Science, Tech & Med. To 1750 Hamlin

MW 9:30-10:45 3 credit hours

Cross-list HIST 83975

Graduate Students Only

This course initiates a two-semester survey of the main events in the history of natural philosophy, technology and medicine from Greek antiquity to the early Enlightenment. The course is intended as an exposure to main currents in scholarship, to a wide variety of primary sources, and will allow students to do bibliographic work in an area of interest. Course requirements will include examinations, presentations and reviews, and an extended bibliographic essay, though these may be modified for students of advanced standing who wish to use the course for other purposes. The course is required for HPS graduate students. Interested graduate students in History, Philosophy, and the sciences or engineering are encouraged to contact the instructor.

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-positivist 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 93637 Topics in Brit/American Intel History Turner

R 2:00-4:30 3 credit hours

Cross-list HIST 93656

Graduate Students Only

Readings in selected topics in British-American intellectual history from the later seventeenth century to the early twentieth. ‘British-American intellectual history,’ as used here, comprises discourses common to Britain and Anglophone North America. This concentration does not preclude occasional French or German voices. Subjects might include sensationalist psychology, Newtonian physics, republicanism, Scottish common-sense philosophy, evangelical reform movements, political economy, Romantic metaphysics, feminism, Darwinian biology, religious unbelief, quantum mechanics, and ‘mass culture.’ But ‘British-American intellectual history’ excludes topics widely discussed only on one side of the Atlantic; a policy that eliminates important regional cultures (notably the American South, Ireland, and Scotland except as participants in larger discourses) and major topics (such as African-American nationalism, Benthamite utilitarianism except as refracted through J.S. Mill, and philosophic pragmatism). We will focus on problems that were nodes of change rather than attempt an even-handed survey, impossible anyway in one semester.

Requirements: Besides discussion of common assigned readings, the work of the course will include papers, the character of which can vary with student needs, including the possibility of writing a seminar paper in either British or American intellectual history or both.

HPS 93721 The Darwinian Revolution Sloan

TR 9:30-10:45 3 credit hours

Cross-list: HIST 93984

Graduate Students Only

This course will be a graduate level survey of the history of evolutionary biology, with particular focus on the work of Charles Darwin. This course is intended to lead in to a series of courses in Theology, HPS, Philosophy, and STV, and other campus commemorations that will be scheduled in commemoration of the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth in February of 1809 and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859. Of particular focus in this course will be the origins, background, content, and reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The intention will be to gain a comprehensive view of Darwin’s work and its place in intellectual and scientific history.

Advanced graduate students in the HPS program will be expected to complete a take-home midterm, and write a research paper and complete a final. First year HPS students and students from other departments will be asked to complete two take-home midterms and a final. Auditors are welcome, but must register for the course and are expected to attend regularly. Student presentations will help introduce some of the materials.

Texts:

Radick and Hodge, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin ( CUP, 2003)

P. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, 3rd ed. (Johns Hopkins)

P. Bowler, The Eclipse of Darwinism, (Johns Hopkins, 1983)

J. D. Watson (ed.), Darwin: The Indelible Stamp (Philadelphia: Running Press, (2005) (collection of four primary texts. This will be reused in other courses dealing with Darwin)

D. Kohn and T. Glick (eds.) On Evolution (Indianapolis: Hackett)

A Reader of primary and secondary sources and electronic reserves and other web materials will supplement the purchased texts.

HPS 93742 History of Economic Thought Mirowski

TR 9:30-10:45 3 credit hours

Cross-list: ECON 43110

Graduate Students Only

This course intends to ask how it is that we have arrived at this curious configuration of doctrines now called "economics"; and importantly, how differing modes of historical discourse tend to ratify us in our prejudices about our own possible involvement in this project. The course will begin in the 18th century with the rise of a self-conscious discipline, and take us through the stabilization of the modern orthodoxy in WWII. Effort will be made to discuss the shifting relationship of economics to the other sciences, natural and social.

Requirements: A basic knowledge of economics (including introductory economics and preferably intermediate economics) will be required.

HPS 93803 Structuralism in Philosophy of Science Brading

MW 11:45-1:00 3 credit hours

Cross-list: PHIL 93803

Graduate Students Only

In 1989, John Worrall published a paper entitled ‘Structural realism: the best of both worlds?’ This paper is a response to a tension between two arguments, one which pulls towards realism with respect to our best scientific theories, and the other which supports scientific anti-realism. We will begin with a discussion of the realism/anti-realism debate, and consider Worrall's suggested ‘structuralist’ resolution to the apparent impasse. Worrall’s response is ‘epistemic structural realism’, and he cites Poincaré as a historical source for his position. Indeed, the early part of the twentieth century saw a variety of structuralist positions being offered, from a range of major figures including Russell, Poincaré, Schlick, Cassirer, and Eddington, among others. We will revisit these historical predecessors to the contemporary debate, asking what motivated their advocacy of structuralism, and what forms of structuralism were being offered. In the contemporary debate, ‘epistemic structural realism’ (all we can know is structure) is distinguished from ‘ontological structural realism’ (all there is is structure). Recently, van Fraassen has proposed a further alternative: structural empiricism. We will discuss these versions of structuralism, in addition to structural idealism. The examples used in the debate have been drawn primarily from physics, and this will be our focus too; however, we will turn our attention to the special sciences towards the end of the semester.

Requirements: The format of the class will be a discussion seminar, focussed on primary source reading. Examination will be through short-answer questions and a term paper.

HPS 93882 Religion & Science: Conflict/Concord? Plantinga

MW 1:30-2:45 3 credit hours

Cross-list: PHIL 93882

Graduate Students Only

This seminar will roughly follow my 2005 Gifford Lectures on the alleged and/or real conflicts between religion and science. My own thought is that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between Christian belief and science, and superficial concord but deep conflict between naturalism (which at any rate serves some of the same functions as a religion) and science. The first part of the seminar will deal with alleged conflicts between Christian theism and science: evolution, divine action in the world, and some issues from evolutionary psychology. I'll suggest that the first two constitute merely apparent conflict; the third constitutes real conflict, but, because of the methodological naturalism assumed, the conflict is superficial. Then we'll turn to superficial concord: intelligent design and fine tuning. Next will be deep concord (Ratzsch). Finally, we‚ll consider the thesis that there is deep conflict between naturalism and science, because naturalism leads to a profound and pervasive skepticism.

Requirements: We'll read essays and parts of books by Stephen J. Gould, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Del Ratzsch, David Sloan Wilson, Bas van Fraassen, Arthur Peacocke and others. I'll assign several short (2-4 page) papers on the reading, and a longer course paper.

HPS 78599 Howard

Thesis Direction

Thesis direction for terminating Master’s students

HPS 78600 Howard

Nonresident Thesis Direction

HPS 96697

Directed Readings

Section Professor

01 Sloan

02 Crowe

03 Jauernig

04 Shrader-Freche

05 Manier

06 Goulding

07 Mirowski

08 Hamlin

09 Stapleford

10 Ramsey

11 Joy

12 Turner

13 Howard

14 Bigi

15 Ashley

16 Fox

17 Gutting

18 Kourany

19 Brading

20 McKim

21 Staff

HPS 98699 Howard

Research and Dissertation

HPS 98700 Howard

Nonresident Dissertation Research