Spring 2009 Graduate Courses
  (Previous Semesters)

HPS 83100 
HPS ColloquiumT 4:15-5:30 (Howard)
Graduate Students Only

Group Discussion by the HPS faculty and students of a prominent recent work in the history and philosophy of science and research presentation by visiting scholars. 

Required course for HPS students in first and second years of Program.

HPS 93501
Theology after Darwin MW 3:00-4:15 (Ashley)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: THEO 60252
Graduate Students Only

This course is a survey of some influential attempts by Christian theologians (both Protestant and Catholic) to come to grips with the challenges raised by the Darwinian revolution.  Initially the challenge of Darwinism was felt primarily in „natural theology,‰ thus we begin there, with a brief consideration of the role of the so-called argument from design in nineteenth century Christian theology.  Then we take up some paradigmatic late nineteenth-century reactions to Darwin:  Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and  John Zahm. From there we will study the largely negative mood of the early twentieth century  in the United States (with the exception of the „liberal theology‰ of Shailer Matthews and other members of the University of Chicago Divinity School), with particular attention to the rise of creationism.   The second part of the course will be taken up with contemporary attempts to defend theism, broadly construed, from atheist critics such as Richard Dawkins, who attack theism on the grounds of its incommensurability with evolution (Langdon Gilkey).  Finally, we will consider those theologians who seek to reconfigure specific doctrinal claims made in trinitarian theology, theological anthropology, soteriology and eschatology (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , Karl Rahner, John Haught, Elizabeth Johnson, and Denis Edwards).

HPS93743 
Economics of Science TR 12:30-1:45 (Mirowski)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: ECON 33270, STV 33250
Grad Students Only

Economists often fret over whether they are 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.

HPS 93863
Darwin in the 21st Century M 6:00-8:30 (Ramsey)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: PHIL 93863
Graduate Students Only

Darwinism has had a profound effect on contemporary biology and many agree with Dobzhansky’s dictum that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of [Darwinian] evolution.” However, recent challenges to Darwinism, coming from such areas as development and complexity studies, have questioned the centrality of Darwinian explanations. In this class, we will examine what Darwinism is, i.e., what the core Darwinian principles are, and consider whether contemporary biological theory is an extension of these principles or whether they are genuinely being called into question.

HPS 93872
Historical Foundations of Quantum Theory TR 11:00-12:15 (Howard)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: PHIL93872
Graduate Students Only

This course is a 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.

HPS 96697
Directed Readings

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.