The John J. Reilly Center
Program in History and Philosophy of Science
Courses Spring 2000
HPS 500
HPS Colloquium 4:15-5:30 T (Howard)
1 Cr. Hr.
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.
Plato's Timaeus as Cultural Icon 11:45-1:00 M W (Reydams-Schils)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: MI 550A, PHIL 510
This course will deal with the reception of Plato's Timaeus, both as a hermeneutical strategy for a richer understanding of the text itself, and as a study of the process of cultural assimilation. We will use the Timaeus also as a window to 'survey' topics, such as the history of Neoplatonism and its impact on the Medieval tradition.
Students will be asked to do research on an aspect of the Timaeus which is related to their specific interest (School of Chartres, medical tradition etc.), do a presentation and write up the paper at the end of the semester. From March 30 through April 1 there will be an international conference here at Notre Dame on the same topic. Graduate students will have opportunity to interact with the visiting scholars, some of whom will also give a guest lecture in the seminar.
The Scientific Revolution: The Disciplines of Early Modern Knowledge Creation 1:30-4:30 M (Harley)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: HIST 562; Graduate Students Only
This course will examine the various disciplines which created knowledge about the natural and human worlds in the long seventeenth century, considering how questions were framed, how investigation was conducted, and how conclusions were justified. The hypothesis that will be examined is that knowledge can only be created within a disciplinary framework and it is therefore necessary to pay close attention to the configuration of disciplines at the time, if the historian is to understand how knowledge was made or challenged. Some of the most creative events in knowledge creation, at any period, occur when boundaries are transgressed, so it is necessary for the historian to explore the location and construction of those boundaries.
The course will be thematic rather than chronological, treating individual disciplines across time, and those disciplines which have especially concerned historians of science, such as natural philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, will be considered alongside others such as law, political economy, linguistics, and biblical hermeneutics. There will be scope for students interested in particular fields of knowledge to request their inclusion. Classes will consist of the study of related primary and secondary texts, and the presentation of critical bibliographies and research papers.
The History of Economics in the Context of Intellectual History 4:30-5:45 MW (Mirowski)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist ECON 506; Permission Required
This course approaches the existence of a separate discipline called "economics" as a research problem and not an obvious fact. Beginning in the 18th century and carrying the story up through post WWII, we survey major figures in the British, French, German and American schools of economics, with major stress on British classical political economy and the neoclassical school. The relationship of these schools to the natural sciences and psychology is covered, as well as repeated discussions of the problem of 'value' in economics. A research paper in the history of economics will be required of all students.
Philosophy and the Human Sciences in the 19th Century 4:30-5:45 M W (Bordogna)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist PHIL 678; Permission Required
The modern distinction between natural philosophy and natural science was secured in the nineteenth century. This course examines the complex and multi-faceted process that resulted in the clear separation of what we would now call philosophy from the human sciences That process included the transformation and emergence of a number of more specific fields, including psychology, anthropology and sociology, from a more general realm of largely philosophical investigation. We will trace the history of the human sciences as they differentiated from older philosophical inquiry, and defined themselves, mainly through some form of affiliation or opposition to philosophy, on the one hand, and the exact sciences, on the other. Particular emphasis will be placed on late-nineteenth-century debates about epistemological and methodological issues, and their interconnection to debates concerning the institutional and academic location of the human sciences.
A comparative perspective will bring out the aspects of the function of national and local differences in the shaping of the debates. Students will be challenged to understand the emergence of new fields of inquiry in different cultural contexts. They should gain new insights into crucial debates that determined the character of the human sciences, as well as new perspectives on crucial issues that were central to philosophical inquiry at the turn of the century and into the twentieth century.
History of the Philosophy of Science 1750-1900 2:00-3:15 T Th (Howard)
3 Cr. Hr. Crosslist: Phil 588
Much of the history of philosophy from the early modern period through the nineteenth century can be written as the history of philosophical reactions to the development of modern science, especially the physics of Newton and Maxwell, but to some degree also the chemistry, biology, physiological psychology, and sociology that came into their own in the nineteenth century. What was the epistemic basis of this new scientific knowledge? What was the proper method of science? What were the scope and limits of this new science?
This course will trace the main themes in the development of the philosophy of science during this period. We will start with early reactions to Newton on the part of Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Reid. In the nineteenth century, we will chart the rise of distinctive schools of thought as the philosophy of science becomes conscious of itself as a distinct area within philosophy, including the positivism of Comte, the inductivism of Mill, the hypothetico-deductivism of Whewell and Bernard, the Scot's school's emphasis on the fundamental role of models in science, and the neo-Kantianism of Helmholtz. As we reach the threshold of the twentieth century we will pay special attention to such precursors of logical empiricism as Mach, Poincaré, and Duhem.
The readings will be a mix of primary and secondary sources.
Students will be required to write a term paper and a take-home final examination.
Thesis Direction (Howard)
Thesis direction for terminating Master's students.
Nonresident Thesis Direction (Howard)
Thesis direction for terminating Master's students.
Scientific Realism 11:00-12:15 T Th (McMullin)
3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: PHIL 680; Permission Required
The controversy regarding realism and anti-realism has been one of the two or three focal issues in the philosophy of science over recent decades. After a brief look at the historical origins of this controversy in early astronomy and in Newtonian mechanics, we shall go on to study the criticisms, defenses, and explications of scientific realism in the writings of van Fraassen, Putnam, Fine, Hacking, Laudan, and others. We will rely mainly on reproductions of selections from historical sources as well as of recent articles. Leplin: A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism (Oxford University Press, 1997) will be discussed.
Requirements: Term paper and take-home final examination.
Directed Readings
Directed Readings carried out under individual HPS faculty supervision.
Research and Dissertation (Howard)
Nonresident Dissertation Research (Howard)