2018-19 Academic Catalog

Science gives us an objective view of ourselves and the world we live in. Or does it? In this course, we’ll pursue some fundamental questions about the nature of the empirical sciences. What makes something a science? What kinds of evidence are there for scientific claims? What, if anything, makes science objective? The main concepts of the course will be illustrated using examples of scientific reasoning from a range of sciences, including biology (e.g., research on gender), climate science (e.g., whether hurricanes are getting more damaging over time), and physics (e.g., the seventeenth century revolution in astronomy). One theme of the course will be feminist critiques of scientific practices and of traditional philosophy of science.