PST 4875, Engl 3883a. Perspectives on the Nature and Development of Science.
Nersessian.
DESCRIPTION
How do scientific theories develop and change? What is the nature
and role of observation and experimentation in science? What is the
nature of scientific investigation? In what ways do the practices
of a scientific community shape its product, scientific knowledge?
How are these practices created? This seminar will provide a
comparative analysis of these and related issues from the
perspectives of different interpretive frameworks: philosophical,
sociological, and cognitive. These perspectives will be discussed
and compared in light of specific historical and contemporary case
studies.
REQUIREMENTS
There will be a substantial amount of reading (100-150 pages per
week). Students will be required to make several joint
presentations and to write several brief papers of approximately 5
pages each.
TEXTS WILL INCLUDE
R.N. Giere: Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988)
I. Hacking: Representing and Intervening (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983)
F.L. Holmes: Eighteenth-Century Chemistry As An Investigative
Enterprise (Berkeley, CA: OHST, 1989)
T.S. Kuhn: The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1977)
L. Laudan: Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of
Scientific Growth (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1977)
S. Shapin and S. Schaffer: Leviathan And The Air Pump: Hobbes,
Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985)