Syllabus: Philosophy 309b, Perspectives: Science, Social Science, Humanities
Spring 2006, CRN 24233; Prof. J. W. Powell, Ph.D., MWF 1500-1550 in NR 201; Office 101 UANX;
1-2 MW, 2-3:30 Thur, at Wildberries TBA., and by appt. Phone 826-5753, email jwp2@humboldt.edu.
Description: This course is a critical inquiry into the divisions of the academic disciplines and an inquiry into characteristics they have in common. We will think about practices and theories of science and social sciences, and then about defining characteristics of some of the humanities. One large problem is not letting the questions get the bit in their teeth and run away with us. Still, we need to acknowledge their variety.
Are the sciences one thing? Are scientists value-free? Are social scientists doing anything in common with physicists? When we condemn some claims as unscientific, does that mean that art or religion also stand condemned? Are there limits to science? When we argue about art or music, are there any scientific grounds we can use? If a dog may gaze on the queen, may an artist gaze on a mathematician? To what extent can there be a common language among sculptors and geneticists? Dancers and historians? Actors and marine biologists? Is science value-free, objective, logical? Are the arts based on feelings and subjectivity, cut loose from rationality? Is there something sexist about science? Is there something terminally fluffy about the arts?
One of my colleagues referred to this course as "the impossible everything course." He's right. But there are very few chances at the University to actually think about how to make sense of the relationships among the academic disciplines. The impossibility of our task is a problem. In order to keep some semblance of possibility and order, we are going to use some thematic examples throughout the course. Student interests will help determine which of these examples we use, but here are some I'm interested in and on which I can provide some reading materials:
1. Madness. How do the sciences, such as medicine, approach questions about mental illness, e.g. clinical depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder)? How do the social sciences' approaches differ from those of the hard sciences? How do the approaches of painters, poets, novelists, and philosophers differ from those?
2. Fine art, perhaps especially photography. What is the physics or chemistry of color, of light, of photography? What do social scientists have to tell us about artists and the arts? How are those related to art criticism and the accounts given by artists themselves? What makes good art good? Is that anything like what makes good science or good anthropology good?
3. Music. What's the physics of music? The anthropology of music? What in the world is musicianship? Why are musicians such weirdos? How does music move us? How do music critics argue for their judgments, and is there anything in common between how those arguments are evaluated and how arguments about the physics of music are evaluated?
4. Science and values. What are the values built into science? In what sense and to what extent is science value-free? What have social scientists to tell us about scientists? What possibilities are there for conversations between the sciences and the arts or between the sciences and philosophy or religion?
5. Language. There are investigators of the acoustics of speech, psycholinguists, anthropologists specializing in languages, literary critics working on the language of Shakespeare's plays, poets whose expertise has something to do with language. How is it these sciences, social scientists, poets, have to do with one topic, namely, language? What is language, really?
6. Violence. Behavioral sciences and neurochemists are beginning to make claims about causes and cures of violence. Literary works and writers in ethics provide other approaches. Sociology has been working on the social phenomena of violence for years. Thinking about causes of violence gives us material for thinking about what counts as a cause, and so both the science and the philosophy of science. 7. Time. Modern developments of the concept of time include attempts to make measurements of time more precise, along with relying on mechanical or physical processes which are increasingly separate from ordinary or everyday concerns about time. Defining time is a grand old philosophical problem (Augustine famously remarks that as long as he isn’t asked, he knows what time is–if asked, he doesn’t: Quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. Confessions, Book Eleven, Chapt. 14). Time becomes crucial to some and overwhelming to others, and American Indians routinely shake their heads over white obsessions about time, and are themselves treated patronizingly because they resist allowing clocks and watches to be as controlling as whites do. Further, our sense that in waiting for a crucial event time slows, or our sense in some meditations or profound recognitions that time has stopped–these might be thought less real than the time of clocks or simultaneity or relativity. Our own pregression toward death is a fraught progression. What is the relation of time to memory? Truth to the future? Poets may do a better job with parts of these than watchmakers or scientists.
--Some of these overlap. Students with other interests are invited to search out interesting articles which would help us with an understanding of how different disciplines approach their subject matters.
Materials: Philosophy of Science, 3rd. edition, edited by Klemke, Kline, and Hollinger (Prometheus Books: 1998), is our main text for the first part of the course. Other materials will be provided as handouts or online via Moodle and the University’s server for courseware materials. All handouts in class and Moodle documents will be material for the exams. The reading load is not excessive in number of pages, but some of the readings may be difficult. The emphasis throughout is on clarifying issues and description and evaluation of arguments, and we will work on method early on. The main work to be done for the course is not in mastering and regurgitating the material, though you have to read it and show you understood it; the main work is instead being active in response--questioning, applying, arguing, getting excited, worrying. In a word, thinking.
Writing Requirements and Grading: The main graded assignments will be essays. Students will write five assignments, each three to five pages long. Three of the assignments will be in the form of e-mailed letters to the class reacting to readings or reacting to discussion. I’ll provide suggested topics for each a week before they are due. The other two will be essay assignments, one at midterm and a final, each with questions distributed a week ahead and each to be done as a take-home exam. Students should write all assignments with the class members as their intended audience. Ninety percent of your grade for the course will be an average of your assignment grades after the lowest grade is dropped. I’ll also make short in-class assignments or give quizzes over readings, and these and participation make up the other ten percent. I require attendance and will distribute a roll sheet to initial frequently. Students who miss more than five classes (out of the approximately 45 times we will meet) lower their final grade by one full letter; students who miss ten, by two.
Schedule: This depends on which thematic examples we choose, how fast we work through the essays in the Klemke text, and which issues we find most interesting and most difficult. We will read the first essays in the Klemke text, pretty much in order, while we gather up materials for the thematic examples, including samples of scientific approaches, social science approaches, humanistic approaches.