Ph 31 Spring 04 David
Banach
Philosophy
of Science
They
did not want to look on the naked face of chance, so they turned themselves
over to science. As a result they are released from their dependence on chance;
but not from their dependence on science.
Hippocratic
treatise, On Science
All
is Number.
Pythagoras
All
things which can be known have number; for it is not possible that without
number anything can be either conceived or known.
Philolaus
Mathematics
is the language with which God has written the universe.
Galileo
No
more fiction for us: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make
fiction first.
Nietzsche
Man tries
to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and
intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extend to substitute
this cosmos for the world of experience, and thus overcome it. This is what the
painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do,
each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot
of his emotional life ... to find ... the peace and the security which he
cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
Albert
Einstein
And
here are trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste.
These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart
relaxes‑how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel?
yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that me that
this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You
enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true.
You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases . . . . But you tell me of an invisible planetary
system in which the planets gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world
to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I
shall never know . . . . That science
that was to teach me everything ends up in hypothesis, that lucidity founders
in a metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I
of so many efforts? The soft line of these hills and the hand of evening on
this troubled heart teach me much more . . . . I realize that if through
science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them , I cannot, for all that,
apprehend the world.
Camus,
The Myth of Sisyphus
The
need to understand is an attempt to recover what one has lost.
Peter
Hoeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow
The Course: This course examines scientific
knowledge: what it is, how it is reached, what it reveals about the world we live
in, and what role it plays in human life. We will look at the origins of the
idea of science and how it arose and what implications it has for human life
and human culture. The course will concentrate on the role that mathematics has
played in science and how this has affected the development of science. Some of the basic issues to be considered
are:
1. What is Number?: What is the
nature of mathematical reality and how does it relate to the world we live in?
2. Infinity: How does infinity manifest
itself in the phenomena of the natural world, and what artifices
has science and mathematics devised to describe infinity?
3. Time: What is time? How has
science attempted to use mathematics to describe the structure of events and
the causal relationships that govern them?
4. Realism: Do the mathematical
structures used by science reflect that nature of reality independent of human
perception, or does it reflect the structure of human consciousness or the
contributions of our conceptual schemes?
5. Perception: Do we perceive
reality directly? What role does observation have in Science?
6. Science and the Meaning of Human
Life: How does science arise from the problems of human life? What
implications do the theories of science have for the meaning of human
existence? What role does science and technology play in human life?
These issues will be discussed in the
context of historical and contemporary examples. We will look at the origins
of mathematics and science in
A. The nature of space-time in
Special and General Relativity.
B.
The reality of sub-atomic particles in quantum theory.
C.
The facts of evolution: the evidence for evolutionary theory.
D.
The implications of evolutionary theory for our conception of human consciousness and for the meaning of
human existence.
E.
Conceptions of time in Science and their development in the history of Geology.
F. Scientific attempts
to explain consciousness and freedom; artificial intelligence.
G.
The influence of science and technology on our conception of time. Phenomenological
accounts of the implication of science on human consciousness and human life.
Texts:
1. Stephen
J. Gould. Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle.
2. Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
.
3. Peter Hoeg, Borderliners.
4. Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves
5. Julia Diggins, String, Straightedge, and Shadow
6.
Office: Bradley House 309 Office phone: 641-7062
email- dbanach@anselm.edu personal webpage:
www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach
course
webpage: www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/ph31.htm
Grading: Your grade will be determined as
follows:
20%-- Midterm Exam
40%-- Final Exam
30%-
Assignments (There wll be four. They can be
found on our webpage)
10%--
Participation and quizzes (Only after midterm)
Exams: There will be one midterm exam at the end of the first
major section of the class. The final exam will be comprehensive.
Grade Scale:
Midterm 200
Assignments 300
Participation
and Quizzes
100
Final
400
----------------------------------------------
Total 1000
A --- 950
and above C- -- 700 to 724
A- -- 900
to 949 D+ -- 670 to 699
B+ -- 875
to 899 D --- 600 to 669
B --- 835
to 874 E --- below 600
B- -- 800
to 834
C+ -- 775
to 799
C --- 725
to 774
Makeups: In order to makeup an exam you must have a written excuse
for missing the exam. The exam must be made up within one week of your return
to school (i.e., the last date covered by your excuse.) Quizzes may be made up
without excuse within one week with a 30%
penalty. Late assignments suffer a 10%
penalty for each class meeting late.