Philosophy of Science (22305)
Degree/study:Degree in Humanities
Year: 3rd-4th
Term:1st
Number of ECTS credits: 5 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 125 hours
Teaching language or languages: english
Teaching Staff: Daniele Cozzoli
1. Presentation of the subject
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of science. Emphasis is placed on the historical development of philosophical issues. The course is in three parts. In the first part, it is explained how a number of philosophical notions evolved in order to explain main scientific theories and concepts of twentieth-century science. Indeed, Descartes, Bacon, Hume and other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers developed conceptual tools apt to explain the New Science of the seventeenth century. The distinction between science and metaphysics, the problem of induction, the scientific discovery, the status of truth, are all examples of philosophical issues developed in the seventeenth century. This part of the course will show how these concepts were modified in order to explain the debate on the foundations of mathematics, and on the quantum theory and the relativity theory of the first half of the twentieth century. Main topics are the foundational programs in the philosophy of mathematics, the logical empiricism, the philosophical ideas of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Popper's fallibilism. The second part of the course focuses on the development of a New Philosophy of science in the 1950s and in the 1960s in the work of Th. S. Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. Such authors transformed the philosophy of science from a logical analysis of scientific theories to a historic-philosophical activity. The third part of the course concerns the sociological turn in the philosophy of science and the latest developments of the discipline. Ideas of authors such as Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu and Ian Hacking are discussed.
2. Competences to be attained
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Transferable skills |
Specific competences |
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1. Discussing philosophical topics 2. Introduction to the academic writing 3. Work in groups 4. Applying philosophical analysis to the nowadays scientific discourse 5. Working with primary and secondary philosophical sources |
1. Reading and interpreting texts in the philosophy of science 2. Writing a philosophical essay 3. Knowledge of the most important topics in the philosophy of science 4.Understanding philosophical ideas concerning science within their historical context |
3. Contents
1. What is the philosophy of science? Some topics of the philosophical analysis of science in the seeventeenth-century philosophy of science.
2. Basic notions of propositional logic. The crisis of the foundations of mathematics. Foundationalism in the philosophy of mathematics: Frege's and
Russel's logicism, Hilbert's program, intuitionism. Gödel's imcompletness theorems.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its influence in linguistics the philosophy. The logical empiricism and the Vienna circle.
Carnap, Hempel, Schlick and the quest for an inductive logic. Russel's logical atomism.
4. Ludwing Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
5. Duhem - Quine thesis and the structure of scientific theories. Popper's fallibilism.
6. The New Philosophy of science1: Th. Kuhn and scientific revolutions.
7. The New Philosophy of science 2: Paul Feyerabend's methodological anarchism and Lakatos' revision of Popper's fallibilism.
8. New topics in the philosophy of science: fallibilism/empiricism debate revised in the light of Artificial Intelligence;
9 The sociological turn in the philosophy of science: Bruno Latour and his critics. Pierre Bourdieu: the scientist's job.
10 The science wars. The Sokal Hoak.
4. Assessment
60% final paper of 2,000 words lenght; 30% presentation of an article or a book in group; 10% participation to lectures and seminars.
September exam: 2,000 words paper. Students must contact the instructor no later than May 2012
N.B. Students who cannot come to class for serious reasons will follow an individual program. They must contact the instructor within the first week of the course
5. Bibliography and teaching resources
5.1. Basic bibliography
Brown, H. I. Perception, Theory and Commitment. The New Philosophy of Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Gillies, D. Philosophy of Science of the XXth Century. Four Central Themes, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993.Godfrey-Smith, P. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003.
Kenny, A. J. P. Wittgenstein, Madrid: Alianza, 1988.
5.2. Complementary bibliography
List of articles for class presentation
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5.3. Teaching resources
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6. Metodology
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7. Planning of activities
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