新的科学视野
The world is ultimately intelligible: all of us, 学生和科学家都一样, 假设这个, by assuming that it is possible to explain how and why things happen. But why do we assume that the universe should be comprehensible to the human mind? What 方法 could we possibly use to encompass the behavior of the natural world?
This course is not recommended for first-year students.
新的科学视野 thus features primary sources in core scientific fields – including astronomy, 物理, 化学, and the life sciences – from antiquity to present. The thematic approach aims to help students to better understand the origins and development of natural science, 包括各种各样的问题, 假设, 方法, 的想法, 值, and results that have characterized scientific practice in a range of historical contexts. Representative readings from antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century can be found in The 历史 and 哲学 of Science: A Reader, co-edited by Professors McKaughan and Vande Wall. While readings will differ at the discretion of the instructor and from year to year, the following list is a fair indication of the kinds of texts typically covered over the course of the year.
- 亚里士多德 物理, On the Soul, Parts of Animals, On the Heavens
- 柏拉图 蒂迈欧篇
- 欧几里得 的元素
- 希波克拉底 人的本性
- 盖伦 论自然能力
- Eratosthenes “Measurement of the Earth”
- Philoponus “Commentary on 亚里士多德”
- 托勒密 天文学大成
- Al-Biruni 说明书
- 伊本新浪 补救之书
- 组长Albertus马格努斯 在植物上
- 阿奎那 论心脏的运动
- Oresme接替 论……运动
- 布里丹 Question on…the 物理 of 亚里士多德
- 哥白尼 Commentariolus
- 布拉赫 修复文书
- 开普勒 哥白尼天文学的缩影
- 培根 新亚特兰蒂斯
- 伽利略 对话…世界系统
- 伽利略 新科学对话……
- 笛卡尔 世界
- 牛顿 原理
- Boyle “Corpuscular or Mechanical 哲学”
- Priestley “Experiments and Observations”
- Lavoisier and Laplace “Memoir on Heat”
- 《拉瓦锡化学元素
- 道尔顿《新体系》
- Gay-Lussac “Memoir on Gaseous Substances”
- Avogadro “Determining Relative Masses”
- 门捷列夫《电子游戏软件》
- Carnot “On the Motive Power of Heat”
- 牛顿 “Letter to Henry Oldenburg”
- 惠更斯《电子游戏正规平台》
- Young “On the Theory of Light and Colors”
- Maxwell “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”
- Helmholtz “On the Interaction of Natural Forces”
- 胡克”字体过小
- 布丰《电子游戏软件》
- 布冯《电子游戏正规平台》
- Linnaeus “Increase of the Earth”
- 拉马克《电子游戏软件》
- Cuvier “On the Correlation of the Parts”
- 居维叶“地球表面”
- Malthus “Principle of Population”
- 《电子游戏正规平台》
- 莱尔《电子游戏正规平台》
- 达尔文 物种起源
- 达尔文 人类的起源
- Huxley “Coming of Age of the 物种起源”
- Mendel “Experiments in Plant Hybridization”
- Einstein Special and General Relativity
- Marie and Pierre Currie “Radioactive Substances”
- Niels Bohr “The Structure of the Atom”
- Werner Heisenberg “Planck’s Discovery and Philosophical Problems in Nuclear 物理”
- Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn “Transmutations of uranium”
课程详细信息
This course attempts to trace the process by which humans learned how to describe, 分类, 模型, 操纵自然世界. The first semester begins with the ancient Greek thinkers, who (surprising though it may seem) identified and explored problems in science and mathematics that are well beyond the understanding of even highly educated people today. We consider the development of that Greek tradition in the Roman, Islamic and Christian medieval worlds – and the many developments in this period that paved the way for later thinkers.
从那里, the course moves to the conceptual revolution that lay behind the seventeenth-century break-through to modern science and the nearly mystical enthusiasm of the time for the explanatory power of mathematical demonstration. We consider the so-called “Copernican revolution” that united the astronomy and 物理 of the heavens and the earth.We then consider the revolution in matter theory – the reemergence of an atomic theory of matter, and that theory’s eventual links to the mysteries of heat, 燃烧, 电, 磁和光.
We also return to the ancient problems of natural history – the question of the formation of the earth’s surface and all those things that live on it. Can these be fully explained within a materialist, mechanist universe? What are the philosophical implications of the belief that the earth and all its living creatures can change over time?
最后, the second semester takes up the shifts from an absolute time and space, to the embrace of Einstein’s relativistic spacetime, and from determinism to the randomness and probability of quantum mechanics. We consider some of the epistemological and ethical issues raised by humanity’s increasing ability to manipulate nature, and the dangers of overestimating our degree of certainly about our understanding.
六学分哲学, six credits core natural science
OR
六学分哲学, 三学分核心数学, three credits core natural science (must take both semesters for this distribution)