MA in Philosophy and History of Science

This unit aims to help the students to refine the skills they will needed for doing postgraduate work in analytic philosophy.  It begins by identifying the distinctive questions and methods of analytic philosophy, considering the argumentative and textual strategies of a wide range of different historical and contemporary texts.  Drawing upon this, it then provides the students with guidance and practice in focussing, structuring, and presenting, their own work.  The unit also provides training in generic research and communication skills, including bibliographical and related techniques, the use of electronic resources, giving presentations, etc.  A component of the unit will be dedicated to academic publishing and developing an academic career.

The unit meets for two hours each week throughout the First Semester and is compulsory for all full and part-time M.A. students, all PG Diploma students and for all M.Litt. students in their first year of studies, unless they have obtained exemption from the Graduate Studies Committee.

This unit provides a detailed introduction to philosophical issues related to basic physical theories.  The unit has two components.  The first component examines conceptual questions in the foundations of quantum mechanics, including the EPR experiment, Bell’s Theorem, the Measurement Problem, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics.  The second component examines the causal structure of space-time, looking at the classical philosophy of space and time, special relativity, and general relativity.

This unit examines some of the central questions in the philosophy of biology, with an emphasis on evolutionary biology. Topics to be discussed include the logical structure of Darwinian theory, the concepts of fitness, selection and adaptation, the concept of the gene, the levels of selection problem, the nature of biological species, the methodology of biological classification, the use of game theory in biology, and the application of evolutionary theory to human culture and behaviour.

This unit provides a detailed examination of various important core issues in philosophy of science, with an emphasis on epistemology/methodology rather than metaphysics. Topics to be discussed include the scientific method and scientific progress, theories of probability, Bayesianism, confirmation theory, scientific explanation, scientific change, and the debates between scientific realists and constructive empiricists.

Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), the topic of scientific revolutions has been a matter of intense debate among philosophers of science. According to Kuhn, both scientific standards and the meanings of key scientific terms shift abruptly during a scientific revolution, producing incommensurability of values and meanings between the old theories and the new ones. If Kuhn is right, there are no timeless criteria which we can use to judge scientific theories, and the fierce scientific debates that characterize scientific revolutions will inevitably involve at best partial communication between the opposing scientific camps.

In this MA unit we take one major revolution in science - that of Copernicus, Lavoisier, or Darwin - and go into the original arguments in some depth and detail. We will read a lot of primary source materials before turning to the secondary literature and to the interpretations of philosophers. We are thus in a position to assess the accuracy of the ‘fit’ between the rival philosophical accounts and the historical facts. Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s

This unit provides a detailed examination of some of the central philosophical issues related to mathematics, discussing issues such as the nature of mathematical objects, the justification of mathematical claims, and the meaning of mathematical expressions. This year the focus will be on the notion of truth in the philosophy of mathematics. The unit will provide a thorough introduction to some of the main programmes in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, in particular mathematical fictionalism, logicism and the neo-logicist programme, and mathematical structuralism. 

Every society has developed healing practices and systems in response to human suffering and illness. Yet, medical ways of knowing are historically, socially and culturally contingent. Far from being a single, unified system of knowledge, medicine has been made up of a variety of ways of knowing, which are often incommensurable with each other. Taking this contingency and variety as its starting point, this unit surveys the “making” of modern medicine from the French Revolution to the AIDS pandemic. It explores some of the key epistemological frameworks of our medical world in their socio-historical context. It traces the creation in the nineteenth century of two new medical institutions, hospitals and laboratories, of new medical professionals working in them, and of new causal understandings of disease. Turning to the twentieth century, it then traces the formation of biomedicine and national health care systems, and examines the problem of standardizing medical knowledge and practice through the clinical trial and evidence-based medicine. Throughout, the unit explores the tensions between the increasing objectification of medicine and the subjective dimensions of doctors’ knowledge and patients’ illness. Addressing the changing relationship between the doctor and patient, science and medicine, and concepts of health and disease, the unit critically assesses the nature and status of disease categories, medical expertise and the construction of medical knowledge.

This unit is divided into two parts.  In the first part, we start with an historical overview of some of the themes common to both philosophy and psychology.  Then we look at contemporary approaches to these themes.  These approaches include classical computation, connectionism, and neural dynamics.  One main theme of this first part of the course is the controversy over levels of explanation in psychology.  In the second part of the course, we focus on the intersection of perceptual psychology and the philosophy of perception.  Here we look in detail at the debate between traditional and active approaches to visual perception. 

This unit will be taught by individual tutorials, and can be taken in either semester. It will consist of advanced research on a particular topic. Students will meet regularly with an adviser and write an extended essay of between 5,000-6,000 words. The unit will be available only by permission of the M.A. Director.

This unit will focus on epistemological, ontological and methodological issues in chemistry, starting from the pre-Socratics all the way up to modern quantum chemistry. Chemistry has been relatively neglected by philosophers of science, but in fact throws up some fascinating philosophical questions. The unit will examine traditional topics in the philosophy of science, including reductionism, complexity, scientific change, paradigms and scientific concepts, all through the lens of chemistry.

Assessment

Unit 1 is assessed only for credit and formative purposes. That is, the unit is pass/fail, and for those who pass the unit, the marks do not contribute to the final mark for coursework or the M.A. overall. All other units are assessed by essay. Essays should be 5,000–6,000 words long.

Dissertation, 60 credit points

Those students who obtain satisfactory marks on the taught units are allowed to proceed to the dissertation stage. In consultation with their adviser, students choose an area of philosophy in which they would like to work. They are then assigned an appropriate dissertation adviser with whom they meet regularly on an individual basis.