Understanding Science
We often put our trust in science, but many of us (including scientists!) do not have a firm understanding of what science is or why it works—when it does. In this course we will examine foundational questions about science. What is it? Is scientific progress fundamentally rational? Are scientific theories true, or just useful? How do scientists choose what gets published, and do they choose well? Is science objective? Should it be? And how can science go terribly wrong—by supporting bigotry, or lending authority to nonsense? This course is open to students of all majors.
Course materials
Introductory stuff for the first weeks:
Syllabus, Fall 2022 (subject to change; see TCU Online for most up-to-date version)
Reading from Barker & Kitcher 2014 (this one’s free but get the book; see below for info)
Student Skills packet (please read the “Guidelines for Reading,” also available online)
“Philosophical Methods” (7 pages; please read before attempting the “Identifying ideas” assignment)
Course texts:
This course uses a textbook. We will be reading most of the book, so please get a copy:
Barker, Gillian and Philip Kitcher. (2014). Philosophy of Science: A New Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (TCU Bookstore; Amazon; or order through your favorite independent bookstore!)
Other readings will be available on TCU Online for free.
Links
Science and journalism
The WNYC radio show On the Media has an edition of their Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook on understanding science news. Their story focuses on healthcare news, but many of their lessons can be generalized to popular science.
Weird life
The YouTuber SubAnima made a video about the definition of life, the Viking Lander experiments, and Cleland. Check it out!
If you want to learn more about the “shadow biosphere,” check out this 2015 article by Sarah Scoles in Aeon magazine.
If you want to learn more about giant viruses, you might listen to the 2015 Radiolab episode “Shrink” (transcript forthcoming but let me know if you want it sooner). If you prefer reading, you might be interested in a writeup by James L. Van Etten in American Scientist, or this really short piece by Amanda Heidt in Science.
Scientific ethics
My friend and colleague Catherine Stinson, who is the most insightful philosopher of computer science I know of, has an op-ed on the need for ethics education and standards in AI and machine learning. I recommend it highly. (Bonus: she coins the term “nerd-sightedness.”)
Scientific racism and history
Radiolab has a series on the troubled history of the scientific concept of intelligence (listen from bottom to top). This episode on eugenics is particularly relevant to our discussion.
Annie Minoff and Elah Feder at Undiscovered discuss the fact that African Americans don’t tend to participate in clinical trials, and examine the causes and consequences. A good listen.
Wendy Zuckerman tells a story about American eugenics and the history of the word “moron” at her podcast Science Vs. Well worth checking out.
The Irish podcast Our Sexual History has a 15-minute episode about the history of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments (or see my annotated transcript of the episode).
Radiolab has a 25-minute segment on the story of Henrietta Lacks. The segment is part of a longer episode about famous tumors, and the other segments are interesting as well (though not related to scientific racism).
Scientific sexism
If you want to know more about the science of human reproduction vs. common narratives (relevant to Martin 1991), I recommend the end of the Radiolab story “Why So Many Sperm?” The last segment begins around 16:30 into the episode, with the sound of geese squawking (or see my transcript of the whole episode; be aware that the rest of the episode involves a frank description of animal sex practices, some of which are rather unsavory, and disappointing trans- and nonbinary-exclusive framing).
For more on the current science of human reproduction, check out “The macho sperm myth” in Aeon, by Robert D. Martin (no relation, so far as I know, to Emily Martin).
Relativism
If you want to learn more about cultural relativism and the legacy of Franz Boas, check out this great podcast documentary on the “the invention of race” by NPR’s Throughline (40 minutes).
Hermeneutical injustice
Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube has a YouTube video on hermeneutical resources, by way of theoretical language and a discussion of “Newspeak” from George Orwell’s 1984.
Based on this image, which is based on this article.