Alumni Sequence: The Modern Tradition Year II

We intend to look at science as both a defining cultural force ("scientism") and a source of increasingly unsettling knowledge, with a view to what it might mean, not only to be scientifically literate, but to acquire some measure of "scientific consciousness."

Niels Bohr famously declared that "those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." Beginning with the Greeks and ending with Heisenberg and Kuhn—with a brief excursion into Darwin and Dewey—we will aim at achieving some measure of this kind of understanding, not only in relation to physics but to modern science more generally.

In addition to being a profound meditation of the meaning of humanity in the wake of the emergence of modern science, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will provide a bit of distraction and relief. 

Course Outline

Here is the Syllabus.

Required Texts

• A Presocratics Reader. Hackett Publishing Company. 2 edition ISBN 978-1603843058

  Darwin, The Descent of Man. Norton & Company ISBN 978-0393958492

  Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0517884416

  Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy. Harper Perennial Modern Classics ISBN 978-0061209192

  Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 50th Anniversary Edition. University of Chicago. ISBN 978-0226458120

  Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. Norton ISBN 978-0393927931

Purchase

Books are available using the Textbook order form from the Gleacher Center Bookstore online, or by using the ISBN number to order the correct edition elsewhere.