PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Single discipline educational activity

Course Sheet

Academic Year of enrolment:

2021/2022

Type of Course:

Characterising

Optional/Mandatory:

Compulsory

Degree:

Master's Degree Programme in HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES

Disciplinary Sector:

LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Language:

Italian

Credits:

Programme Year:

Professor and Collaborators:

BACCHINI Fabio

Hours of classroom activity:

Prerequisites:

none

AF code:

40002357

Assessment Methods

Verification of learning:

Written exam. The exam usually consists in 5/6 open questions in English. The accepted languages for answers are: French, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese.

Teaching period

Second semester

Objectives

(1) Knowledge and understanding:
By the end of the class the students will possess a broad spectrum of basic knowledge about the main open questions in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, and a good capacity of understanding the debates around them.

(2) Applying knowledge and understanding:
The main goal of the class is to make the students able to use a basic mastery of philosophy of science and philosophy of biology for developing arguments for and against the many rival positions concerning specific issues in the fields.

(3) Making judgements:
By the end of the class the students will be able to develop new arguments within specific debates in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, and to estimate the strength of one specific argument in comparison to a rival one.

(4) Communication skills:
The students will be able to correctly name and express the main theoretical positions one can assume in the most important debates animating philosophy of science and philosophy of biology; to build up arguments in favour and against the rival positions; to engage into an argumentative challenge with one or more than one interlocutors; to correctly evaluate their own and others’ argumentative performances.

(5) Learning skills:
The class is aimed at letting the students have the skills for developing over time higher-level knowledge in current epistemological debates over biology and science in general, on one side, and in critical thought on the other side.

Contents

What is science? What is philosophy of science? Science and pseudo-science. Popper’s falsificationism. Scientific reasoning. Deduction, induction, abduction. Facts and theories. Explanation in science. Causality. Naturalism, reductionism, eliminativism. Ontology, classification, taxonomy. Natural kinds. Realism and anti-realism. Scientific change and scientific revolutions. Kuhn and incommensurability. Philosophical problems in physics, psychology, and biology. Science and its critics. Thick concepts in science. The relevance of values.
Charles Darwin. Confronting the creationists: the First Darwinian Revolution. How species originate. Ideological opposition to Darwin’s five theories according to Mayr. The theory of natural selection. Darwinism, Neo-Darwinism, and the Second Darwinian Revolution. New frontiers in evolutionary biology. The philosophical debate on the existence of human races.

Recommended Bibliography

1. Personal notes from the class sessions.
2. Samir Okasha, 2002, Philosophy of Science. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
3. Ernst Mayr, 1991, One Long Argument. Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press.

Non-attending students will substitute 1) with:
4. Stephen Jay Gould e Richard C. Lewontin, 1979, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 205 (1161), 581-598.
5. David Sloan Wilson, 2015, “Spandrels of San Marcos Revisited: An Interview with Richard Lewontin”, This View of Life, The Evolution Institute, 29 March 2015, https://thisviewoflife.com/the-spandrels-of-san-marco-revisited-an-inter...

Methods of Provision

Conventional

Teaching Methods

Active participation; students will be asked to produce arguments to support or reject theories and points of view.

Contacts/More Information

Readiness to offer individual assistance also in a foreign language to incoming students.
Readiness to accept examination of incoming students also in a foreign language.
Availability of supporting material and bibliographic references also in a foreign language (English; French; Spanish; Portuguese).

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

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Course year: 2

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PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE