BASS Social Anthropology and Philosophy / Course details

This course introduces several major controversies in the philosophy of science and uses them to investigate the nature of science, its methods, and its accomplishments. Topics covered include inductivist vs. falsificationist methodology, Kuhnian relativism, scientific realism, natural kinds, and laws of nature.

Pre-requisites: 20 PHIL credits at Level 1

20 PHIL credits at Level 1.

The course aims to:

- Introduce students to key issues in the philosophy of science.
- Enhance their skills at understanding and evaluating philosophical problems.
- Acquaint students with some of the special concepts used in characterising scientific methodology.

By the end of the course, students should have:

- Knowledge of some central problems in the philosophy of science and of certain possible solutions to them.
- The ability to assess some received wisdom about the nature and purpose of science and of scientific method.
- An understanding of key philosophical concepts such as inductive reasoning, refutation, confirmation, law of nature, and natural kind.

There will be a mixture of lectures and tutorials.

Please note the information in scheduled activity hours are only a guidance and may change.

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate fora is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main form of feedback on this course is feedback on your assessed essay, in the form of in-text comments and a general feedback report, both available through Blackboard. You are also welcome to ask the course convenor to give you some feedback on your exam performance.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer and tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer or tutor (before and after lecture/tutorial); and obtaining feedback on your ideas from your peers and tutor during tutorials.

James Ladyman, Understanding Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2002) (available as an e-book from the University Library)