Publication
Imprint: Chantilly, Virginia : Teaching Company, c2006. Responsibility: Professor Steven L. Goldman, lecturer. Physical: 4 videodisc (20 30-min. lectures) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in. + course book. DVD.
Call number
DVD / Front Desk
ISBN
9781598032079
Collections
CSS Library Notes
Description: Five Centuries of the Science Wars
In 24 half-hour lectures, Science Wars explores the history of competing conceptions of scientific knowledge and their implications for science and society from the onset of the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s to the present. It may seem that the accelerating pace of discoveries, inventions, and unexpected insights into nature during this period guarantees the secure foundations of scientific inquiry, but that is far from true. Consider these cases:
The scientific method: In the 1600s the English philosopher Francis Bacon defined the scientific method in its classic form: the use of inductive reasoning to draw conclusions from an exhaustive body of facts. But "no scientist has ever been a strict Baconian," says Professor Goldman. "If you followed that, you would get nowhere."
A "heated" debate: Around 1800 the dispute over the nature of heat was resolved in favor of the theory that heat is motion and not a substance given off during burning. But then the French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier wrote a set of equations that accurately described how heat behaves regardless of what it "really" is, which, Fourier contended, was not a scientific question at all.
Paradigm shifts: The publication in 1962 of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions precipitated a radical change in attitudes toward scientific knowledge, prompted by Kuhn's insight that science is not an entirely rational enterprise, and that its well-established theories (or paradigms) are overturned in a revolutionary, nonlogical process.
Postmodern putdown: The postmodern attack on science as a privileged mode of inquiry made some headway in the late 20th century. But the credibility of the movement wilted in 1996, when a postmodern journal unwittingly published a spoof by physicist Alan Sokal, purporting to prove that physical theory was socially constructed. Sokal then exposed his piece as a parody.
In the penultimate lecture of the course, Professor Goldman considers intelligent design—the argument that evolution can't account for the immense complexity of life and that a master designer must be at work. He approaches this topical debate by asking: What are the minimum criteria that define a hypothesis as scientific, and does intelligent design qualify? Having already covered five centuries of the science wars in the previous lectures, you will analyze this controversy with a set of tools that allows you to see the issues in a sharp, new light.
What Is Reality?
"Fasten your seatbelts," says Professor Goldman at the outset of Lecture 21—an advisory that applies equally to the whole course, which covers an astonishing array of ideas and thinkers. Throughout, Professor Goldman never loses his narrative thread, which begins 2,400 years ago with Plato's allegorical battle between "the gods" and "the earth giants"—between those for whom knowledge is universal, necessary, and certain; and those for whom it cannot be so and is based wholly on experience.
The problem of what constitutes scientific knowledge can be illustrated with one of the most famous and widely accepted scientific theories of all time, Nicolaus Copernicus's heliostatic (stationary sun) theory of the solar system, which has undergone continual change since it was first proposed in 1543:
Copernicus called for the planets to move in uniform circular motion around the sun, slightly displaced from the center.
Using observations by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler revised the Copernican model, discarding the ancient dogma of circular motion, which did not fit the data. Instead, he guessed that the planets in fact move in elliptical orbits.
In his influential work endorsing the Copernican theory, Galileo ignored Kepler's corrections and opted for circular motion. Notoriously, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo for heresy. But the church was actually correct that he had no basis for claiming the heliocentric theory was true, rather than simply an interpretation of experience.
Galileo's picture of space was superseded by Newton's and later by Einstein's, which also will doubtless be revised.
Even something as basic as the elliptical motion of the planets is a vast oversimplification. There are no closed curves in space, since the solar system is moving around the center of the galaxy; the galaxy is moving within the local cluster; and the local cluster is also moving.
Although we still call the conventional picture of the solar system Copernican astronomy, there is effectively no resemblance between astronomy today and Copernicus's 1543 theory of the heavens. The same is also true of other theories, such as the atomic theory of matter. All scientific theories are in a state of ceaseless revision, which raises the question of what reality "really" is.
As the contemporary philosopher of science Mary Hesse has pointed out, the lesson of the history of science seems to be that the theories we currently hold to be true are as likely to be overturned as the theories they replaced! -- from publisher
FY2023 / jvsn
In 24 half-hour lectures, Science Wars explores the history of competing conceptions of scientific knowledge and their implications for science and society from the onset of the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s to the present. It may seem that the accelerating pace of discoveries, inventions, and unexpected insights into nature during this period guarantees the secure foundations of scientific inquiry, but that is far from true. Consider these cases:
The scientific method: In the 1600s the English philosopher Francis Bacon defined the scientific method in its classic form: the use of inductive reasoning to draw conclusions from an exhaustive body of facts. But "no scientist has ever been a strict Baconian," says Professor Goldman. "If you followed that, you would get nowhere."
A "heated" debate: Around 1800 the dispute over the nature of heat was resolved in favor of the theory that heat is motion and not a substance given off during burning. But then the French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier wrote a set of equations that accurately described how heat behaves regardless of what it "really" is, which, Fourier contended, was not a scientific question at all.
Paradigm shifts: The publication in 1962 of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions precipitated a radical change in attitudes toward scientific knowledge, prompted by Kuhn's insight that science is not an entirely rational enterprise, and that its well-established theories (or paradigms) are overturned in a revolutionary, nonlogical process.
Postmodern putdown: The postmodern attack on science as a privileged mode of inquiry made some headway in the late 20th century. But the credibility of the movement wilted in 1996, when a postmodern journal unwittingly published a spoof by physicist Alan Sokal, purporting to prove that physical theory was socially constructed. Sokal then exposed his piece as a parody.
In the penultimate lecture of the course, Professor Goldman considers intelligent design—the argument that evolution can't account for the immense complexity of life and that a master designer must be at work. He approaches this topical debate by asking: What are the minimum criteria that define a hypothesis as scientific, and does intelligent design qualify? Having already covered five centuries of the science wars in the previous lectures, you will analyze this controversy with a set of tools that allows you to see the issues in a sharp, new light.
What Is Reality?
"Fasten your seatbelts," says Professor Goldman at the outset of Lecture 21—an advisory that applies equally to the whole course, which covers an astonishing array of ideas and thinkers. Throughout, Professor Goldman never loses his narrative thread, which begins 2,400 years ago with Plato's allegorical battle between "the gods" and "the earth giants"—between those for whom knowledge is universal, necessary, and certain; and those for whom it cannot be so and is based wholly on experience.
The problem of what constitutes scientific knowledge can be illustrated with one of the most famous and widely accepted scientific theories of all time, Nicolaus Copernicus's heliostatic (stationary sun) theory of the solar system, which has undergone continual change since it was first proposed in 1543:
Copernicus called for the planets to move in uniform circular motion around the sun, slightly displaced from the center.
Using observations by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler revised the Copernican model, discarding the ancient dogma of circular motion, which did not fit the data. Instead, he guessed that the planets in fact move in elliptical orbits.
In his influential work endorsing the Copernican theory, Galileo ignored Kepler's corrections and opted for circular motion. Notoriously, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo for heresy. But the church was actually correct that he had no basis for claiming the heliocentric theory was true, rather than simply an interpretation of experience.
Galileo's picture of space was superseded by Newton's and later by Einstein's, which also will doubtless be revised.
Even something as basic as the elliptical motion of the planets is a vast oversimplification. There are no closed curves in space, since the solar system is moving around the center of the galaxy; the galaxy is moving within the local cluster; and the local cluster is also moving.
Although we still call the conventional picture of the solar system Copernican astronomy, there is effectively no resemblance between astronomy today and Copernicus's 1543 theory of the heavens. The same is also true of other theories, such as the atomic theory of matter. All scientific theories are in a state of ceaseless revision, which raises the question of what reality "really" is.
As the contemporary philosopher of science Mary Hesse has pointed out, the lesson of the history of science seems to be that the theories we currently hold to be true are as likely to be overturned as the theories they replaced! -- from publisher
FY2023 / jvsn
Physical description
4.75 inches
Description
Welcome to the science wars-a long-running battle over the status of scientific knowledge that began in ancient Greece; raged furiously among scientists, social scientists and humanists during the 1990's and has re-emerged in today's conflict between science and religion over issues such as evolution.
Language
Original language
English
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User reviews
LibraryThing member forrest.cahoon
I've been checking the Great Courses series out of my public library, and have have been listening to them for years. Most are superb; but Steven Goldman's The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It is so fundamentally flawed as to be an embarrassment for them to have in their
This is a philosophy course whose aim is to show how the discoveries of science relate to what is truly real, which is to me a valid and interesting question. He is full fascinating of stories about philosophers and scientists throughout history, and how they have dealt with this issue.
However, he gets it stunningly, horribly wrong in the one part of the story I actually know reasonably well― the evolution from Newton's theories of motion to Einstein's. What's profound about this development is that Einstein didn't simply invalidate Newton; he showed how a universe in which Newton's Laws had been very well confirmed to be true (in cases, it so happens, where nothing was moving anywhere near the speed of light) could be tweaked in a way that was subtle and profound to embrace a more complete picture of reality.
For Goldman, however, there is no evolution in scientific understanding, only revolution. There is no way in which Newton's picture could remain true in any sense whatsoever after Einstein, or – critically for him – how it could have been “really true” when Newton formulated it. Newton's Laws, in his presentation, are every bit as discredited as the theory of phlogiston. He underscores his lack of understanding by absurdly declaring that engineers, when building a bridge, use an incorrect (i.e. Newtonian) theory of mechanics. This is totally wrong; for bridge-building, Newtonian mechanics agrees with Einstein's mechanics to every last digit of accuracy engineers need.
Some reviewers thought that Goldman has an axe to grind, and perhaps that's the best explanation for this otherwise thoughtful professor to misrepresent the nature of scientific progress so badly. Perhaps that's true: towards the end of the course, he discusses the possible validity of the theory of Intelligent Design, as advocated by Michael Behe, whom he identifies as a colleague. (For those not familiar, this “theory” was devised as an attempt to dress up Christian Biblical Creationism to look like a scientific theory specifically so that it could be taught in public schools.) Goldman concludes that Intelligent Design is not “scientific”, but still might be worthy of consideration. That conclusion is a lot more plausible if you've bought into the way he's sold science short in his previous exposition.
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collection.This is a philosophy course whose aim is to show how the discoveries of science relate to what is truly real, which is to me a valid and interesting question. He is full fascinating of stories about philosophers and scientists throughout history, and how they have dealt with this issue.
However, he gets it stunningly, horribly wrong in the one part of the story I actually know reasonably well― the evolution from Newton's theories of motion to Einstein's. What's profound about this development is that Einstein didn't simply invalidate Newton; he showed how a universe in which Newton's Laws had been very well confirmed to be true (in cases, it so happens, where nothing was moving anywhere near the speed of light) could be tweaked in a way that was subtle and profound to embrace a more complete picture of reality.
For Goldman, however, there is no evolution in scientific understanding, only revolution. There is no way in which Newton's picture could remain true in any sense whatsoever after Einstein, or – critically for him – how it could have been “really true” when Newton formulated it. Newton's Laws, in his presentation, are every bit as discredited as the theory of phlogiston. He underscores his lack of understanding by absurdly declaring that engineers, when building a bridge, use an incorrect (i.e. Newtonian) theory of mechanics. This is totally wrong; for bridge-building, Newtonian mechanics agrees with Einstein's mechanics to every last digit of accuracy engineers need.
Some reviewers thought that Goldman has an axe to grind, and perhaps that's the best explanation for this otherwise thoughtful professor to misrepresent the nature of scientific progress so badly. Perhaps that's true: towards the end of the course, he discusses the possible validity of the theory of Intelligent Design, as advocated by Michael Behe, whom he identifies as a colleague. (For those not familiar, this “theory” was devised as an attempt to dress up Christian Biblical Creationism to look like a scientific theory specifically so that it could be taught in public schools.) Goldman concludes that Intelligent Design is not “scientific”, but still might be worthy of consideration. That conclusion is a lot more plausible if you've bought into the way he's sold science short in his previous exposition.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
By the time you finish this course, you'll have a different perspective on how to assess the "truth" of scientific theories. Goldman takes us painstakingly and at great length (perhaps too great) through the history of how scientists and philosophers have handled the question of how scientists know
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what they know. Are they making observations of true facts of nature, or is everything just our experience of nature, and, therefore, something that can't be proven as absolutely real. The argument swings back and forth and there are some clever end runs to redefine the problem. The answer does matter, but Goldman points out, as he does in his other Teaching Company Course, Science in the 20th Century, that what science knows is always evolving. There is no good reason to think that what we "know" in 2018 won't look as out-of-date and often as wrong as when we now look back on the science of 1918. Goldman deeply cares about the subject, but his delivery here is not as smooth as in the other course. He sometimes stumbles over words and as he moves around during the lecture, he rarely looks directly at the audience (i.e., into the camera). Still, for most passages he moves along very smoothy, and he talks very fast. I think the topic could have been covered more concisely, perhaps in just 12 lectures, and still made its points, but I certainly don't regret spending this time with Goldman. I streamed this on The Great Courses Plus, and I highly recommend a subscription to anyone with a yearning to keep learning. Show Less