I teach an upper level General Philosophy of Science course every other year. My institution is a mid-sized R2 that primarily serves the local, urban region. The course is available to any student who has completed two lower level philosophy classes. The class is mostly populated by students in the Philosophy Major and the M.A. in Philosophy, but it frequently has students from Psychology, Environmental Science, Education, and the natural sciences. As you can imagine, this requires a good deal of flexibility in learning activity design. Regardless of context, I believe there are some general ideas one could draw from my course, and I hope some of my observations about teaching this course are of use to those teaching both in similar and quite different contexts.
Since some experience with the sciences is very beneficial to understanding the questions raised in general philosophy of science, it is very helpful to build this into the course. In non-2020 versions of the class, I have leaned heavily on descriptions of scientific processes provided by philosophers. Adrian Currie’s Rock, Bone, and Ruin does a very good job of this. I found Dana Tulodziecki’s account of the formulation of the elevation principle in the study of cholera pretty exciting, and easily supplemented with the work of the scientists of the time. Of course, Kuhn provides plenty of interesting descriptions of astronomy, and so on. In other, near to 2020, iterations of the class, I took my class ghost hunting. Tim Hansel and I wrote about this for Teaching Philosophy. This was an opportunity for students to deploy (and recognize the limits of) scientific reasoning in action. I have also always wanted to try Hardcastle and Slater’s Box Project (PSA, Vol 81, 2014), and I continue to toy with the idea of having students participate in some of my science colleagues’ labs. I have also found it possible to simply read scientific texts and ask philosophy of science questions about them. One year, for example, we read The Perception of People: Integrating Cognition and Culture, by Perry Hinton. Whether you go the experiential learning route, stick to descriptions of the sciences, or provide scientific articles or books, it is extremely helpful to have a common science touchstone for the entire class, especially in light of the quite varied science background of the students.
I usually spend a little time at the outset of the class teaching epistemology. I do this for my other upper level courses, including philosophy of mind and philosophy of the life sciences. Student exposure to epistemology can be quite sparse, even within our major, and I have found it very difficult to teach philosophy of science without a bit of epistemology. I usually teach a basic theory of truth, some introductory probability math, and a little sentential logic that makes explaining Popper much, much easier. I sometimes teach some Modern epistemology, including the problem of induction, Cartesian skepticism, foundationalism, and so on, but I have moved away from that in recent years. I also frequently do short lessons Chisholm’s problem of the criteria, Laudan’s pessimistic meta-induction, van Fraassen’s underdetermination and empirical adequacy, and, when it’s not a focus of the class, I do a lesson on Longino’s account of objectivity, to give the student a flavor for the kinds of projects in which philosophers of science engage. Going forward, I am including Wylie’s pluralism as a part of this survey.
I am very inclined to suggest to students that philosophy of science, being relatively new to philosophy subdisciplines, is an opportunity to challenge a number of philosophic traditions. For example, Positivism’s challenges to classic metaphysics, or feminist philosophy of science’s challenge to value free ideals (wherever they may lurk), or the social nature of science as a challenge to epistemic individualism, provide opportunities for students to learn about philosophy more generally. As a result, I have used my general philosophy of science course to raise questions both about how we do philosophy and how we do science.
Since this is an upper level writing course, I tend to favor doing one on one tutorials with students. The tutorial is an opportunity to work with each student to develop an outline for a final paper that is scaffolded by experiences they already have (either with philosophy or with the sciences) and attached to the course content they are feeling curious and confident about. The papers I get at the end of the course vary greatly in focus and topic, because, as I note throughout the course, philosophy of science and its attention to epistemology is an opportunity to further engage almost any project. It is truly a joy to see students integrate their learning from the class to projects that continue to matter to them. These papers have ranged from friendly amendments to works we have read all the way to arguments for novel K-12 science curricula.
I have found students come to this course with some interesting assumptions, which do not appear to arise in my philosophy of mind or teaching and learning seminar. Some students, usually the philosophy students, believe that, as the resident philosopher of science, I must hold to some form of Scientism (usually a strong form). Others, usually the students from the sciences, hold that I must be some sort of science skeptic. I note this because I have not yet found a good way to address these assumptions, and because many students, around the eight-week mark of the fourteen-week course, seem to spontaneously discover their assumption was false. I welcome thoughts on how (or whether) these assumptions should be addressed more directly. So far, I have not found these to be problematic to student learning and mostly entertaining when revealed. It does, however, present a possible teaching and learning opportunity that I have not yet determined how to harness.
In general, I try to teach books in the course. As I noted above, journal articles and shorter readings figure more prominently at the beginning of my course and, where possible, serve supplements to the books. Since the students will be writing a paper, it would be wrong not to give them some examples of this form of writing. Books however tend to provide a wider range of issues on a single topic, and also include a good deal of scaffolding for the problems they address. I do my best to teach one book I haven’t read before. This is fun, since it permits me to continue to push my own learning, and I find that this allows the class to construct an understanding of the book together – modeling what I take to be good practice in my subdiscipline. I also tend to pick one book that I read for the last iteration of the class. I teach this before the new one, since I have a better idea how to explicate the ideas of this book and scaffold what we will do with the new book. Here are some books I have taught recently: Stephanie Ruphy’s Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered: A New Approach to the (Dis)Unity of Science, Helen Longino’s Science as Social Knowledge, Adrian Currie’s Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Elliott Sober’s Ockham’s Razors, Patrick Grim’s Philosophy of Science and the Occult, Paul Dicken’s A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism, and Kristin Andrew’s Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology.
As a final thought, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that any good syllabus will be backward designed in line with ongoing assessment. I have done my best to continue to remove the more ‘legalistic’ language that my early career syllabi contained for a variety of not so great reasons, to transparently align my learning activities and my course goals, and to indicate my commitment to learner centered teaching. Of course, even with such continuous improvement, there is still farther to go.
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W. John Koolage
Dr. W. John Koolage is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of General Education at Eastern Michigan University. His research focuses on bringing ideas from philosophy of science and cognition to bare on contemporary issues, such as gun control, climate change, nanotechnology, forensic science, conspiracy theories, and, of course, teaching and learning.
