Last modified: December 2, 2008
Contact | Description | Outcomes | Texts | Assignments | Readings | Policies
Current Announcements Grades so far (with final participation grades) are available here. Please remember that this page gives the latest information on readings and overides the printed syllabus in all matters. |
Office: Irish A 219 & LSC 268
Hours: M, 10:30 - 11:30 (LSC); TTh, 9:00 - 10:00 (Irish), or by appointment.
E-mail: The most efficient way to contact me (john dot lynch at asu dot edu). Please see the policies page for important information about my availability over email. Please make sure you put "HON273" in the subject line.
HON 273 follows on from the first semester of “The Human Event” but will focus on a selection of modern scientific ideas (for example, the observational work of Galileo, the theoretical work of Newton, the synthetic work of Darwin) and their implications for us as human beings. Throughout, we will be examining these ideas as both scientific knowledge and as cultural products, while exploring their implications for our views of ourselves within an apparently vast impersonal universe. Particular attention will be paid to apparent tensions between scientific and religious viewpoints.
Readings will be somewhat technical in places (especially Newton), but not overly so, and non-scientists who are interested in these “great ideas” will benefit. Those wishing to explore the ideas further in more technical detail will be encouraged to do so
Please only purchase these editions. They are available at the ASU Bookstore and online.
Please see the printed syllabus for further details of assignments and grading rubrics.
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26-Aug | Introduction to the Class.
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Th |
28-Aug | Presentation: Revolution and Enlightenment.
Reading: Bacon, "The Four Idols" [sections xxxix - xliv of pdf]; Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" [pdf]; Even if you've read Bacon before, please re-read. Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) was an English statesman and philosopher. In his unfinished Magna Instauratio (begun in 1620), he attempted to summarize his thoughts on everything from epistemology to natural philosophy (what we would now call "science"). The latter part of the work was the Novum Organ0n which gave his ideas on how nature was to be interpreted. The reading is his famous four Idols - from the Greek eidolon (“image” or “phantom”) - which he claims prevent us from achieving a full and accurate understanding of nature. Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) is certainly one of the most influential philosophers in the West, and it has been argued that the appearance of his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 marks the beginning of modern philosophy. Rather that read any of the difficult Critique (though Kant does discuss natural theology - see Newton, Paley & Hume in coming weeks), or his well known categorical imperative, we are going to read a brief essay that he wrote in 1784 to answer the question Was is Aufklarung? (What is Enlightenment?). Note that Kant is writing at the tail end of the Enlightenment, so he is not offering a prescriptive definition but is reflecting on what the Enlightenment has meant. You may also want to reflect on Kant's famous statement from the conclusion to his Critique of Pure Reason:
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T | 2-Sep | Reading: Galileo, Siderus nuncius, pp. 29 - 64 & 82 - 86, skim pp 64 - 82. Siderus nuncius ("Starry Messenger") dates from 1610 and is Galileo's first attempt to broadcast the findings of his use of the telescope. There are a couple of things to keep in mind with today's reading. Firstly, Galileo is writing in Latin rather than in the Italian he would use for his later works. Secondly, he is not (explicitly) defending a heliocentric view. If not, what is the view that he is defending? Why? Thirdly, I'd like you to consider what the reaction of the general public and/or the philosophers & theologians would have been to his observations. Here is an eight-page handout on Galileo's life and work, and the Galileo Project at Rice University has plenty more information. |
Th | 4-Sep | Reading: Newton, Principia [pdf]; See below for reading. Note that we will not be reading the whole PDF. Newton's Principia (1687) is probably one of the most famous works in Western science and also one of the most difficult. Famously, Newton felt that only the initial three sections of Book I (along with Book III) would be understood by even mathematically literate readers. The selections I have chosen aim to provide a taste of Newton's argument. In the first section (pp. 403 - 408), Newton outlines the definitions of some terms he will use later. In many cases, e.g. "quantity of matter" or "quantity of motion," he does not use terms that we use today. You will need to think about what he is defining. The second section (pp. 416 - 417) presents his famous "Laws of Motion". Then read the two pages that I handed out in class on Tuesday. The third section (pp. 794 - 796) begin Book III of Principia ("The System of the World") and offers Newton's "Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy." In the fourth section (pp. 797 - 819), Newton offers some "Phenomena" (data to be explained) and proceeds to derive "Propositions" (based on Books I and II) that explain them. Here he derives his Universal Law of Gravitation. Additional Supplemental Readings: (for the Newtonophile)
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T | 9-Sep | Reading: Newton, continued. The final section of our reading from Principa (pp. 939 to end) is the "General Scholium" which has been called "possibly the most famous of all Newton's writings" (I.B. Cohen 1971). In it he offers some thoughts on the theological significance of his work. Newton begins by attacking Descartes "hypothesis of vortices" - a vortex (whirlpool in the aether, the invisible material in space) caused the moon to circle the Earth, with a similar vortex causing the planets to circle the Sun. Newton then goes on to provide a defense of his particular religious views. There are two other important places where Newton discusses the implications of his ideas - Query 31 of Opticks (1717) [pdf] in which he clearly states his belief in "an intelligent Agent" that created and designed the universe and his letters to Bentley (1692-'93) [pdf - pp. 233-236, 238-240, and 244.] |
Th | 11-Sep | Reading: Paley, Natural Theology [pdf] Natural theology, or natural religion, the inferring of the existence and characteristics of the Christian god from observations of nature, has a long tradition. The argument can actually be traced back to Plato and Aristotle and was christianized by Thomas Aquinas. Natural theology received a boost during the Scientific Revolution with the writings of such individuals as Isaac Newton but reached its most elegant expression in Paley's 1802 work. William Paley (1743 - 1805) was an English churchman and author of popular apologetic works. One of these - Natural Theology - begins by making his famous watchmaker argument; just as the complexity of a watch implies a watchmaker, so too the complexity of living things implies a designer. The latter portion of the book (and the majority of our reading) attempts to argue for the attributes of God from observations of nature. To help clarify things, it is probably best to separate the argument to design (that something shows the marks of being designed) from the argument from design (detection of the characteristics of the designer). A few things are worth pointing out. Firstly, Charles Darwin was greatly influenced by Paley's writings (which were mandatory reading at Cambridge). Secondly, though Hume had dealt with natural theology in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (which we will read in two weeks), Paley's argument remained forceful to the reading public. Thirdly, it is generally held that the death-blow to natural theology was dealt by Darwin in 1859 with the publication of Origin of Species. After this time, natural theology could no longer be seen as a scientific endeavor. In short, Darwin finished what Hume started nearly a century earlier. Lastly, the modern "intelligent design" movement, which reappeared in the 1990's, is taken by historians and philosophers of science to be little more than a modernized version of Paley's argument. The movement could easily be termed Neo-Paleyism. In short, Paley is not going away! For our purposes, concentrate on the validity of Paley's argument. Are there obvious exceptions to his claims? Do they undermine his argument? Paley (as orthodox Christian) and Newton (as heretic) are arguing for a different kind of Christian god using the same natural world - how can this difference be adjudicated? Is the argument to/from design hopelessly flawed? |
T | 16-Sep | Reading: Hume, "On Miracles" (pp. 107 - 125) in Hume. Beginning in the 1740's, the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume (1711-1776, "the most important philosopher ever to write in English") undertook an extended skeptical examination of traditional religion. Generally speaking, people have two reasons to hold a religious claim to be true - the first is because of revelation (revealed religion, i.e. Biblical pronouncements), and the second is due to examination of the natural world (natural religion or natural theology). In his 1748 essay "On Miracles" (contained in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), Hume set out to demonstrate that there were no rational reasons to accept accounts of miracles. Hume's essay is relatively clear and should not present any major interpretive problems. How good are Hume's arguments? Be wary of saying Hume is wrong because you believe in miracles as told in scripture - Hume is arguing that whatever you believe, you cannot expect the claims to be sufficient to persuade another rational individual. Of course, that leads one to ask what the term "belief" even means? Are religious statements "beliefs"? Do scientific statements have a similar epistemological status? In the 1750's Hume wrote his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, an extended examination of the sorts of claims made by natural theologians such as Aquinas, Newton and (later) Paley. It was only published in 1779, three years after Hume's death of stomach cancer. In 1755 Hume published his Natural History of Religion. Noting that there was no rational basis for natural or revealed religion, he argued that the remaining "vulgar religion" developed from people's fear of the unknown, thus fore-shadowing an argument that Sigmund Freud would make over 200 years later. |
Th | 18-Sep | Reading: Hume, "On Suicide" pp. 97 - 105 in Hume. |
T | 23-Sep | Reading: Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Parts I through VIII, pp. 1-53) Before beginning the Dialogues, it would be a good idea to refamiliarize yourself with the sorts of arguments marshaled by Newton (in the "General Scholium") and Paley. While reading, try and come to conclusions about the positions represented by the three protagonists - Cleanthes, Demea, and Philo. How do their positions differ? Which position could possible represent Hume's own views? Which is your position? Why? This first portion of the reading deals mainly with a posteriori arguments, i.e. those that work from direct evidence. One such argument is the design argument favored by Paley. |
Th | 25-Sep | Reading: Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (pp 54 - 89) Having dealt with a posteriori arguments, Hume now turns - in Book IX - to a priori arguments, those that require no evidence but instead work from metaphysical claims. The work ends with an extended discussion of the problem of evil - why does evil exist if God is both all-powerful and all-good? |
T | 30-Sep | Reading: Darwin Descent of Man, Ch 3, 4 & 6. In 1859, Darwin published On the Origin of Species, a work that outlined his theory of transmutation (evolution) of species by means of a naturalistic mechanism. Darwin's mechanism - natural selection - can be easily understood using the following algorithmic construction:
In 1871, Darwin published The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, a work which examined the physical and mental evolution of humans. The readings for today focus on the origin of human mental traits and moral impulses. In Chapter 6, Darwin also outlines his overall view of human ancestry. One of the things to note here is Darwin's use of "savage" and "higher" (and other such terms). Darwin felt that there were differences in mental powers between human populations and, like any good Victorian, he felt that the English were the pinnacle of humankind. However, Darwin also vehemently opposed slavery and the concept that it was the "white man's burden" to civilize the other populations. For Darwin, the same natural forces that drove the evolution of the English would drive that of the other groups. |
Th | 2-Oct | Reading: Darwin Descent of Man, Ch 19, 20, & 21. One of the big problems facing Darwin was the origin of the human races (see his discussion in Ch 7). Darwin felt that there was no selective value for the observed differences between the races and, indeed, that the variation within a given race swamped variation between the races (an observation supported by modern genetic research). So how do you explain the differences? Darwin formulated his theory of sexual selection (a combination of male-male competition and female choice; see Ch 8) to try and explain them - for Darwin, racial differences were merely an expression of aesthetic choices within a population and were not of any evolutionary significance. To establish the existence of sexual selection, he provides an encyclopedic examination of sexual differences throughout the animal kingdom (Chs 9 to 18) before turning to human sexual differences. Our reading focusses on his examination of the power of sexual selection in humans (Ch 19 & 20). Darwin then provides a summary of his work (Ch 21). |
M | 6-Oct | Paper 1 due electronically before 8am. Do not e-mail me your paper; I will not accept it and will give you a zero for the assignment. Instead, submit the paper using the BlackBoard site for this class (Select 'Assignments' on the left hand menu). It is your responsibility to submit the paper on time. Late assignments will receive an automatic zero. |
T | 7-Oct | Reading: Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lie" [pdf]; "The Madman" [pdf]; "The Greatest Weight" [pdf] These three short pieces introduce us to some of Nietzsche's most famous idea: his perspectivism, the idea that "God is dead," and eternal recurrence. Further background information on Nietzsche is here. Between 1873 and '76, Nietzsche wrote a number of unpublished works, of which On Truth and Lie is one. In this short essay, he considers the ways in which language imposes its own shape on our experience, with the effect that it does not reflect the world as it is. Our experiences are unique, but language makes experiences labelled with the same words appear to be similar. Language is inherently metaphorical, translating phenomena into images that are more standardized and anthropomorphic than reality justifies, and we tend to forget this fact. We imagine that we have penetrated to the "reality" of things, but we have not; "truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins" (p. 4). Our two other selections come from The Gay Science (1882). "The Madman" ( §125) is foreshadowed by §108 where Nietzsche for the first time declares the death of God:
Pay close attention to this and the parable of the madman. What does the "death of God" mean? Does Nietzsche see it as a good thing? "The Greatest Weight" (§341) has Nietzsche pose us a question:
For Nietzsche, how you answer this thought experiment indicates your true attitude to life. You may want to think a little about how Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence (which he would see as the "fundamental conception" in his next work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra) fits with the ideas expressed by the author of the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes:
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Th | 9-Oct | No class - Instructor at conference |
T | 14-Oct | Reading: Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality (Part I) Robert Wicks notes the following about Nietzsche:
Regarding the Genealogy, he states:
The key to reading Nietzsche is to approach his writings with an open mind - he is deliberately trying to discomfort you and make you re-evaluate what you hold to be true. As with any difficult work, use the endnotes (pp. 119ff) to clarify issues and provide you with background information. |
Th | 16-Oct | Reading: Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality (Part II) Wicks notes:
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T | 21-Oct |
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Th | 23-Oct | Reading: Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents pp. 65 - 112; The Freud-Einstein Corresponence [pdf] The Freud-Einstein correspondence occurred between 1931 & 1932, at a time when Hitler was rising to power. |
T | 28-Oct | Reading: Huxley, Evolution and Ethics [pdf; 1-17] Thomas Henry Huxley was famously known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his defense of Darwin's ideas. However. not many people realize that Huxley actually was ambivalent about the ability of natural selection to achieve what Darwin felt it could. The reading is his 1893 Romanes Lecture delivered at Oxford. In it he argues that we should not look to nature for moral guidelines. As he argues:
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Th | 30-Oct | Reading: Galton, "Eugenics", 1904 [pdf]; The Nan Family: A study in Cacogenics, 1912 [pdf]; Black, War Against The Weak (Background to Buck v Bell) [pdf]; Ruling in Buck v. Bell, 1927 [pdf]; Snyder, The Principles of Heredity [pdf]; Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 688-689.
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T | 4-Nov | Paper writing workshop. Bring a printout of your last paper (with my comments) to class. You also need to bring three copies of your thesis and topic sentences for the next paper. Failure to do either of these tasks will result in one grade point being taken from your next paper. Failure to do both will result in failure of the paper. Peer review groups will be assigned. |
Th | 6-Nov | No class - Instructor at conference |
T | 11-Nov | No class - Veteran's Day |
Th | 13-Nov | Peer Review for Paper #2 Further details of the review procedure will be given nearer the date. |
S | 15-Nov | Paper #2 due electronically before 10am. Do not e-mail me your paper; I will not accept it and will give you a zero for the assignment. Instead, submit the paper using the BlackBoard site for this class (Select 'Assignments' on the left hand menu). Do not use the "Digital Dropbox". It is your responsibility to submit the paper on time. Late assignments will receive an automatic zero. |
T | 18-Nov | Reading: Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, pp. 1 - 37. Please make sure you read this background material. It will make our discussion of the work a lot easier. In addition, for the chapter on the Grand Inquisitor, it will be useful for you to review the temptation of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew 4:1-11. Some things to consider while reading ... Book Five
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Th | 20-Nov | Reading: Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, pp. 39 - 80. Book Six
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T | 25-Nov |
Reading: McEwan, Enduring Love [pdf]; Camus, "The Guest" [pdf] Ian McEwan (left, 1948 - ) is a prize-winning British novelist whose 1997 novel, Enduring Love, is regarded by many as a masterpiece. We're going to read the first chapter. Although born in extreme poverty, Albert Camus attended the lycee and university in Algiers, where he developed an abiding interest in sports and the theater. His university career was cut short by a severe attack of tuberculosis, an illness from which he suffered periodically throughout his life. The themes of poverty, sport, and the horror of human mortality all figure prominently in his volumes of so-called Algerian essays written between 1937 and 1954. In 1938 he became a journalist with Alger-Republicain, an anticolonialist newspaper. While working for this daily he wrote detailed reports on the condition of poor Arabs in the Kabyles region. These reports were later published in abridged form in 1958. Such journalistic experience proved invaluable when Camus went to France during World War II. There he worked for the Combat resistance network and undertook the editorship of the Parisian daily Combat, which first appeared clandestinely in 1943. His editorials, both before and after the liberation, showed a deep desire to combine political action with strict adherence to moral principles. During the war Camus published the main works associated with his doctrine of the absurd -- his view that human life is rendered ultimately meaningless by the fact of death and that the individual cannot make rational sense of his experience. These works include the novel The Stranger (1942), perhaps his finest work of fiction, which memorably embodies the 20th-century theme of the alienated stranger or outsider; a long essay on the absurd, The Myth of Sysiphysus (1942); and two plays published in 1944, Cross Purpose and Caligula. In these works Camus explored contemporary nihilism with considerable sympathy, but his own attitude toward the "absurd" remained ambivalent. In theory, philosophical absurdism logically entails total moral indifference. Camus found, however, that neither his own temperament nor his experiences in occupied France allowed him to be satisfied with such total moral neutrality. From this point on, Camus was concerned mainly with exploring avenues of rebellion against the absurd as he strove to create something like a humane stoicism. The Plague (1947) is a symbolic novel in which the important achievement of those who fight bubonic plague in Oran lies not in the little success they have but in their assertion of human dignity and endurance. In the controversial essay The Rebel (1951), he criticized what he regarded as the deceptive doctrines of "absolutist" philosophies -- the vertical (eternal) transcendence of Christianity and the horizontal (historical) transcendence of Marxism. He argued in favor of Mediterranean humanism, advocating nature and moderation rather than historicism and violence. He subsequently became involved in a bitter controversy with Jean Paul Sartre over the issues raised over his essay "Existentialism is a Humanism" (see next week).. |
Th | 27-Nov | No class- Thanksgiving |
T | 2-Dec | Reading: Sartre, extracts from "Existentialism is a Humanism" [pdf]; Camus, extracts from "The Myth of Sisyphus" [pdf]; Update: The full version of Sartre's piece is here. Educated in his native Paris and at German universities, Jean-Paul Sartre taught philosophy during the 1930s at La Havre and Paris. Captured by the Nazis while serving as an Army meteorologist, Sartre was a prisoner of war for one year before returning to his teaching position, where he participated actively in the French resistance to German occupation until the liberation. Recognizing a connection between the principles of existentialism and the more practical concerns of social and political struggle, Sartre wrote not only philosophical treatises but also novels, stories, plays, and political pamphlets. Sartre's personal and professional life was greatly enriched by his long-term collaboration with Simone de Beauvoir. Although he declined the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, Sartre was one of the most respected leaders of post-war French culture, and his funeral in Paris drew an enormous crowd. Sartre's philosophical influences clearly include Descartes, Kant, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger. Employing the methods of descriptive phenomenology to new effect, his Being and Nothingness (1943) offers an account of existence in general, including both the being-in-itself of objects that simply are and the being-for-itself by which humans engage in independent action. Sartre devotes particular concern to emotion as a spontaneous activity of consciousness projected onto reality. Empasizing the radical freedom of all human action, Sartre warns of the dangers of mauvaise foi (bad faith), acting on the self-deceptive motives by which people often try to elude responsibility for what they do. In the lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1946), Sartre described the human condition in summary form: freedom entails total responsibility, in the face of which we experience anguish, forlornness, and despair; genuine human dignity can be achieved only in our active acceptance of these emotions. |
Th | 4-Dec | Reading: Oreskes, "A Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How do we know we are not wrong? [pdf] |
T | 9-Dec | Roundup and Evaluation |
S | 13-Dec. | Paper #3 due electronically by 8am. |