HSEM2529H

You will probably have been told about "The Scientific Method" in middle school and/or in high school. You formulate a hypothesis, derive some prediction, do an experiment to test it, provisionally accept the hypothesis if it passes the test, and reject it when it doesn't. There is broad agreement among professional historians and philosophers of science that science rarely works this way. In this seminar, we explore a different view of science in which scientists work more like detectives, using clues wherever they can find them to come up with explanations for features of the natural world that intrigue them. After studying how Sherlock Holmes solved some of his cases, we study how Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein solved some of theirs. You will then form groups to study other celebrated cases of scientific sleuthing, such as continental drift and the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction.

000571

Periodic Fall