History and Philosophy of Science, or HSC, exemplifies Stanford OHS’s interdisciplinary approach. Mostly taken by sophomores, HSC covers the development of science through a philosophical lens, focusing on significant debates throughout the history of science.
One of the course texts, Richard DeWitt’s Worldviews, is a perennial student favorite; both in and out of Core classes, students who have taken HSC often return to DeWitt’s model of a worldview as made up of beliefs that interlock like puzzle pieces. Key moments in HSC focus on the times when the puzzle falls apart, pushing the scientific community into a new worldview: the move from geocentrism to heliocentrism, the move from Aristotelian physics to Newtonian physics, the move from a belief in four primary elements to a belief in wider range of primary chemical substances.
Touchstone questions connect the disparate historical and scientific moments—questions such as:
- What is the nature of reality, and how, if at all, can we come to know that nature?
- What are the simplest building blocks that make up the physical world? And what do we mean by “simple,” anyway?
- In what ways are humans continuous with the rest of the natural world, and in what ways are we separate from it?
- How do we become convinced of the truth of a belief? Once we’re convinced of the truth of a belief, how and why might we come to change our minds?
HSC aims to foster informed and open-minded reflection about the natural world, our ways of organizing and understanding it, and our place in it. It’s a course that offers something for everyone: STEM-oriented students often say that HSC helped them come to appreciate the humanities; similarly, humanities-oriented students often say that HSC helped to open up the sciences for them. For all students, HSC brings philosophical thinking to the center of their studies.