Course Co-ordinator: Dr L Moretti

Pre-requisite(s): None.

Note(s): This course will be available in 2012/13 as PH 352L / PH 452L.

The course aims at uncovering what is constitutive of scientific rationality. Some of the most discussed conceptions of scientific methodology, including Baconian inductivism, hypothetico-deductivism, falsificationism, Feyerabend's anarchism and Bayesianism, will be analysed. Some of these views will be tested on cases from past and contemporary science, including the Copernican revolution and the continental drift hypothesis. Specific and "technical" topics, including the old and the new problem of induction, the Duhem-Quine thesis and paradoxes of confirmation, will also be surveyed.

Level 3: 1 one and a half hour lecture and 1 one and a half hour tutorial per week

Level 4: 1 one and a half hour lecture and 1 one and a half hour student-led seminar per week.
(Thus, each student will have 3 contact hours per week.) Tutorials/seminars begin in week 2.

1st Attempt: Level 3; two 2,500 word essays (100%).

1st Attempt: Level 4; two 3,500 word essays (90%) and a seminar presentation (10%).

Resit: Level 3; 1 two-hour written exam (100%). In line with School Policy, students cannot pass the course on the first attempt if a component piece of assessed work is submitted and marked 0-5. The student must then take the resit in order to pass the course. Failure to submit a component piece of assessed work, or submitting a token piece, will result in the withdrawal of the class certificate.

Resit: Level 4; There is no resit for year 4 students.