History and Philosophy of Sciences - Historia e Filosofia das Ciencias

Description

Originally, this was a History of Science course for the 1st semester of 1st year students in a Teaching of Physics-Chemestry degree (eventually finding a job as teachers in a High or Secondary School). I have been teaching it since 1999. Then from 2001 onwards, it also included students of a Philosophy course (!) in their 1st year, therefore getting its current name.

The idea is to provide students why and how new scientific (and revolutionary!) ideas arise, what were either the political, religious, social, cultural and other contexts that lead and/or allow those ideas to surface. It is NOT a philosophical perspective, it is much more a "once a upon a time" narrative from a theoretical physicist point of view. I do avoid meaningless (in my own opinion) sociological aspects about on how science is conducted.

Program, Evaluation Methods and Bibliography

In the following links you may find

Lecture Notes

Here are the lecture notes (handwritten). They are in W97.doc files format (after scanning). Please, browse through the scanned images of several lectures overheads/slides:

Tutorials Schedulle

  • Here is the Tutorials (Atendimento) schedulle (it is now outdated...)

  • This is the monthly-weekly-daily schedulle (tentative!) with indication of overheads-slides for the 1st semester: October & November & December & January

    Exams, Tests,Problem Sets and Marks (classifications)

    Students may peruse previous example/exercice sheets and tests/exams (some may be missing - I will try to update this section):


    Students may also use this site to download the following Tutorials:


    This is the current academic year (2003/2004) Marks/Classifications

    Other Resources Available

    The following links may provide additional material and resources elsewhere that you may find useful for your study:


    Students Feedback on the Course

    Finally, I ask the students to fill in THESE questionaires (Inquerito1) Query1 and (Inquerito3) Query3 at the start of the semester and THIS questionaire (Inquerito2) Query2 at the end. I stress that these are THE questionaires that interest me the most. I am further grateful in advance for any constructive criticism that may assist me and the teaching of History and Philosophy of Science to be both more effective in the (very!) near future.

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