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
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.
Back to my homepage!