Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It

Choose one: (A) Science gives us objective knowledge of an independently existing reality, or (B) Scientific knowledge is always provisional and tells us nothing that is universal, necessary, or certain about the world. Made your choice? Welcome to the science wars. This long-running battle over the status of scientific knowledge began in ancient Greece, raged furiously among scientists, social scientists, and humanists during the 1990s, and has reemerged in today's conflict between science and religion over issues like evolution. This series of 24 lectures explores the history of competing conceptions of scientific knowledge and their implications for science and society, beginning with the onset of the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s up until today. It will provide you with an understanding of how science works that is as important as ever. Though it may seem that the accelerating pace of discoveries, inventions, and unexpected insights into nature over the centuries should secure foundations of scientific inquiry, that is far from true, as every day's headlines demonstrate. By the end of these lectures, you will understand what science is, and you will be enlightened about a fascinating problem you might not even have known existed. "There have been a raft of popular books about what scientists know," says Professor Goldman, "but to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single one of these popular books that focuses centrally on the question of how scientists know what they know." These lectures are an answer to that critical need.

All Lectures:
1. Knowledge and Truth Are Age-Old Problems
2. Competing Visions of the Scientific Method
3. Galileo, the Catholic Church, and Truth
4. Isaac Newton's Theory of the Universe
5. Science vs. Philosophy in the 17th Century
6. Locke, Hume, and the Path to Skepticism
7. Kant Restores Certainty
8. Science, Society, and the Age of Reason
9. Science Comes of Age in the 19th Century
10. Theories Need Not Explain
11. Knowledge as a Product of the Active Mind
12. Trading Reality for Experience
13. Scientific Truth in the Early 20th Century
14. Two New Theories of Scientific Knowledge
15. Einstein and Bohr Redefine Reality
16. Truth, Ideology, and Thought Collectives
17. Kuhn's Revolutionary Image of Science
18. Challenging Mainstream Science from Within
19. Objectivity Under Attack
20. Scientific Knowledge as Social Construct
21. New Definitions of Objectivity
22. Science Wars of the Late 20th Century
23. Intelligent Design and the Scope of Science
24. Truth, History, and Citizenship