WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2021-2022       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Theories and Models

HIST 141
Fall 2021 not offered
Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate

This class will focus on how theories and models are designed and regarded across the university curriculum--in the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. This topic is particularly pertinent to intellectual history, a subject that regularly uses texts from across the modern university curriculum as its primary readings. Given the range of intellectual history, both in terms of chronology and subject matter, intellectual history could be argued to be the subject best positioned to consider the process of making theory.

Questions to be addressed include: What are some of the unexpected results of the increased use of mathematics and computers even in the humanities and social sciences, not just in the sciences, and how has this changed the relationship of theory and models for each of these disciplines? To what extent does the debate about the refutability, the falsifiability--or truth status--of models indicate an ongoing need for theory? The specific modern academic subjects to be examined will be philosophy, economics, and physics. Thomas Kuhn's THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS (1962) will serve as a starting point for this study; however, most of the readings during the semester will be much more recent.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (CSCT)

Last Updated on DEC-07-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459