Course descriptions are not final and may be changed at or before the first class. For enrolment instructions, students should consult the Course Planning guide and see Timetable Builder to see the scheduled day and times.
First Term – May-June
HPS120H1 – How to Think About Science
Course instructor: Fermin Fulda de la Garza
Delivery Method: In-person
This course addresses the nature of science and its importance to our understanding of ourselves. Questions include: What is a science? Is science objective? What is scientific reasoning? Has our conception of science changed through history? How does science shape our moral image? Does science reveal our natures as humans?
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)
HPS300H1 - Topics in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology: Critical Studies of the Mind Sciences in the Modern World
Course instructor: Andrew Jones
Delivery Method: In-person
This course examines the close connection between the mind sciences (psychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, neuroscience) and the development of advanced industrial societies. Not only did the rise of advanced industrial societies shape the concerns and the content of the emerging mind sciences, but technological developments had, and continue to have, a considerable impact on mental lives in the modern era. Starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we will explore how new urban landscapes and technological infrastructures impacted social relationships and gender norms while stimulating psychological interest in nervous disorders and crowds. Moving on to the second half of the 20th century, we will critically assess how psychiatry, psychology, and psychopharmacology were used as tools to normalize individuals and advance imperial agendas. At the same time, we will also examine how critical scholars and researchers used the mind sciences to challenge rampant industrialization and colonialism. The final part of the course will look at the relationship between social media and mental health in the 21st century by investigating past and current scientific perspectives on the nature of addiction. Through lectures, course readings, assignments, and a research essay, students will learn how to think critically about and conduct original research on the way in which new technologies impact scientific disciplines and our mental lives.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)
HPS302H1 - Topics in Philosophy of Science: What is Life? An Introduction to the Philosophy of Biology
Course instructor: Auguste Nahas
Delivery Method: In-person
This course introduces some of the major topics in the philosophy of biology, organized around the debate about the nature of life as it has unfolded over the past century. These topics include reductionism, teleology, emergence, complexity, the use of idealization and models, and the implications of synthetic biology. The course will be organized around key case studies, from the vitalism-mechanism debate in the early 20th century, to the emergence of the concept of homeostasis, the ‘cracking of the genetic code’, and the emergence of the genetic program as an influential metaphor.
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)
Exclusion: HPS208H1
Second Term – July-August
HPS200H1 – Science and Values
Course instructor: Francesca Elliott
Delivery Method: In-person
An introduction to issues at the interface of science and society. Including the reciprocal influence of science and social norms, the relation of science and religion, dissemination of scientific knowledge, science and policy. Issues may include: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons; Genetic Engineering; The Human Genome Project; Climate Change.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief, and Behaviour (2)
HPS301H1 - Topics in the History of Science: Living with the Bomb: A History of the Nuclear Age
Course instructor: Breanna Lohman
Delivery Method: Lectures – In-person
Living with the Bomb: A History of the Nuclear Age” investigates the enduring political, social, and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons on our world today. Beginning with the Manhattan Project, this course appraises the profound and terrible legacies of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings by undertaking an inquiry-driven, critical study of nuclear weapons from 1945 to the present. Through close readings of key historical sources and a broad range of scholarly works, students will synthesize interdisciplinary perspectives to apprehend how nuclear weapons fundamentally restructured world politics, global ecosystems, popular culture, public health, and the experience of everyday life. Among the topic covered in the course include: the tensions between nuclear fallout and clean energy “too cheap to meter”; narratives of the Cold War, with case studies on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the Cuban Missile Crisis; the nuclear disasters of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and the changing nature of risk.
Here is a representative list of excerpted texts we will read in “Living with the Bomb: A History of the Nuclear Age”: A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies by Martin J. Sherwin, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos by Judy Pasternak, and the film, Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)