Part II
The Part II course in History and Philosophy of Science gives students an insight into the historical development of the sciences, technology and medicine, and into their philosophical structure and sociological dynamics. It thus provides essential resources for understanding some of the most significant institutions in the world today.
This is a full-time Part II course in the Natural Sciences Tripos. We also offer three single-paper options to students taking the NST Part II course in Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
Options
There are two alternative options for students taking HPS Part II: Option A is normally the choice of students who intend to graduate after taking Part II; Option B is normally the choice of those who plan to proceed to Part III. All students are free to choose either option.
Option A consists of:
- three unseen written examinations chosen from the nine papers;
- a dissertation;
- two primary sources essays.
Option B consists of:
- four unseen written examinations chosen from the nine papers;
- two primary sources essays.
The papers
Students taking Option A may choose any three of the following papers; students taking Option B may choose any four. Papers 1 and 8 will not be available in 2012–13.
Paper 2: Early Medicine
This paper covers medical knowledge and practices in the ancient, medieval and early modern periods. Themes include understandings of the body and of disease; the status of medical knowledge; patient-practitioner relationships; the medical marketplace; sex and reproduction; and medicine, magic and religion.
Paper 3: Natural Philosophies: Renaissance to Enlightenment
This paper's scope includes the development in early modern Europe of occult and natural philosophies, mathematical sciences, natural history, projects of global exploration and the instrumentation of the sciences. Lectures examine such themes in early modern European cultures as the social organisation, methods, cosmologies and material of inquiry; concepts of natural order and economy in enterprises of collecting, travelling and field study; and the practices of experimentation and measurement in natural philosophy, exact sciences and practical techniques.
Paper 4: Science, Industry and Empire
This paper addresses the major changes in the natural sciences between the Napoleonic Wars and the end of the First World War. This was the period when modern sciences in a recognisable form emerged, were consolidated and challenged, and extended their global reach. Many of the typical institutions of the sciences were established and developed: teaching laboratories and research institutes, industrially-sponsored research and professionally organised scientific careers and qualifications. New and large-scale publics for the sciences appeared, and, in turn, responded to and affected the content and aims of scientific inquiry. This was also the epoch of grand visions of natural order and its secular meanings, whether in thermodynamics and electromagnetism, in astrophysics and cosmology, or in evolutionary theory and racial science. The paper traces the interactions between imperial and national rivalries, notions of class and of culture, enterprises of commerce and industry, and the achievements of the major scientific programmes of the period.
Paper 5: Modern Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Born in hospitals, vaccinated, X-rayed, taking antibiotics, receiving transplants, medicine sets the parameters of our lives. Since a great deal of biology, chemistry and physics has been and continues to be done as part of medicine, it is also central to HPS. This paper is about how, and with what consequences, a new, scientific medicine was made for the modern world. The Michaelmas Term course surveys the creation since 1750 of new medical institutions, professionals and practices. The Lent Term course explores the twentieth-century transformation of medicine into a major object of economic, political and ethical concern.
Paper 6: Metaphysics, Epistemology and the Sciences
This paper provides a canonical treatment of general philosophy of science. It is recommended for any Part II HPS students who wish to acquire firm grounding for further work in philosophy of science (either in graduate degrees, or in more specialised papers in Part II).
Paper 7: Ethics and Politics of Science, Technology and Medicine
Science, technology and medicine play a central role in the modern world. However, there are many on-going political and ethical controversies over the role they ought to play. These include debates over whether, when and how, ethical and political values should shape scientific research and practice, and over when and how scientific results and new technologies should be used. Furthermore, these important disputes relate to more fundamental questions about the relationship between truth, values and objectivity. The aim of this paper is to introduce students to both practical and theoretical debates over the politics and ethics of science and to examine their inter-relationships.
Paper 9: History of Philosophy of Science
This paper looks at the origins of the philosophy of science and at its history in the modern age. The lecture courses trace changing views on the sources and features of science and our knowledge of nature. Topics covered include the empiricist approaches to knowledge of Locke, Berkeley and Hume and their legacy; Kantian philosophy and the sciences; the nineteenth-century Kantian heritage (Whewell, Helmholtz, etc); positivism and neo-positivism (Comte, Mill; Mach, Carnap, Neurath); conventionalism (Duhem, Poincaré); pragmatism (Peirce, Dewey, Putnam).
Paper 10: Mind and Society
This paper explores historical and philosophical aspects of the social and psychological sciences, including the character of their subject matters and their methodologies. Amongst the disciplines covered will be psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, economics, political science, anthropology, sociology and history. Topics may include historical development of concepts and methods in these sciences, principally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the cultural impact of these sciences; the supposed differences between these sciences and the natural sciences; their connection to values; the nature of explanation; the reality of objects; the possibility of objectivity; their relation to evidence-based policy.
Paper 11: Mesopotamian Science and Scholarship
Taught through a mixture of lectures, seminars and student presentations, this paper looks at the intellectual history of ancient Iraq – the cultures of Sumer, Assyria and Babylonia – through extensive use of texts in translation and methodology from the history and sociology of science.
Primary sources
Students write two extended essays (up to 3,000 words), each based on a primary source. During Michaelmas Term there will be a series of four primary sources seminars for each of the papers. Students should attend four series of seminars: those associated with the papers they are taking plus, for Option A students, one other series of their choice. They then choose two of the sources on which to write their essays.
The prescribed sources for 2012–13 are as follows:
- Paper 2: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722; Penguin, 1966) Online
- Paper 3: The Board of Longitude, materials and documents (1714–74)
- Paper 4: H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr Moreau (1896; Penguin, 2005)
- Paper 5: Ruth Hall (ed.), Dear Dr Stopes: Sex in the 1920s (Penguin, 1981)
- Paper 6: Larry Laudan, 'A Confutation of Convergent Realism', Philosophy of Science 48 (1981), pp. 19–49
- Paper 7: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Synthesis Report (2007)
- Paper 9: David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part 4, Section VI: 'Of Personal Identity' (1739–40)
- Paper 10: John Stuart Mill, The System of Logic, Book VI: 'On the Logic of the Moral Sciences' Online
- Paper 11: Eleanor Robson, 'Mesopotamian mathematics', in V.J. Katz (ed.), The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India and Islam: A Sourcebook (Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 57–186 Online
Dissertation
This part of the course – which is only for students taking Option A – gives students the chance to explore in depth a topic that really interests them. The dissertation is a substantial piece of work (between 5,000 and 12,000 words) on an approved topic within HPS. Each student makes a short presentation on their dissertation topic at one of the dissertation seminars in Lent Term.