Core 1: The Structure of Social Knowledge (3 credits)

Tentative Course Outline

1. Introduction to the problem

Religious approaches; scientific undertanding; historical perspectives; social and ideological views;
What is the Enlightenment?

2. Descartes and the birth of modern epistemology:

Descartes' definition of the "problem" of  what and how we know what we know? The  analytic separation of mind and body. Spinoza's dialogue with Descartes: the primacy of the body.

Readings: Descartes, Discourse on Method (selections); Spinoza, Ethics (selections)

3.  Is there an "Order" in Nature? Hume's challenge

Reading:David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (selections)

4. Vico and the introduction of "social" knowledge

Reading: The New Science of Giovanni Battista Vico (selections)

5. "We know of only one science, the science of history"

Reading: Karl Marx, The German Ideology (Part One)

6.  Knowledge as Experience.

Reading: John Dewey, Art as Experience

7. Knowledge as Social Representation

Readings: Emile Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy; Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia

8.  The Nature and Scope of Scientific Knowledge

Readings: Karl Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery;Thomas Kuhn, Structure of
Scientific Revolutions; Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery; Paul Feyerabend,
Against Method

9.  Knowledge and Power

Readings: Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge; Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory
Life; Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science; Donna Haraway,
Primate Visions

10. The Political Economy of the Production of Knowledge

Reading: Fritz Machlup, Knowledge: its Creation, Distribution and Scientific
Significance