(3 credits; 30 hours plus conferences; 15-20 students per offering)
Proposed Course Outline
1. Introduction to the problem:
2. Descartes and the birth of modern epistemology:
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: K. Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery; T. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions;
David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery; P. Feyerabend, Against Method
9. Knowledge and Power
Readings: Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge; Bruno Latour and Steven
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. Princeton University Press, 1984.
Preliminary Bibliography
Berger, P. & T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Pelican Books, 1984.
Bhaskar, R. The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, 2d ed,. Harvester Press,1979.
Bloor, David. Knowledge and Social Imagery. London: Routledge,1976.
Bourdieu, Pierre. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method. New York: Liberal Arts Press, trans.1956.
Durkheim, Emile. Sociology and Philosophy. New York: Free Press, trans.1974.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books, 1980 [1934].
Dewey, John. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Irvington, 1982 [1938].
Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. London: New Left Books, 1975.
Feyerabend, Paul. "Poppers Objective Knowledge & The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," in Problems of Empiricism, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1985.
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon, 1980.
Garfinkel, A. Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Geertz, Clifford. "From the Native Point of View," in The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Harper Collins, 1983.
Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Harding, S. & M. Hintikka, eds. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983.
Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Harding, S. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.
Hollis, M. The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Hume, David. Treatise on Human Nature. New York: Dutton, 1964.
Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Latour, Bruno & Steven Woolgar. Laboratory Life. Los Angeles: Sage, 1979.
Machlup, Fritz. Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution and Economic Significance. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1984.
Machlup, Fritz. "Are the Social Sciences Really Inferior," Southern Economic Journal, 17, 1961.
Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970 [1936].
Manicas, P.T. A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.
Martin, M. & L.C. McIntyre, eds. Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.
Marx, Karl. German Ideology (trans.). New York: International Publishers, 1972.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 1962.
Popper, Karl. Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson, 1959.
Popper, Karl. Objective Knowledge. London: RKP, 1972.
Schutz, A. "Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences," in D. Emmet & A. MacIntyre, eds., Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis. New York: Macmillan.
Searle, J.R.. The Construction of Social Reality. London: Penguin, 1995.
Vico, Giambattista. The New Science of Giovanni Battista Vico, (trans). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970.