LIBS637

Science as an intellectual, social, and cultural enterprise has been represented historically in the West as a liberator, oppressor, redeemer, and ground of certainty in an uncertain world by historians and social critics, artists, authors, philosophers, theologians, and scientists themselves. This course will consider the origins of many of the cultural myths about science, its metaphorical meanings, and its intellectual development as narrated by authors in a variety of texts--from Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND and Bertolt Brecht's GALILEO to the writings of contemporary philosophers and historians. An emphasis will be placed upon a reflective analysis of the texts and the social and conceptual roots of the images of science those texts present.