This course can concern topics of special interest in the philosophy of science from Antiquity until present. Topics may include scientific change, rationality, method, evidence, progress, reduction, scientific laws, models, representation etc. The course may also focus on specific-time periods, fields of inquiry, individuals, scientific institutions, geographic locations, etc.

Offers a hands-on introduction to historical research. Through a close examination of classic scholarly texts, archival materials, and recent media publications, this advanced seminar explores the sources, methods, and approaches in historical studies of biomedical twentieth century-sciences.

This course examines the intersection of technology and environment in the modern world. Whether simple or complex, whether designed for recreation, work, or warfare, our tools and how we use them filter our perceptions of, and engagements with, non-human nature.

This course explores how medicine was practiced, taught and theorized from ancient Greece to the early modern period. It focuses on the historical development of western medicine in relation to societies, politics and culture, and considers topics such as the creation of medical traditions, the transmission and communication of medical knowledge, the pluralistic world of healers, the role of religion, magic and natural philosophy, the cultural meaning of disease, and the emergence of institutions such as the hospital.

This course examines the development of medicine from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. It focuses on the historical development of western medicine in relation to societies, politics and culture and considers topics such as changing views of the body, the development of medical institutions such as hospitals, asylums and laboratories, the diversifies world of healing and the place of visual and material culture in the production and dissemination of medical knowledge.

This course seeks to understand the nature of engineering practice, which comprises complex social, intellectual, and technical actions at various stages from design to entrepreneurship. Building upon the history and social studies of technology, philosophy of engineering, business history, and management science, we introduce ways to analyze such complex actions.

A survey of the history of and recent developments in the scientific study of complex systems and emergent order. There will be particular emphasis on the biological and cognitive sciences. Topics covered may include: mechanism and teleology in the history of science, 19th and 20th century emergentism, complex systems dynamics, order and adaptiveness, self-organization in biology and cognitive development.

Historical examination of the interactions of science (both as body of knowledge and as enterprise) with ideological, political and social issues. The impact of science; attacks on and critiques of scientific expertise as background to contemporary conflicts. Subjects may vary according to students interests. (offered irregularly)

This course explores interdisciplinary topics related to the encounter between modern science and texts accepted as holy by religious communities, such as the Bible in Christianity. What role did holy texts play in the emergence of modern science? Did modern science change the way religious communities interpret their holy texts? What to do with claims such as that the Quran contains quantum physics? Does modern science exhibit the same kind of rationality that we find in rabbinical Judaism? Do holy texts only exist to assist humanity's attempts at understanding the meaning of the world, while modern science actually explains the world? What role do texts play in modern science compared to holy texts in religious communities? And, what has modern science to say about the very idea of holy texts?

Maps are pervasive in our world: so indispensable, and so disposable that thousands are made, used, and discarded every day. Yet not long ago, maps were both rare and strange technological things. When and why did modern mapping systems come into being? Behind this transformation lie contentious stories of objects and people, makers and users, global forces and local dynamics, metropoles and colonies, and technologies and cultures. Focusing on the modern period, each week illuminates maps and their importance in our world by focusing on a keyword, such as power, territory, worldmaking, boundaries, imperialism, capitalism, literacy, verticality, and countermapping.

With the recent headline-making breakthroughs in deep learning neural networks (DNNs), it might seem that we are on the cusp of living with artificial systems that match or exceed human intelligence. But there remain longstanding philosophical challenges around the definition of intelligence that AI researchers use, how they measure the performance of their systems, and what DNNS could really be capable of, that still need addressing. For example, how close are DNNs to passing the Turing test? How close are we to building general intelligence and what do we need to get us there? How can we draw fair and meaningful comparisons between artificial and biological systems? We will draw on material from the history and philosophy of science to evaluate and inform current debates around the limits of AI. For example, we’ll consider what kinds of explanations DNNs can provide. We’ll also look at how debates between the rationalists and empiricists (e.g. Locke, Hume, and Kant) inform current debates between AI nativists and empiricists. This course explores these questions through contemporary texts across the fields of philosophy of science, artificial intelligence, comparative psychology, and cognitive science, among others.

The effects of automation, computing, and information technology have had a great impact on our society. The rise of automation and computing the almost cult-like trust in mechanization have transformed our society both at the material and the epistemological level. This course will examine the epistemological and ethical debates that AI and automation have produced in all sectors of society. It will consider a variety of media and instruments from data visualization and mapping, to the use of AI and robotics, contextualizing them within popular and hotly contested examples in the military field and in cybersecurity, in medical diagnostics and epidemiology, in the automotive industry, and in the personal realm.

Taking cue from the entanglements that historically have pervaded the relation between biology and information technology since the early 20th century, this course interrogates the sociocultural and technological conjuncture that has brought computer science, biology and engineering together into peculiar, ingenious, and often controversial alliances. What do AI, synthetic biology, and biotechnology have in common? How have they come to be associated? What are the debates and ethics emerging from such associations? The course will focus on topics such as: geoengineering and bioremediation; GMO and Robotic insects; the use of expert systems and machine learning to optimize synthetic biology; the flourishing and marketing of precision and personalized medicine/immunotherapy; and the ethics behind CRISPR babies.

What is autism? When was it first identified as a condition? How has its meaning changed over time? How does the autistic experience vary across cultures?

This course covers the history of autism, the social understandings and cultural meanings of autism, and the autistic experience through time and across cultures. It introduces students to both historical and contemporary perspectives, including scientific accounts, cultural representations, and the voices of autistic people. Through the case of autism we will grapple with larger issues such as the role of medical and social views in shaping definitions of mental normality and pathology, the changing meaning of disability in different cultures, and the experience of living with a developmental disability.

This course examines how the contemporary life sciences intersect with global geopolitics through an introduction to the field of science and technology studies (STS). Using interdisciplinary methodologies and global perspectives, the course addresses key questions including: Who benefits from the development of new biotechnologies, and who is exploited in the process? Who sets the international norms of bioethics and medical market regulation? How are biologists and medical practitioners redefining life for different societies and their diverse constituencies? The course predominantly focuses on humans, but also introduces new scholarship on animal studies and synthetic life forms. It has significant coverage of the Middle East, Africa, and East and South Asia.

This course provides a broad thematic overview of the history of medicine and public health in the Middle East. Focusing on the modern period, the course highlights the region as a contact zone of medical traditions and a key site in the emergence of colonial medicine and international public health. Students examine the social and cultural effects of new developments in medical thought and practice, including ideas about contagion and disease prevention, the notion of public health and hygiene, and the construction of colonial and postcolonial medical schools and hospitals.

This course introduces students to philosophical issues in the study of medicine. The course will cover foundational questions, such as what constitutes evidence that a therapy is effective, how do we define health and disease, and information derived from research is used to support clinical practice. Students will be introduced to different movements in contemporary clinical medicine, such as Evidence-based Medicine, Person-Centered Healthcare, and Precision Medicine.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes in our daily lives, society, medicine, and public health. This course will examine the pandemic and the public response through a philosophy of science lens. In particular, students will explore philosophical issues about how the healthcare community generates knowledge and how that knowledge is used to inform responses to a major public health crisis. The course will also provide a brief history of pandemics and examine Coronavirus in a historical context. Epistemological issues regarding pandemic modelling and epidemiology, clinical research and generalizability of findings, diagnostic testing, public health response (e.g. border closures, protective masks, social distancing, isolation, testing and tracking), and economic and social impact will be covered. Portrayals of the pandemic by media, government, and scientists will also be examined. Readings will be drawn from a variety of academic disciplines and popular sources.

The epistemology of misinformation is a branch of epistemology with the objective of providing insight into the nature and spread of misinformation, fake news, conspiratorial theories, echo chambers, and epistemic pathologies in the formation of public opinion. This course focuses on medical misinformation, what harms it can cause, how it spreads, and strategies that have been advanced to minimize the harm of medical misinformation. Through a series of case studies, it also provides a critical perspective on the difference between misinformation and disinformation with an overview of how threat actors weaponize information during public health emergencies to cause harm. Topics covered may include concepts of scientific objectivity and universality; the communication of risk and risk perception; and the changing role of expertise in a fragmented public sphere; and the key role played by mainstream and social media in spreading both information and disinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and fake news.

A survey of ancient, medieval, and early modern mathematics with emphasis on historical issues.

A survey of the development of mathematics from 1700 to the present with emphasis on historical issues.

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities…. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities…. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course explores the history of science through direct engagement with local scientific artifacts within the University of Toronto Scientific Instrument Collection (UTSIC.org). Each student will undertake a research project focused on a single artifact within the collection in order to explore both the local history of science and the methodology of material culture research as it relates to science.

What can a focus on nonhuman animals reveal about the knowledge practices and politics of science and technology? This course approaches the history of science from the perspective of nonhuman animals in order to revisit—and retell—the history of various scientific disciplines and practices. We will consider how the various ways in which animals have been enrolled into the formation of scientific knowledge, from laboratory settings to ecological fieldwork, to colonial natural history. Students will learn to interrogate anthropocentric biases in the histories of science and technology, and to assess the significance of nonhuman animals in the formation of scientific knowledge.

This is an advanced undergraduate seminar that examines the past, present, and future of vegetarianism and veganism, with a focus on five central themes: science, technology, human health, animal welfare, and the environment. Along the way, we will consider many other important issues and contexts as well, such as: factory farming, capitalism, social identities and inequalities associated with gender, race, and class, religious beliefs and practices, high-performance sports, and cultural resources such as documentary films, television programs and music videos. Students will engage in discussions, make class presentations, and carry out original research projects.

Historical examination of mathematics, focusing on certain themes and time periods, to show how mathematics has changed and evolved.

An examination of foundational and conceptual aspects of mathematics such as: the nature of mathematical objects, logicism, Church’s elementalistic mathematics, Gödel’s theorem and formal systems, postulational methods, mathematics and reality, the cardinal, ordinal and abstract approaches to numbers, infinity, and Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries.

Historical examination of the biological sciences, focusing on certain themes and time periods.

Historians, philosophers, and sociologists have produced a wealth of literature on the analysis and examination of physics from the early modern period to the present. In this seminar, we read and discuss in depth a collection of recent classics and cutting-edge works on the historical studies of physics. Students also conduct research based on this literature. We aim to use physics as a lens to understanding key themes in the making of modern science, from incommensurability, epistemic cultures, and historical ontology, to materiality, social construction, pedagogy, and countercultures.