This course examines the development of science in its social, philosophical, political, and cultural contexts from the end of the 18th century to the present. Topics will include the development of our contemporary notion of evidence, the debates over the “scientific method”, the “historicisation of nature,” the rise of “big” science, the acceptance of probabilistic accounts of the world, and the construction of human nature in modern biology. Emphasis will be on the physical and biological sciences.
