Science and Culture

HPSC-X104 — A&H

An introduction to the study of science as a human activity that both contributes to cultural change and responds to it.

Issues in Biological and Medical Ethics

HPSC-X 111 — A&H

An introduction to environmental ethics, addressing questions of animal (and plant) rights, the moral sense of nature, and ecological thinking. Topics include: biocentrism, the land ethic, deep ecology, ecofeminism, the Gaia hypothesis, the politics of greening, the history of environmentalism, and connections to mental health, medicine, and public health.

Critical Medical Humanities

HPSC-X125 — S&H

Critical medical humanities offer an interdisciplinary and interprofessional approach to research the psychological and social effects of illness and treatments. The recent prominence of medical humanities in the academia aims at cultivating “medical citizens” in shaping the future medical culture as a democracy, where deep understanding of the less technical or measurable facets of medicine support fairness, individual and social justice, and a clinical rather than a business or sheer scientific framework.

Occult in Western Civilization

HPSC-X207

Critical and historical evaluation of a wide range of occult topics: superstition, magic, witchcraft, astrology, alchemy, the Cabala, and psychic phenomena (mesmerism and spiritualism).

Medical History

HPSC-X 205 — S&H

This class covers the history of Western medicine from Hippocrates in Ancient Greece to the present. As we are seeing in our own time, medical history shaped human history, often in dramatic ways. We will study changing concepts of disease; past epidemics, including the Black Death, which killed about a third of Europe’s population; efforts to understand human anatomy and physiology; the history of vaccination and the germ theory of disease; the role of medical images in anatomy and pathology. There are no pre-requisites to take this class.

The Occult in Western Civilization

HPSC-X 207 — A&H

Scientific Methods

HPSC-X 340

This class covers the history of Western medicine from Hippocrates in Ancient Greece to the present.

Service Learning in Medical Humanities

HPSC-X 470

This final service course of the Medical Humanities Minor is an experiental educational experience, in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets community needs. The split of 20 service hours and 20 in-class studies is designed to allow practical applications of theoretical and conceptual aspects of medical humanities through first-hand experience with underserved communities. 

Quantum Mysteries for Everyone

COLL-C 105

Quantum theory is the best theory we have of microscopic things, but it is also extremely hard to understand what exactly the theory is saying. We will begin this course by describing a few simple quantum experiments to see just why the theory is so strange, and then we will begin to look more closely at the formalism of the theory and at the philosophical puzzles raised by its interpretations. After suggesting several solutions, we shall adopt a more instrumental view, on which these puzzles may be considered an important resource that, if harnessed, may have some surprising implications on the way we manipulate information and perform computations. Along the way, we will learn how to think critically and carefully about science and scientific theories, and how to approach a given problem from several different philosophical angles.

Quick and Dirty Mental Operations

HPSC-H 241

Human survival depends on effective gathering of huge amounts of information, adequate processing, fast learning, and controlling the environment to secure predictability and adjustment. Our brain selects what to attend to, categorize and integrate perceptual input, makes inferences, establishes emotional and physical reactions to environmental cues, and activating all other systems (affective, behavioral, and physiological) with staggering speed and efficiency. These cognitive feats are executed extremely quickly and accurately with the help of mental short cuts called “heuristics”.

Revolutions in Science: Plato to NATO

HPSC-X102 — S&H

An introduction to the formative steps in the scientific tradition as well as philosophical investigations of the nature of science.