PHIL 858U, Graduate Seminar in Unity/Disunity in Science Fall, 1997, Time Change: 5-7:30 Tuesdays Instructor: Lindley Darden This course will focus on the issue of unity and disunity in science. Should science be unified? To what extent? The older perspective was unification of science via reduction. Is that still a viable position? Can physics be expected to supply an all-encompassing, lower level theory? Are there emergent levels in biology and psychology that make reduction impossible? To what extent are there laws in biology that function to provide unificatory explanations? The issue is discussed in recent work by Rosenberg, Dupre, Kitcher, Sober, Brandon, and Beatty. To what extent can interfield connections provide unification (integration) of areas of science, e.g., genetics, biochemistry and structural chemistry via molecular biology (Darden), cognitive and neurobiology via cognitive-neuroscience? Textbooks: Rosenberg, A. (1994), Instrumental Biology or the Disunity of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dupre, J. (1993), The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Galison, P. and D. J. Stump (eds.) (1996), The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Plus additional articles.