This course is the common experience of all post-Medieval History MA students. It provides the occasion for you to reflect on the discipline through an examination of theoretical and methodological writing, as well as some historical works exemplifying important currents of historiography. Emphasis in the course is on reading and discussion.

Independent study/directed reading courses offer MA and 1st year PhD students the opportunity to explore a topic not currently offered as a graduate course. Students are responsible for finding a graduate faculty member willing to work with them. In collaboration, the graduate faculty member and the student or group of students will create a syllabus clearly outlining the learning goals, deliverables, resources, timeline, and mechanism for feedback. The supervising faculty member must have a School of Graduate Studies (SGS) Graduate Faculty Membership Appointment through the Department of History or another unit in the university. These are not meant to replace existing curriculum where sufficient course offerings are available. HIS1999H courses may count towards a student's course requirements at the discretion of the Associate Chair (Graduate). They should fill a gap in knowledge required for the 2000 paper/PhD dissertation.

Independent study/directed reading coursesoffer MA and 1st year PhD students the opportunity to explore a topic not currently offered as a graduate course. Students are responsible for finding a graduate faculty member willing to work with them. In collaboration, the graduate faculty member and the student or group of students will create a syllabus clearly outlining the learning goals, deliverables, resources, timeline, and mechanism for feedback. The supervising faculty member must have a School of Graduate Studies (SGS) Graduate Faculty Membership appointment through the Department of History or another unit in the University. These are not meant to replace existing curriculum where sufficient course offerings are available. HIS1999H courses may count towards a student's course requirements at the discretion of the Associate Chair (Graduate). They should fill a gap in knowledge required for the 2000 paper/PhD dissertation.

Independent study/directed reading courses offer MA and 1st year PhD students the opportunity to explore a topic not currently offered as a graduate course. Students are responsible for finding a graduate faculty member willing to work with them. In collaboration, the graduate faculty member and the student or group of students will create a syllabus clearly outlining the learning goals, deliverables, resources, timeline, and mechanism for feedback. The supervising faculty member must have a School of Graduate Studies (SGS) Graduate Faculty Membership Appointment through the Department of History or another unit in the university. These are not meant to replace existing curriculum where sufficient course offerings are available. HIS1999H courses may count towards a student's course requirements at the discretion of the Associate Chair (Graduate). They should fill a gap in knowledge required for the 2000 paper/PhD dissertation.

The Directed Research of 2000 paper is intended to help students develop skills in research, in the use of primary-source evidence and in defining and defending an argument with a substantial body of evidence within a limited space. It is an original research paper in the format of an article, making extensive use of primary sources available in Toronto or accessible by interlibrary loan set within the framework of the existing historiography. The paper should be about 7,000 to 8,000 words (approximately 35 pages), the expected length of a submission to a scholarly history journal.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to some of the key conceptual developments in the history and philosophy of science and technology. History of science and philosophy of science tend to operate at a distant remove from each other: they often employ different methodologies to address different kinds of questions. The objective of this course is to carve out common ground in which historians and philosophers may productively engage with one another, and at the same time to survey various issues in the history and philosophy of biology. We will do this in an unorthodox way. We will focus on the 'problem of the organism.' Organisms, of course, are the subject matter of biology. They are at the same time problematic sorts of natural phenomena. We will the changing approaches to understanding (or ignoring) organisms throughout the history of biology, as a lens through which to discuss issues in the philosophy of science such as explanation, the metaphysics of science, experiment, modelling, laws of nature.

Normally, 1 full or 2 half-courses allowed per program. Instructor's permission required. Topic is chosen by the student, with approval of a particular faculty member, who meets with the student regularly to discuss readings. Involves the writing of at least one essay. Can also be taken during the summer.

Normally, 1 full or 2 half-courses allowed per program. Instructor's permission required. Topic is chosen by the student, with approval of a particular faculty member, who meets with the student regularly to discuss readings. Involves the writing of at least one essay. Can also be taken during the summer.

Normally, 1 full or 2 half-courses allowed per program. Instructor's permission required. Topic is chosen by the student, with approval of a particular faculty member, who meets with the student regularly to discuss readings. Involves the writing of at least one essay. Can also be taken during the summer.

The purpose of this course is for students to demonstrate their ability to conduct original research in their chosen field of interest that shows promise of eventual publication. Students pursue research projects of their own design over the course of the year in consultation with both the faculty member leading this seminar and with a faculty advisor specializing in their field of expertise. This course is required for all PhD students, and all students must pass this course with an A– or above to continue in the program.

This course provides MA students the opportunity to undertake original research in the social and humanistic studies of science, technology, and medicine with the goal of developing the student's capacity to effectively engage and contribute to existing scholarly literature. IHPST graduate students who wish to take this course must draw up a detailed course plan with a member of the IHPST graduate faculty who is prepared to provide supervision, and submit a Request for Reading and/or Research form that must be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies. This course can be taken in the Fall or Winter term.

A study of selected topics in the history of mathematics, with emphasis on moments of debate, novel developments, and the social, political, and cultural contexts of mathematical thought and practice.

The aim of this graduate seminar is to introduce important developments in the history of physics and to explore the ways to understand them. In the semester, we will examine in chronological order the emergence or consolidation of some primary areas of physical sciences, such as mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum physics, and relativity. Although these topics by no means exhaust all the noteworthy episodes, they nonetheless represent the major route along which physics has taken shape. In addition to its historical subject, each session corresponds to a historiographical theme, which can be philosophical, sociological, or cultural. We will discuss how historians have addressed these themes and turned them into approaches of writing the history of physics, and assess the implications of such approaches.

This course provides an overview of selected major developments in the history of the life sciences, mainly in evolution and genetics in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It also examines key historiographical questions in the history of science. Each week we focus on one historical event and also on one historiographical issue in the history of science, but we will strive to connect them to earlier events and debates. The readings include primary sources, secondary sources, and historiographical discussions. We learn to interpret primary texts and use secondary literature in developing historical arguments.

This course offers an introduction to the history of medicine in relation to societies, politics, and culture. We shall address topics such as changing views of the body and its functions, the social and cultural meaning of disease, the place of patients and medical practitioners in the world of healing and the role of religion and magic in health-related pursuits. We will also explore the bearings medical pursuits had on the creation and substantiation of notions of gender, investigate how practitioners sought to gain and maintain authority over knowledge, institutions, and patients, and examine the place of visual and material culture in the production and dissemination of medical knowledge.

In the last century and a half, a new discipline called Psychology has aimed to place our knowledge of the human mind, brain, and behavior on a scientific footing. Using a wide array of scientific tools of analysis, professional psychologists have been studying fundamental questions that concern all of us. In this course we examine the history of professional psychology, along with its widespread and often contested social relevance, from a number of angles. We will focus on major figures and key controversies about scientific ontology, epistemology, and methodology, and about the social implications and public policy uses of psychological knowledge. We will consider how psychology was first established as an academic discipline, became institutionalized, grew as a profession, and came to be the large, diverse field of scientific inquiry, social practices, and policy applications that it is today. We will examine the social context and specific influences (i.e., politics, wars, social structures, patronage, academic environments, influential figures, etc.) that have shaped the development of psychology and its relationships with the wider society. And we will consider how the history of psychology can be relevant to the theory, practice, and social relevance of psychology.

This seminar examines the history and philosophy of the social sciences. We will study key controversies about the subject matter, methodology, and aims of the social sciences, about the relationship between the individual and society, about central concepts such as race, class, and gender, about the causes of historical change, about the prospects for social progress, and about the relevance and uses of social science knowledge, practices, and expertise in public policy and the wider society. And we will examine the social context and various influences (i.e., industrialization, religion, politics, war, social structure, patronage, academic environment, influential personalities, cultural attitudes, and values, etc.) that have shaped the development of the social sciences and their significance in the modern world.

We will also use materials from this class to examine fundamental questions about the history of science: What sorts of questions do historians of science ask? What types of frameworks of inquiry do they work with? What sorts of answers do they offer? What kinds of evidence do they rely upon? What rhetorical strategies and story-telling techniques do they employ?

Why do we do what we do? What factors play a role in shaping our personality? What biological and social elements help configure a person’s moral, intellectual, and emotional character? In this course we examine landmark studies that shook standard beliefs about human nature in their time. We analyze those studies in their historical context and discuss their lasting relevance to social, ethical, and policy debates. In addition, this course will help students to understand what is involved in choosing a large research project and to think about the steps needed to turn it into a viable dissertation/book project. Thus, we will devote parts of some meetings to discuss the different aspects of conceptualizing a project, organizing the research, developing a manageable timetable, and writing the different parts of a book (introduction, arch of the chapters, conclusion).

In this course, we examine the mutual shaping of engineering with technology, politics, society, culture, technoscience, and/or environment from the early modern period to the present. Topics include, but are not limited to, technological systems, infrastructures, technocracy, state building, revolutions, wars, engineering education, engineering epistemology, engineering ethics, design, management, inventions, innovations, and tech ecosystems.

This course is designed as a graduate level introduction to philosophy of science. The lectures and discussions will explore some important issues in the philosophical literature on the natural sciences: rationality, experimental practice, theory, the role of instruments, the unity/disunity of the sciences, problem-solving in the sciences, incommensurability, and the underdetermination thesis, to name just a few. Wherever possible, we will attempt to situate these issues in their historical context, and to relate their emergence to associated intellectual approaches (e.g., feminist, anthropological, sociological trends). In order to facilitate discussion, however, we will chiefly be concerned with the treatment that these issues have been given by a handful of scholars (especially Kuhn, van Fraassen Hacking, Latour, Cartwright) who have contributed greatly to the present shape of philosophy of science and the considerable influence that it enjoys in many academic circles.

The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis is the current orthodox theory of evolution. It arose early in the 20th century through an amalgamation of Darwin's theory of natural selection and Mendel's theory of inheritance. It is now coming up for a century of unprecedented success. (The first serious intimation of a synthesis was produced by Fisher in 1918). Recently, however, the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis has begun to receive a battery of challenges. These arise mostly from empirical work in development, inheritance, the evolution of novelties inter alia. The challenges have provoked biologists, historians, and philosophers to re-evaluate the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, to investigate its conceptual foundations, to explore its possible limitations. Increasingly calls for an extensive revision, expansion, or wholesale rejection of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis — as well as systematic defences of the Synthesis — are being heard. The objective of this seminar series is to investigate the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, its formulation, its conceptual foundations, the empirical and conceptual challenges it faces, and its prospects for survival or revision.

This reading-based seminar offers an overview of the development of HPS as a discipline. Students will gain familiarity with key concepts and methods in the field; and will developed a shared analytic vocabulary for pursuing HPS based on reading significant figures in the field. Readings may include works by Thomas Khun, Hasok Chang, Ian Hacking, Donna Haraway, Peter Gallison, Lorraine Daston, and Michel Foucault, among others.

This course introduces students to various themes and methodological approaches in the social studies of medicine. Topical, methodological, and analytical emphasis varies depending on the instructor's area of specialization, but may include such themes as psychiatry, public health, medical ethnography, disability studies, biomedicine, bioethics, and philosophy of medicine.

This seminar course provides a graduate level introduction to the philosophy of medicine, a fast-growing philosophical field. We will explore both classic and cutting-edge work. In line with the orientation of the field, we will examine metaphysical/conceptual and epistemic questions in medicine and medical research rather than the kinds of questions traditionally asked in the field of bioethics. Also following the contemporary focus of philosophy of medicine, most of the readings are situated in the philosophy of science. Topics explored will include: varieties of medicine (mainstream, alternative) and their critics; the concepts and nature of health, disease, and illness; disease kinds and classification; the philosophy of psychiatry; biomedical science and medical explanation; the methodology of clinical research and epidemiology; the epistemology of evidence-based medicine; clinical reasoning; and values and the social epistemology of medicine. While most readings follow an 'analytic' approach to philosophy of medicine, some follow a more 'continental' approach. Classes will consist in a discussion of the course readings with an introduction to the topics provided by the instructor. Links to all required readings will be provided.

Henri Poincare, the French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher said that "if this calculus be condemned, then the whole of the sciences must also be condemned." Indeed, the concept of probability plays a crucial role in modern science and contemporary philosophy. While there is a broad consensus about the formal theory of probability, there is no agreement on its interpretation. In the course, we shall first look at the history of probability until the 19th century, then study the main contemporary interpretations of probability and finally consider some applications of these interpretations in science and/or philosophy. The course will be taught as a seminar in which students present the main readings and some of the further readings.

The economic realm dominates many central aspects of our life. Economics is the science that is supposed to describe and explain economic phenomena. Yet, economic theory is a perplexing subject. A few centuries after its birth, its cognitive status and methods are still largely unclear and controversial. The course aims to encourage a critical, philosophical reflection on modern economic theory and its fundamental concepts and postulates, and achieve a better understanding of modern economies and their relevance for society and social justice. We shall evaluate issues including the nature of economic knowledge and explanation, the status of the fundamental postulates, theories and models in economics, the influence of ideology, the concept of economic efficiency, the question whether economics is descriptive or normative and some central questions concerning the relevance of economics for collective choice and social justice. This is a seminar in which students present the main readings.

This graduate course is delivered as a seminar. We will explore an integrative approach to the history and philosophy with an emphasis on central systematic questions in the field of science and religion. No specific philosophical or theological background is required, but any prior training in the philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and theology are an asset.

This course considers historical entanglements of science, medicine, and slavery. It articulates a critical reflection of both the ways in which medicine and natural inquiry supported the institution of slavery and the settings in which slavery was integral to the production of medical and natural knowledge. At the same time, the course examines the epistemic role of enslaved individuals and communities in the histories of science, medicine, and technology. In recent years, scholars have analyzed the institutional apparatuses of imperial science and medicine, paying special attention to the mobility of individuals, knowledge, practices, and objects across the globe. However, the place of slavery in historical processes of production, movement and transfer of natural and medical knowledge has only started to be explored. This course draws attention to entanglements of slavery, science, and medicine in different regions, settings, and temporalities. It considers how the study of these entanglements can potentially shift our perspective on how we think and write about our discipline. Key topics include the examination of the place of slavery in histories of: medicine and anatomy; gender and generation; medical experimentation; disease and disability; collecting and natural history; the rise of racial science; and bodies, violence and the archive.

Traditionally, epistemology has dealt with the ways in which an individual acquires knowledge through perception and reasoning. However, in recent years it has become apparent that the traditional discussions of knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular, fail to capture important aspects of the social dimension of knowledge. We acquire most of our beliefs from the testimony of others, including experts, and from social institutions that are in charge of the generation of knowledge. The relatively recent branch of philosophy that deals with the social dimensions of knowledge is called social epistemology. It has developed through dialogue with the history of science, sociology of scientific knowledge, anthropology, and philosophy of science. The course will provide an introduction to social epistemology, in general, and social epistemology of science, in particular. It will deal with various aspects of the nature of knowledge from this new perspective, including issues such as the development of scientific knowledge, 'knowledge that' (something true) vs. 'knowledge how,' the influence of social and cultural factors on scientific methodology, scientific rationality and scientific knowledge, scientific realism vs. social constructivism, distributive cognition, holism vs. methodological individualism, trust, expertise, consensus, distributive epistemic injustice, and feminist epistemology.

Ruminations about causality are at the center of our very idea of a science. This course will explore various developments associated with the scientific revolution (understood in the broader sense to signify the rejection of the Aristotelian worldview and its replacement by the mechanistic cosmos associated with Galileo, Descartes, and Newton) from the point of view of the notion of causation (a subsidiary goal will be the use the scientific revolution as a background for helping us get clear on the notion of causality). Starting with a discussion of Aristotle's theory of causation as elaborated both in his work as philosopher and as naturalist, we will then turn to developments in astronomy and cosmology, mechanics, natural history, biology, geology, and chemistry, exploring the sense, if any, in which these developments involved a rejection of Aristotle's theory(s) of causation. The course will be conducted as a seminar, with students selecting topics for presentation at our first meeting.