学生对 爱丁堡大学 提供的 Philosophy and the Sciences: Introduction to the Philosophy of Physical Sciences 的评价和反馈

It was a really good course. Something very different for me. I just wish it was a litter longer than 4 weeks.

was expecting a more generalistic (not so focused on cosmology) course on episthemology

too much mathematics equations and formulas

Very technical and focuses more on cosmology than on the principles of Philosophy of Science

Pretty good, but some of the positions were a little poor. Judging religion with scientific parameters is simply wrong, as wrong as judging science with religious parameters; the debate between creationism and evolutionary biology is outdated at least in the creationist position; better effort to try to rescue evolutionism, and not the same on creationism. Lastly, reducing religion to "religious experience" or "tradition" or "book" or "culture" is as very poor understanding of religion.

I am a fervent and sufficiently knowledgeable catholic, but as an engineer with studies in astrophysics, I'm really open to good arguments. I would recommend one reading and one source, as a way to update some of the arguments: the reading is Fides et ratio, from John Paul II, and the source is disf.org (italian) or inters.org (english), which is a set of articles made by proffesional scholars, on interdisciplinary matters of science and faith.

Thanks a lot for an otherwise very enjoyable class!

Though familiar with the material, the lectures made several very nice key points about the Philosophy of Science which I found useful. However there are a few issues :

-a lot of the lecturing is on a board which is hard to read

-there is a lot more science than there is Philosophy

The latter isn't necessarily a bad thing, but based on the title I expected more of the latter.

Really informative. Equations were a bit difficult to understand. I felt that there was a bias towards anthropic principle.

Found it a bit hard to follow, some aspects could've been explained in more detail.

2nd time trying this. Hard to understand subject. Short class.

Waste of Time : supereasy and shallow

I did not enjoy this course for the following reasons:

1.In the course presentation it is not specified which are the prerequisites for the learners. In this case it seems to me that the potential learner or student has got to have a good knowledge of modern astrophysics, if he or she wants to fully understand the matter as it is presented.

2. The videoclips by dr. J. Peacock are certainly clever, but are generally rather obscure and uncomprehensible by those who do not have a good knowledge of modern astrophysics. I must confess that I have understood almost nothing from those lectures, and I would not be able to repeat the arguments, even not in detail, to somebody else who does not know the subject.

3. The course slides are oftenj obscure, particularly those of weeks 3 and 4. Week 3 slides from page 13 to 42 inclusive are almost incomprehensible (even when supported by the video lecture), those of week 4 are about 50% unclear. Week 1 and 2 slides are better understandable.

4. In the philosophical part, the stress is on Duhem's, Popper's and Kuhn's theories, but for example, the Hume's critic of the cause concept is not even mentioned.

5. In the videos it is not possible to see what dr. J. Peacock writes on the whiteboard (problem of illumination during making of the videos?)

6. There is no real forum. The majority of threads are either instructor created, and contain reference for additional readings, or are rather old, dating eight monts or one year ago. So, there is no real feedback and discussions with other peers in the course.

7. I found the article, suggested as additional reading, by O. Lahav and M. Massimi, Dark Energy, Paradigm Shift, and the Role of Evidence, as well done and instructive.