66-105 DC First-Year Seminar: Scientific Thinking in Children, in Adults in Scientists
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
The aim of this course for you to learn how to provide a coherent answer to the question What does it mean to do science You will discover that the answer depends on being able to define the scientific method and scientific knowledge. We will sample a very tiny part of the vast literature on Science. This will involve reading selected papers about scientific reasoning, creativity, invention, and discovery. You will learn something about what philosophers, historians, sociologists have written about how science is done, and you will also see what scientists themselves have to say about the matter. In one part of the course, we will read selected topics from a standard textbook on thinking and problem solving. You will have a chance to do some psychology research of your own that reveals how people go about forming hypotheses and designing experiments to test them. In addition, we will look at studies and research papers about the cognitive psychology of science, and you will read several primary sources articles from journals in cognitive psychology that deal with the psychology of scientific reasoning. Finally, we will spend some time learning about research on teaching science in the early grades, and examine some of the current controversies about science.
Prerequisites: none listed
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