20706039 - SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS

The course of Science and Metaphysics is part of the program in Philosophy and it is included among the complementary training activities.The aim of this course is to illustrate and discuss philosophical issues connected to science, and the contribution that scientific theories can make towards our understanding of the fundamental structure of reality. Students will acquire knowledge of specific research themes at the boundary between theoretical philosophy and the empirical sciences, as well as the ability to compare the methods, themes and results of philosophy and science, and put them together.
Students will be able to apply the knowledge acquired in the discussion and argument both from a theoretical and a scientific perspective. At the end of the course the student will acquire:
-) Ability to analyze and interpret philosophical and scientific texts;
-) Properties of language and argumentation;
-) Ability to contextualize the acquired knowledge in the philosophical and scientific debate.
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Programme

The course will deal in general with some themes from the history and philosophy of space and time. Short anthological excerpts from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Galileo, Descartes, Leibniz Newton, Kant Einstein and Bergson will be read. One of the main themes of the course will concern the nature of the present moment: its interest depends on the fact that while physics does not deal with it, from the point of view of our experience it separates the immutable past from a future that is not fatalistically understood, but instead appears 'open' to our free decision.


Core Documentation

1) Friedel Weinert The March of Time. Evolving Conceptions of
Time in the Light of Scientific Discoveries Springer 2022

2) N. Huggett, 1999, Space from Zeno to Einstein, MIT PRESS

Reference Bibliography

Mazur J. The measured time. Our myth of measured Time. D. Mermin, Its about time

Type of delivery of the course

frontal lectures

Attendance

ATTENDANCE REQUIRED

Type of evaluation

Questions on the program