NB: You are not responsible for reading every text listed; you should choose at least one principal text and 1-2 others based on your interests.
Aim to complete your chosen readings by the date listed.
week | date | topic | reading | milestones |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Tuesday, 15 January | Overview; What do we know to be obviously true about the physical world? Can we be sure? | Rohrlich, chapters 1-3; Sklar, pages 1-18 |
|
Classical Foundations | ||||
Thursday, 17 January | Spheres, ferris wheels, & heresy: Sleepwalking to heliocentrism |
Kuhn, Copernican Revolution, ch. 3, pp. 123-44 & 181-4; Koestler, pp. 20-222; Feynman, ch. 2; Rohrlich, ch. 4 |
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2 | Tuesday, 22 January | De Brahe, Kepler, & Galileo: The birth of modern cosmology |
Kuhn, Copernican Revolution, pp. 200-37; Koestler, pp. 227-503 |
Homework 1 due (We know this is short notice, but it's needed to get you started thinking AHEAD of lecture.) |
Thursday, 24 January | From Kepler to Newton; The meaning (& ambiguities) of Newton's laws |
Rohrlich, ch. 5 | ||
3 | Tuesday, 29 January | Newtonian space & time | Sklar, pp. 19-25; Rohrlich, ch. 5 |
|
Transition to Modern Physics | ||||
Thursday, 31 January | Causality, determinism, & all that | Bohm, pp. 1-10; Sklar, pp. 79-85 & 202-4; Feynman, ch 4; Gettier, 'Is justified true belief knowledge?' |
Homework 2 due | |
4 | Tuesday, 5 February | Conservation laws; The limits of the classical world |
Sklar, pp. 94-117, 121-32, & 142-55; Bohm, pp. 10-33; Feynman, ch. 5; Knobe, 'Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language'; Vihvelin, review with Frankfurt examples |
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Thursday, 7 February | Waves, Maxwell, & invariance | Einstein, chs. 1-8; Rohrlich, pp. 49-55 |
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5 | Tuesday, 12 February | From the aether to Einstein's postulates | Rohrlich, pp. 55-62 | Homework 3 due |
Spacetime: Special & General Relativity | ||||
Thursday, 14 February | Special relativity | Einstein, chs. 9-17; Rohrlich, pp. 62-72; Sklar, pp. 25-40; Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, ch. 10 |
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6 | Tuesday, 19 February | Unification of electricity & magnetism; E = mc2 & Minkowski space |
Rohrlich, pp. 73-86 | |
Thursday, 21 February | General relativity | |||
7 | Tuesday, 26 February | Curved spacetime: The geometry of the Universe? |
Rohrlich, ch. 7; Sklar, pp. 40-69 |
Homework 4 due |
Thursday, 28 February | Big bang cosmology: Will the expansion stop? |
Sklar, pp. 69-90; Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions |
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8 | Tuesday, 5 March | Summary; Philosophical implications; Paradigms, positivism, & falsification |
Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions | |
Quantum Mechanics, Philosophical Responses & Consciousness | ||||
Thursday, 7 March | Key experiments leading to quantum mechanics | Rohrlich, chs. 9-10; Sklar, pp. 157-72 |
Homework 5 due | |
9 | Tuesday, 12 March | Two-slits done doubly well | ||
Thursday, 14 March | The fuzzy reality of quantum mechanics | Rohrlich, ch. 11; Sklar, ch. 4 |
419: term paper consultations (see Prof. Phillips) |
|
19 & 21 March | Spring Break | |||
10 | Tuesday, 26 March | Einstein loses the quantum reality battle | Sklar, pp.202-26; Rohrlich, pp. 169-80 |
Homework 6 due |
Thursday, 28 March | Consciousness: Functionalism | Handouts (see Compass); Sklar, pp.153-4 |
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11 | Tuesday, 2 April | Consciousness: Physicalism | Handouts (see Compass) | 419: term paper topic/ abstract due |
Time & Cosmology | ||||
Thursday, 4 April | Primer on probability | Rohrlich, ch 9; Sklar, pp. 92-108 |
Homework 7 due | |
12 | Tuesday, 9 April | Arrow of time | Sklar, pp. 121-54 | |
Thursday, 11 April | Cosmology | 419: term paper outline/ partial draft due | ||
13 | Tuesday, 16 April | Cosmology/ inflation; The beginning & end of time; What is there? How much is there? What about entropy? |
Hawking, chs. 3 & 9 | |
Thursday, 18 April | The anthropic principle | |||
14 | Tuesday, 23 April | Theories of unification | 419: term paper rough draft due | |
Thursday, 25 April | Postmodernism | Hawking, ch. 8 | ||
16 | Tuesday, 30 April | Wrap-up | ||
Thursday, 2 May | Reading Day | |||
Wednesday, 8 May | Final Exam, 8a–11a (in 276 Loomis) | 419: final term paper draft due (by 8a: submit on paper at exam and on Compass) |