Course Syllabus

Welcome to the Philosophy of Science!

Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:30am-12:50pm.  I will often grab lunch after class; if you’d like to join me for lunch, just ask.

I’m Professor Patrick Frierson (you can call me Patrick or Professor Frierson, whichever you prefer)

My office hours this semester are Tuesdays from 2-3, Wednesdays from 10-11, and by appointment.  I’m usually available for appointments to meet on zoom after 9pm or in person Monday and Friday mornings 10-11:30ish, but I’m also available at other times.  You don’t have to have pressing business in order to meet with me, especially during regular office hours.  You can come to talk about anything class or Whitman related.  (I’m an academic advisor and was pre-law advisor for many years, so I also like just talking about future plans and students’ lives.)

Most of what you need to know in terms of day-to-day work is on the timeline below and the linked assignments.  Those will provide the readings for each day and the required writing for each day.  Note that for a 4 credit class, you should expect to do about 3 hours of homework for each hour you spend in class.  That adds up to eight or nine hours a week spent reading the materials for this class and writing up the responses.  I strongly recommend scheduling time to spend doing these readings.  They are tough and there are a lot of them, and I expect you to read them carefully and think about them on your own.  Avoid surfing the internet, even to look up stuff that seems relevant, while you are doing work for this class.

Here I just want to add a few general policies that will apply to this class.

Books

There are two required books for this course, which are both available in the Whitman Bookstore:

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (ISBN: 978-0226458120)

Gillian Barker and Phil Kitcher, Philosophy of Science: A New Introduction (ISBN:  ‎ 978-0195366198)

Grading

I will be using Canvas’s point system to give you an ongoing sense for your grade in the class.  Each assignment has a certain number of points, and your final grade will be based on your overall point total (as a percentage of total points available).  Almost every day, there is a small writing assignment usually worth 3-5 points.  Altogether, these small assignments are worth up to 86 points.  In addition, there are five higher stakes assignments:

1. Short paper #1, worth 40 points, due February 20.
2. Take-home closed book quiz, worth 60 points, due April 2.
3. Short paper #2, worth 40 points, due April 12.
4. Final paper, worth 150 points, due May 6 (with drafts due sooner).
5. Final exam, worth 150 points, will be taken in class on May 11. Plan your travel accordingly.  This is an in person exam.

I am trying to use Canvas to give you an accurate ongoing record of your grade.  I find Canvas difficult to manage and have found that many students in many classes end up treating their Canvas percentage as their grade, so I have sought to design the system this semester so that the Canvas grade is accurate.  Note that Canvas is a complex software interface, so I reserve the right to correct mistakes if I (or the system) make mistakes. 

Note, too, that sufficiently poor attendance can override your Canvas grade, and I may also adjust your final grade based on class participation.  Excellent participation could bump you up a bit (from a B+ to an A-, for example), and a lack of participation or participation that is disrespectful or disrupts others’ learning can significantly lower your final grade.

Attendance

For this class, you are expected to contribute to a learning community through coming to class prepared and participating in a substantive, meaningful, inclusive, and respectful way.  As noted above, the quality of your participation may affect your final grade since I can adjust the grade shown in Canvas based on your participation.  I will not be granting excuses for absences, but I understand that circumstances can sometimes require that students miss class, even for reasons not included in the College’s official authorized absences (sports, etc.).  However, students who miss more than 20% of the class (6 total class periods) will not pass the class, regardless of their grade in Canvas.  [Note: these six absences do not include absences for which a student has a religious or disability exception, but I must approve those exceptions in writing (email) before the end of the second week of classes, and students will need to make up missed work.]  

Plagiarism, Academic Honesty, AI, etc.

I believe that one of the central missions of a liberal arts college is to help students think for themselves.  That includes reading difficult material for yourself, writing arguments yourself, formulating positions for yourself.  We live in a world in which various media constantly tell us what to think, usually in short snippets or manipulative programming.  The material we are reading in this class makes complex arguments that are hard to understand and that encourage you to think about topics in new ways.  I want you to think for yourself rather than to become a cog in a propaganda machine.

At the same time, thinking and learning are social processes, facilitated by conversation and dialogue and also by tools that can help us think for ourselves.  I encourage you to use our class discussions and your classmates and friends as conversation partners who can help you think about the subjects we are discussing.  I encourage you to visit the CoWS for help with writing.  When necessary, I encourage you to look things up in dictionaries, Wikipedia, various web sites, but as you engage with online resources, be wary of how you can be distracted and manipulated.

For all of the work that you turn in for this class, I want you to turn in work that reflects your own thinking and writing.  If you consult with any other sources (including the CoWS, AI, websites, books, friends, chalk on a sidewalk), you should disclose those sources.  If you directly use language from another source, you should use quotation marks and cite that source.  I will assume that you use the built-in grammar and spelling checkers in Word or googledoc, but if you use Grammerly or ChatGPT or other AI to polish your writing, tell me what you used.  If you use AI to do work for you (beyond correctly spelling and grammar), tell me what prompts/questions/instructions you gave the AI and, if you significantly edited the AI-generated results, provide the original that you revised.

Accommodations

In accordance with the College’s Religious Accommodations Policy, I will provide reasonable accommodations for students who have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments, or required attendance in class because of religious observances.  If you find it at all awkward to ask for a religious accommodation, please feel free to call on Whitman’s Interfaith Chaplain, Adam Kirtley, who can advocate on your behalf.

If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please contact Disability Support Services at DSS@whitman.edu, or visit Olin Hall 334, for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. All information about disabilities is considered private; if I receive notification from Disability Support Services that you are eligible to receive an accommodation due to a verified disability, I will provide it in as discreet a manner as possible.

For either religious or disability-related accommodations, you must notify me before the end of the second week of classes regarding your needs so that we can work out a reasonable plan for accommodating those needs.  You cannot receive accommodations after-the-fact for classes or work that you have already missed.  If at any point you find that I am not adequately respecting your need for accommodations and do not choose to speak with me about that concern, you may contact the Chair of the Faculty, Rebecca Hanrahan.  I also encourage you to reach out to your academic advisor, who can discretely reach out to me.  If you believe I am guilty of biased conduct towards you, you may file a bias incident report at https://www.whitman.edu/about/inclusive-excellence/bias-reporting-and-response.

If you are a student without a legally-protected disability but who has specific learning needs that I should be aware of, please let me know as soon as possible.  My goal is for this class to be available and supportive of the learning of all of my students.

Finally, if you find the assignments, lectures, or other aspects of the course either confusing, or if you find yourself spending more than 10 hours in a given week on ordinary work for this class, please come talk to me.  Whether or not you have a diagnosed disability, most students benefit from reflecting on their own particular learning strategies and working with their professors to develop ways to improve how they go about doing the work for the course.