Philosophy [ WFARM1160 ]

An incursion into philosophy of science aims at enabling the student to tackle, with a philosophical mind, the signification of occidental science. It will imply a familiarization with the issues raised by epistemological turns in philosophy of science and biotechnologies. We will for instance question the contributions of Darwinism or Lamarckism to philosophical representations to bioethical issues we will confront the challenges of evolutionary sciences in an ethical perspective.

The objective is to offer the students some familiarity with continental philosophers and conceptual schemas that will help them situate the occidental history of medical science and analyse the social impact of medical and scientific discoveries. This basic knowledge of philosophers (Platon, Descartes, Kant, Canguilhem) will aim at helping the students articulate philosophical interrogations and the history of scientific inquiry throughout modern history.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

The course will be articulated around three parts 1) Introduction to philosophy 2) Anthropology of sciences 3) Ethics and the sciences. The course will more pratically analyse the concepts of man versus nature, the norm and the pathological, the new ethical questions raised by human experimentation.

New information and texts will regularly be offered on iCampus to complement the syllabus.