COURSE DESCRIPTION: The Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the modern era. Although it is a theory of biology with its revolutionary consequences in all life sciences it has also had an enormous impact on science, philosophy, religion, and politics for the last 150 years. In this course, as we examine the evolutionary thinking by the work of a number of key representative figures in the past and present we will also be questioning as to whether scientific theories, in general, and the evolutionary theory, in particular, are social constructions by searching for values inherent in scientific theories and research.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: The aim of this course is to demonstrate students by concrete examples from the history of evolutionary biology that, although science involves social (nonscientific/epistemic) values both in discovering and testing scientific theories, it, nevertheless, progresses and achieves objective knowledge by removing these values from science.

COURSE TOPICS: Problem of objectivity and subjectivity in science, epistemic (scientific) and non-epistemic (social) values in science, the role of metaphors in science.