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Mathias Frisch
PHIL250 Expecting a B Anonymous 02/05/2011 |
It would be an understatement to say that this course has changed the way I look at the scientific method and everything in the natural world. I came into the course, a skeptic of philosophy and its uses. I leave now, still a skeptic in some form, but certainly able to see the importance in assessing scientific processes using philosophical methods. This is one of the few classes I have taken, that I would recommend to every single student on campus. If you are a creationist or climate skeptic waiting for that one moment when you're 40 years old to “look at the evidence”, do it now. If you are a stubborn logical empiricist as I once was, and cannot think of any reason why science may not be uniform, please take this course. You are embarrassing your own philosophy and science as well. Now, only if I could somehow get my creationist father, who thinks “evolution is only a theory” to take this course... Lectures, depending on the philosophical view, can be either extremely interesting, or some slightly sleep-inducing. For instance, some parts of lectures concerning the history with the logical empiricist views could have been better. Or maybe what is boring is the history itself. And the feminist critique of science seemed to drag on a bit more than even the feminists can take. But other than that, lectures were excellent, made doubly so by his act of posting them on ELMS. The main textbook, Theory and Realty was easy to keep up with, with author's wit and expertise engaging the reader. It also proved extremely helpful for examinations. However, I felt that the professor may have dwelt too much on Kuhn's “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. As landmark as I think the book was in its time and ours, I don't see any reason why Kuhn's model had to be given more thought to than, say, any of the later philosophers. Maybe I'm biased: Kuhn is an extremely boring and inefficient writer. He makes a lot of interesting cases, but the book could have sufficed with less pages. I should add, the monumental task of getting the students to read 8 chapters of Kuhn in a week is intimidating. W.W.K.D? What would Kuhn Do? Weekly ELMS quizzes encouraged us all to keep up with the readings. Quizzes were fairly easy, with maybe 5 difficult questions in 4 distinct quizzes (4 questions each). Two exams are given: a midterm and a final. Professor and teaching assistant, Lisa L. makes sure that we take either exam fully prepared. I have not been to Frisch's office hours, but I have friends say that he is willing to devote a good amount of his time to making sure that you understand the material. They are also highly responsive to E-mail, although Lisa, the TA was about 10 times quicker and more responsive in replying to E-mails. So, if in doubt, send the email by Lisa. Lisa also seemed to take a load off in writing the final paper. She had kept office hours, and read through copies of drafts, and finished papers. In discussion sessions, she helped clarify the more difficult concepts. |
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Mathias Frisch
Expecting an A Anonymous 12/11/2010 |
This class is basically what you'd expect from a class on time, which is either fascinating or boring, depending on what type of a person you are. I have only minor criticisms of Dr. Frisch. He's very good at explaining and presenting what he calls "philosophical puzzles," but the discussion was somewhat weak. He dismissed other people's points every now and then, which gave us less material to discuss. But I hear this class is being offered as a lecture next semester, which might fix these problems. |