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HPS 0410 Einstein for Everyone

Somehow what Einstein did seems to have changed everything. Or at least that is the impression you get in almost every field of thought that looks at things at a really fundamental level. But how is someone who doesn't know much physics to figure out if this or that moral really is vindicated by Einstein's work? This course covers just enough of Einstein's work at an elementary level to help answer. 		Taught Spring Term 2007-2008, Spring Term 2006-2007.
HPS 1702/1703 Junior Senior Seminar for HPS Majors and Writing Workshop

This upper level undergraduate seminar is a "capstone" seminar for HPS undergraduate majors intended to give them experience at synthesizing history of science with philosophy of science. It combines a survey of the philosophy of science literature on induction and confirmation with case studies in history of science 		Taught Spring Term 2004-2005.

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Conformal diagram HPS 2534 General Relativity and Gravitation Fall 2007

Co-taught with John Earman

This seminar will survey historical and foundational issues in classical general relativity theory. Depending on seminar interest, we will look at Einstein's discovery of genreal relativity; the causal structure of spacetime; the initial value problem; the "hole argument", and the status of general covariance; and spacetime singularities.In general relativistic cosmology, we may look at the discovery of modern, relativistic cosmology; the "horizon problem" and the genesis of inflationary cosmology; accelerating expansion and "dark energy"; and the multiverse and anthropic selection.

Taught Fall Term 2007-2008
HPS 2501/Philosophy 2600 Philosophy of Science

This seminar is our graduate program's "core" introductory, seminar in philosophy of science for graduate students entering the department's graduate program and for graduate students in the Department of Philosophy. 		Taught Fall Term 2006-2007.
HPS 2626 Recent Topics in Philosopohy of Physics

This graduate seminar is devoted to reading recent topics in philosophy of physics. The choice of topics was determined by an in-seminar ballot. 		Taught Fall Term 2004-2005.
HPS 2509 Einstein 1905

This graduate seminar is devoted to studying the work of Einstein's annus mirabilis, 1905. It was the year in which he published his investigations on the reality of atoms (Doctoral dissertation, Brownian motion); his papers on special relativity and E=mc2; and his light quantum paper. 		Taught Spring term 2003-2004.