The University of New South Wales is the second biggest university in the state after the University of Sydney. This is the page in the handbook describing the Philosophies of Science unit in the Philosophy School.
There are three modules which are taught in rotation. The module on positivism is interesting from the CR point of view!
Module: “Positivism and After”
The nature and reliability of knowledge is a perennial question at the heart of the philosophy of science. Is there a scientific method? How does science differ from other enterprises and other kinds of knowledge? This course places such questions in the context of answers of the ‘Logical Postivists (Empiricists)’ in the early 20th Century – the Vienna Circle, following Ludwig Wittgenstein. The module will introduce key ideas of the Positivists concerning the nature of science and its methods, including particularly the question of how we might distinguish genuine science from various forms of pseudo-science or ‘metaphysics’. These philosophical attempts to understand the nature of science led to a major re-evaluation following the work of Thomas Kuhn on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the course will examine the directions that philosophy of science took in this post-positivist period, including the sociological approaches of ‘science studies’.
