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The primary “text” for Frontiers of Science is the set of thriteen
lectures given each Monday throughout the semester. Attendance is therefore
mandatory. The readings for Frontiers comprise scientific articles, popularizations
thereof, and excerpts from books, all designed to provide context and background
for the lectures, as well as to extend the ideas presented.
The four course units for Fall 2005 are as follows: Brain and Behavior,
Biodiversity, Global Climate Change and Lives of Stars.
Four coursepacks, one for each subject unit, are available from Village Copier,
2872 Broadway (between 111th and 112th Street, on the East side of Broadway).
In addition, a printed version of the web-book Scientific
Habits of Mind by David Helfand is also available for purchase from
Village Copier. Finally, two books used for the climate change unit Fossil
Fuel CO2 and the Angry Climate Beast by Wallace Broecker and Two
Mile Time Machine by Richard Alley are available from the Bookstore.
The material in the Coursepacks will also be available at the Frontiers Courseworks
website. In order to minimize printing costs, all printed materials are in black
and white; furthermore, the extensive links in “Habits” which provide
both tutorials and more advanced material have not been reproduced. For this
material you should directly consult Scientific
Habits of Mind.
The first meeting of Frontiers of Science is MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 at Miller
Theater. Your seminar session scheduled for the first week of classes will NOT
meet. During the first week, then, you are expected to read through the entire
text of Scientific Habits of Mind; We will return to this material
throughout the semester, but you should become acquainted with all it contains
early on. Even though the chapters in “Habits” are relatively short,
they are moderately dense: one chapter-a-day is the recommended dosage. Consulting
some of the on-line links is also strongly encouraged.
The weekly lecture schedule is given below.
Lecture and Exam Schedule - Fall 2007
| September 10 | Brain & Behavior 1 (Hood)
What does your brain look like and how does it work? |
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September 17 | Brain & Behavior 2 (Hood)
How can we study the live human brain?
What is the relationship between your visual perception of the world and your brain? |
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September 24 | Brain & Behavior 3 (Hood)
Do you have one or two brains?
Are there right brain and left brain individuals? |
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October 1 | Building the Universe-Astronomy 1 (Johnston)
What structures exist in the Universe, where are they and how do we know? |
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October 8 | Building the Universe- Astronomy 2 (Johnston)
When did structures form in the Universe and what are they made from? |
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October 15 | Building the Universe- Astronomy 3 (Johnston)
Making sense of what we've found out: why should we see structures in the Universe at all? |
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October 22 | No Class: exam this week,
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October 26 | Friday, MIDTERM, 2:30 - 4pm
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October 29 | Climate 1 (Broecker)
Global Warming: Is it real? What can we do about it? |
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November 5 | Holiday
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November 12 | Climate 2 (Hemming)
How do we reconstruct climate records before historical times?
How has climate changed in the Mono Lake Basin of California? |
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November 19 | Climate 3 (Hemming)
What determines regional and global climate? |
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November 26 | Evolution 1 (Pollack)
DNA-based life is chemical, textual, improbable and historical. So are we. |
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December 3 | Evolution 2 (Pollack)
DNA-based life is the product of Natural Selection. So are we. |
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December 10 | Evolution 3 (Pollack)
The human exception: our mental worlds are unrestricted by our DNA. |
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December 17 | Final Exam 7-10pm
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