Scientific literacy course for non-scientists

[Ruralguy]

I've heard people say very similar things about Aristotle (at least as far as Physics goes) and Freud...not because of difficulty of understanding, but because Aristotle's physics is highly misleading, and Freud's views of psychology might be very interesting, but are not generally thought to be valid modern interpretations because they weren't (and are not now) really data driven.

[Parasaurolophus]

I've heard people say very similar things about Aristotle (at least as far as Physics goes) and Freud...not because of difficulty of understanding, but because Aristotle's physics is highly misleading, and Freud's views of psychology might be very interesting, but are not generally thought to be valid modern interpretations because they weren't (and are not now) really data driven.

Yeah... Aristotle is a very hard read, and he's made harder by the fact that we're reading what are basically just his lecture notes. If you don't already sort of know what's going on, it can be really bewildering. You could have first-years read him, but I don't see why you would. Especially since they could just read Plato instead.

Aristotle does have the distinction of being a more rewarding read than Kant or Hegel, however! ;)  And his stuff is at least peppered with weird and shocking tidbits (like the number of teeth women supposedly have, which IIRC is something like 24...).

[jimbogumbo]

Gödel's incompleteness theorem was absolute cake to what we started with in Philosophy of Math, which was Frege. Trying to read the definition of "2" even now gives me a headache.

[Parasaurolophus]

Gödel's incompleteness theorem was absolute cake to what we started with in Philosophy of Math, which was Frege. Trying to read the definition of "2" even now gives me a headache.

Oh, that's a lovely piece! But yeah, not for the faint of heart!

I'm really enthralled by the question of what numbers are. My students, however... not so much! =p