The course will address three sorts of questions. The first set involves the status of science as a privileged source of knowledge: what, if anything, justifies this status? The second set involves concepts such as 'law' , 'cause', and 'explanation' which occur within scientific practice: how are these to be understood? The third set involves understanding the relationship between different scientific enterprises: is there a hierarchy of sciences ranging from physics at one end to the human or social sciences at the other? If so, how should this hierarchy be understood?
