daenerys comments on Which fields of learning have clarified your thinking? How and why? - Less Wrong

12 [deleted] 11 November 2011 01:04AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 06:34:51AM 2 points [-]

Upvoted, and ditto.

One of the best courses I took in terms of taking a step back and looking at how science and knowledge actually work was a history of science since the enlightenment.

We read Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and studied Popper. Learned about phlogiston theory, and the development of gas theory. We studied Darwin, as examined by his contemporaries, by reading the essays other scientists wrote about him and his works. Back then the big debate wasn't that evolution was "atheist" but rather on Darwin's methodology (deductivism v inductivism, basically)

tl:dr- History and Philosophy of Science is extremely worthwhile.