PHIL 245Critical Thinking About Science
- Faculty
- Arts
- Last listed
- Spring 2024
No longer offered. It was in Waterloo’s course catalog since at least Winter 2020 (as far back as Open Data goes) to Spring 2024. It isn’t in the 2024–25 or later calendars.
In the course catalog from Winter 2020 to Spring 2024; Open Data has no classes for it in that time.
How does science work? Does anything fall outside the scope of scientific inquiry? Under what circumstances do scientific claims deserve our trust? Does corporate funding of research affect its credibility? What can scientific failures teach us about scientific success? By looking at case studies of recognized scientific successes and failures, this course addresses these questions in a way that emphasizes core philosophical concepts in epistemology, philosophy of science, and ethics.
Discussed on r/uwaterloo
3 posts and comments in 2 threads mention PHIL 245, October 2016 to December 2024. Quoted word for word, newest first; each reply sits under the post and the comment that started its branch. Search r/uwaterloo for newer posts.
Fall 2016
Need input on my course selection for 2A CS; 6 courses 1 point, 13 comments
u/I-am_SHER_locked: “… I'm thinking something like PHIL 245 (critical thinking about science, which should be challenging and fun). Should I also swap PHYS 122 with a course in which I'll actually learn something brand new? …”
u/sniper23456: “… PHIL245 I assume will be a lot of writing and reading which is time consuming and honestly I hate when TAs are too busy with their own shit that they don't put enough into TAing. …”
Fuck Phil145 6 points, 12 comments
u/confused_buffoon: “legit. if you look up PHIL 245 and its course description it makes you feel like you're stuck in some sort of weird warp of reality”
Check it elsewhere
- Undergraduate Calendar, 2023–24Its last calendar entry, on ucalendar
- Course outlinesSyllabi from past terms (UW login)
- UW FlowStudent ratings and reviews
- WClassesPast sections back to 2004, and who taught them
In the scanned calendars
How it read in each calendar from 1991–92 to 1994–95, newest first. The text is OCR of the scanned pages; years whose wording matches are shown once, from the clearest scan. Each year links to its page on uwloo and to that page of the scanned PDF.
1991–92 to 1994–95 4 calendars
An analysis of more complex types of reasoning, including statistical reasoning, decision strategies, and reasoning involving causes and correlations. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of concrete examples.
Prereq: PHIL 145 or 140 recommended
3 class hours a week · 0.5 credit