Members of the Fall 2007 Science & Society Seminar at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland. Front row: C. J. Dempsey, Demetria Cipriano, Emilia Ferrara, Julie Walz. Second row: Dr. Hans Engler (Mathematics), Will Handke, Jenna Kelly. Third row: Erica Beal, Kristina Mitchell, Deion Simmons, Christina Cauterucci, Brendan Smith. (Courtesy Kathryn Olesko)
By Megan Weintraub
As Georgetown’s Science & Society Seminar proves, science does not always involve countless hours in the lab sweating over test tubes and hunting for nanoparticles on sophisticated microscopes. It has also grown to include students’ deep understanding of the philosophical, historical, and social issues that govern both science and mathematics.
The Science & Society Seminar emerged in 2006 from the desire of Georgetown College to give first-year students an opportunity to delve into these issues in an intensive and supportive setting. Headed by Dr. Kathryn Olesko, and with the support of the College administration, the seminar leads 15 students each semester through this unique initiative. In the process, it fulfills general education requirements in the College each semester—one in science or mathematics and the other in the humanities, either history or philosophy. As part of the seminar, students co-register for courses in which science and humanities professors teach complementary themes that are informed by a variety of academic perspectives, including: bioethics, the environment, philosophy of science, history of science, technology, medicine, and even the language and literature of early modern forms of magic that were precursors to the sciences.
“College Dean Jane McAuliffe and I viewed the seminar as a way to raise the profile of the sciences on campus as well as to make the sciences more appealing to students who were not majoring in them,” explains Dr. Olesko.
In addition to taking courses, students attend dinner meetings with faculty and take field trips in the Washington, D.C. area that highlight dimensions of the courses’ content. For instance, the students visited the Library of Congress, where they obtained readers’ cards, learned how to use the library for research, and heard a mini-lecture on the first printed bible, which they compared to a handwritten bible from the same decade. They also went to the Hirshhorn Museum to attend an exhibit about light and the Holocaust Museum where they learned how the Nazis used statistics in the Third Reich, in part to implement the Final Solution.
Dr. James Mattingly, a professor of Philosophy at Georgetown, who coordinates the series with Dr. Olesko and has taught two courses in the seminar, views these activities as an important way to induct students into an intellectual community.
“It’s a way to open students’ eyes to a community of inquiry instead of leading them to believe they are just consumers of intellectual activity,” he explains. “It’s fruitful, especially when you can humanize the faculty in the process.”
In the spring of last year, Dr. Mattingly joined Physics professor Dr. Jim Freericks to teach a course called “The World of the Small,” which explored issues related to the philosophical study of science.
“The course looked at how we know what we know about a world invisible to the senses,” explains Dr. Olesko. “James and Jim turned out to be a perfect pairing for a seminar.”
Dr. Freericks agrees.
“James has been a great person to work with," he says. "He has taken a lead role in coordinating the efforts between the two classes and he has worked hard on making content accessible to the students. The subject we work in, quantum mechanics, is both fascinating and bizarre. It is an adventure to help students grapple with these concepts and emerge with a deep understanding of the subject.”
Last fall, Dr. Mattingly teamed up with Dr. Maria Donoghue to teach a course in “Biology and Society.” Billed as “an issues approach to biology,” the course examined contemporary scientific issues in public debate, such as stem cells, cloning, genetically modified organisms, infectious agents, and the neurobiology of cognition and memory.
“This course demonstrated our ability to show the students a true example of interdisciplinarity, a back and forth engagement,” says Dr. Mattingly.
Dr. Donoghue describes Dr. Mattingly’s knowledgeable and thoughtful contribution to the seminar.
“He is a creative thinker and an interesting person,” she explains. “And his analyses of the bases of scientific beliefs are insightful and relevant. He represents the very best in undergraduate mentoring.”
Other seminar courses have tackled history and mathematics. For example, Dr. Olesko, a historian of science, combined the second half of her European Civilization section with Dr. Hans Engler’s course on “Mathematics in Society” to produce a Seminar course called “Probability and Certainty in Science and Everyday Life.” The course explored important questions such as, “What is certainty? What is the ‘reasonable person’? What does it mean to be rational?”
“When Hans’ course was submitted to the College Curriculum Committee for approval as a general education course in 2004-05, I immediately saw the potential to link it to a history class because the issues treated were so closely related to mathematical techniques that entered into daily life,” says Dr. Olesko.
By all accounts, the Science & Society Seminar has been a rousing success, as students have benefited from becoming active members of a community of scholars in a fun and unique way. This exciting initiative would not have been possible without the financial and structural support of the College.
“Dean McAuliffe’s commitment to this program has been unwavering,” says Dr. Donoghue. “And the students are smart, lively, and insightful. They aren’t very different from all of our other first-years except that these students have taken a big intellectual challenge and thrive within the community of the program and the academic melding of two disciplines.”
Dr. James Mattingly's work raises questions that challenge our deeply held beliefs about the purpose and methods of science, especially in the discipline of physics.
If you could come back to life as a plant/animal/thing, what would it be?
On reflection I'm not sure I actually understand the question. But I'm a big fan of sea-gooseberries.