The Power of Ideas
Overview
We all have ideas about love, friendship, abortion, war. We have ideas about art, justice, the proper role of government, the role of science in our lives, even about the nature of knowledge and of reality. John Maynard Keynes famously observed that "[t]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else."
The very idea of history implies an understanding of the history of ideas. Plato believed ideas were pure being, archetypes compared to which real objects could at best be imperfect replicas. Aristotle held that ideas or concepts are formed by man's mind, organizing sense data according to the rules of logic. Thus, for Aristotle and other like-minded thinkers, ideas are based ultimately on sense experience.
Immanuel Kant, by contrast, claimed that ideas were products of reason that are transcendent but fundamentally nonempirical. Hegel saw ideas as absolute truth the complete and ultimate product of reason. Marx thought ideas were largely irrelevant to the great sweep of history, and that economic and technological forces were the engines of the evolution of societies. The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that science does not progress by a series of inductive proofs, but rather by a process of falsifiability.
Art, literature, and music include ideas that move us.Ideologies and religions comprise ideas often used to move others. Science generates ideas that can profoundly change the world we live in as well as the understanding of our own nature. By integrating different ideas about how humans think and act, we give students an intellectual framework with which to understand history, themselves, and the surrounding world.
Courses
Seminar: Economics 99FCS.36 John Maynard Keynes
Roy Weintraub, Professor, Departmemt of Economics
This seminar will examine the life and work of one of the truly important figures of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes. The context of the development of Keynes's thought in late Victorian Cambridge, and the influence of G. E. Moore and the Apostles, sets the stage for an examination of Keynes's emerging role as government adviser, journalist, teacher, and economist. The seminar will study his connections to the Bloomsbury Group as well as his non-economic writings, both political and biographical. The emergent focus will be Keynes's influential (1936) General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, its intellectual background, and its consequences. For as the last sentence of that book proclaimed: “Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil” .
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Seminar: Biology 93FCS.04 How Darwin and DNA Changed the World
Stephen Nowicki, Professor, Department of Biology
Daniel Kiehart, Professor, Department of Biology
Fundamental ideas in biology are shaping the twenty-first century much in the same way that ideas in physics profoundly altered the twentieth century. Two ideas in particular stand as pillars for current biological thought and its influence on society. The first is the concept of natural selection articulated by Darwin in 1859, then refined in the “Modern Synthesis.” The second is our understanding of molecular genetics and the facile manipulation of genomes that emerged from the structure of DNA as modeled by Watson and Crick almost a century later. Together, evolution and molecular biology stand as essential pivots in how we think both about the science of biology and about the impact of biology on our lives. In this course, we will study the science behind both ideas, explore their historical origins, and consider how each has impacted science specifically, our understanding of ourselves in particular and our world in general.
Seminar: History 89FCS.02, Revolution of Medicine
Jeffrey P. Baker, Professor of Pediatrics and History
Breakthroughs in science, ranging from the rise of Renaissance anatomy to the mapping of the human genome, have had profound implications for the care of this sick. Yet the process by which scientific knowledge translates to the bedside is far from straightforward. In this class, we will investigate some of the major turning points in the history of the biomedical sciences since 1500 (ranging from anatomy to bacteriology and genetics), and the extent to which they did, or did not, truly transform medical practice. We will seek to understand the sources of resistance to new ideas, and gain insight into what has distinguished those revolutions that have ultimately succeeded.
Seminar: Political Science 85KFCS.01 Reason, Virtue & Rights
Gary Hull, Director, Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace
People claim to have all sorts of rights. Some say they have a right to health care, education, housing. Others claim a right to free abortions, a job, equal pay. Some industries want the right to restrict foreign imports, while some politicians want to limit political speech. Still others assert a right to life, liberty and property.
This course investigates the various “rights claims” that exist today and throughout history. We will explore the various arguments for and consequences of those claims. In addition, we will look at some of the presuppositions—in ethics and epistemology—of those theories of rights. Throughout the course, we will shuttle back and forth between major cultural movements and the theories that give rise to them.
We will read selected excerpts from thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas,
Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, and various twentieth century figures.
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Focus 99FCS.09 Special Topics in Focus: The Power of Ideas
Students faculty will meet weekly in this half-credit
course to discuss issues of common interest that bridge
the topics of individual seminar courses.
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