Semester:
Offered:
Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard Graduate School of Education)
First-Year Seminar 31J 4 credits (fall term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Descartes wrote his Meditations because he realized that, although he had received the best education in the world, much of what he had learned was false or unfounded. This led him to embark on a systematic investigation to discover whether knowledge is possible. Harvard first-year students face a similar predicament. Having dutifully learned what they were taught, and evidently learned it well, some find themselves questioning its cognitive adequacy. Much that they learned in school seems superficial, incomplete, oversimplified, or incorrect. Is it possible to know the way the world is? Can I know that I am not a brain in a vat being manipulated into thinking that I am an embodied human being? Can I know that the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803, that electrons have negative charge, that Hamlet is a masterpiece, that the sun will rise tomorrow? How can I tell whether a report is ‘fake news’? Are there ‘alternative facts?’ Is uncertainty regrettable or valuable or both?