Mathematics and the sciences (especially the natural sciences) have often been portrayed in the modern era as paradigmatic sources of knowledge. Nevertheless, one can still pose a number of lively and much-debated questions: what makes something a science? Is there a single "scientific method" or ideal way of discovering, confirming, or disconfirming scientific truths? Are there limitations to the knowledge the sciences can provide? Indeed, do the sciences provide knowledge? Does science make any presuppositions about the nature of the world or about what exists (ontology)? What is the nature of mathematics? Does it apply to a world of ideal objects, to rules for using symbols, or to the physical world? What kinds of things are numbers? Readings will include works by Peirce, Frege, the Vienna Circle, and Kuhn, as well as contemporary readings in the philosophy of science and mathematics and in the philosophies of physics, biology, the social sciences, and logic.
