Students will acquire the ability to:

Contemporary science is based on a world view, a basic and fundamental understanding of both reality and the way in which scientific knowledge concerns that reality. Such a world view is metaphysical inasmuch as it informs, as it were ‘from above’ (meta) scientific inquiry concerning the physical world.

The main aim of this course is to investigate several central tenets of metaphysical thought: its origins, its developments throughout western philosophy, as well as its contemporary relevance for and interplay with science. On the one hand, it will become clear how the development of modern science is and remains deeply rooted in a metaphysical tradition that is at least 2000 years old. On the other hand, it will become clear how scientific advancement challenges and occasionally deeply problematizes this self-same metaphysical foundation (e.g. how relativity theory and Riemannian geometry undermines Kant’s schematism, which was based on Euclidean geometry).