Introduction to Chaos and Fractals

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Schedule

• Week One
  • Tuesday 5 January: No reading. We will cover Feldman Chapters 1 and 2 in class and go over the structure of the course.
  • Friday 8 January: Gleick, The Butterfly Effect, pp. 9-32. Do not read Gleick's Prologue. Feldman, Chapters 0 and 8. Possible discussion topics: what is science? The nature of scientific explanation(s). In class we will cover Feldman Chapters 3 and 4.
• Week Two
  • Tuesday 12 January: Gleick, Revolutions, pp. 35-56. Reading on Kuhn via email. Possible discussion topics: How does change occur in science? How does change occur in other areas (art, music, social norms, politics)? Incommensurability. Paradigms. Does COA have a paradigm? Optional readings on Kuhn:
    • Wikipedia entry on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
    • Bird, Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
    In class we will cover Feldman Chapters 4.
  • Friday 15 January: No reading. In class we will cover Feldman Chapters 5 and 6.
• Week Three
  • Tuesday 18 January: No reading. In class we will cover Feldman chapter 7
  • Friday 22 January: Read Gleick, Life's Ups and Downs. Read this after you do exercise 7.8 from the textbook. The program you need is is here.