Steven L. Goldman

This course focuses on the ideas behind an assortment of scientific theories and inventions.

It's important to note that Professor Goldman doesn't go into great detail about each discovery, but rather the chain of events that lead to the manifestation of that idea, which eventually lead into the mechanization of that concept or acceptance of that theory. For example, Darwin/Wallace's Theory of Evolution first started out as an idea. They did not discover Natural Selection. It was an idea that began its rumblings during the Roman Empire.

A lot of what I learned was mind-blowing indeed. One of the last lectures points out that all of life is just microbes interacting with each other. The idea of the computer was also very interesting. However, there was a lot mathematical information as well that I found a bit difficult to follow. It wasn't jargon heavy but the concepts were complex.

Professor Goldman seemed to be in a hurry or was rushed while giving the lectures. He didn't setup each lecture with an introduction and made listening a bit hectic since he would just jump right into whatever subject he was going over. Other teachers in The Great Courses have set up a thesis before beginning their lesson. This was not the case here.

Overall, I found the course interesting. There is a lot to go over and absorb. Science is damn awesome!… (altro)

By the time you finish this course, you'll have a different perspective on how to assess the "truth" of scientific theories. Goldman takes us painstakingly and at great length (perhaps too great) through the history of how scientists and philosophers have handled the question of how scientists know what they know. Are they making observations of true facts of nature, or is everything just our experience of nature, and, therefore, something that can't be proven as absolutely real. The argument swings back and forth and there are some clever end runs to redefine the problem. The answer does matter, but Goldman points out, as he does in his other Teaching Company Course, Science in the 20th Century, that what science knows is always evolving. There is no good reason to think that what we "know" in 2018 won't look as out-of-date and often as wrong as when we now look back on the science of 1918. Goldman deeply cares about the subject, but his delivery here is not as smooth as in the other course. He sometimes stumbles over words and as he moves around during the lecture, he rarely looks directly at the audience (i.e., into the camera). Still, for most passages he moves along very smoothy, and he talks very fast. I think the topic could have been covered more concisely, perhaps in just 12 lectures, and still made its points, but I certainly don't regret spending this time with Goldman. I streamed this on The Great Courses Plus, and I highly recommend a subscription to anyone with a yearning to keep learning.… (altro)