Steven L. Goldman

One of the best Teaching Company courses I have taken. Although there have been some new developments since this was produced in 2004, it remains a great overview for the non-scientist of the amazing developments in 20th Century Science. Starting with Einstein and spending a great deal of time on Quantum Theory (well spent time!), Goldman enthusiastically and engagingly tells the story of physics, space science (the expanding universe), mathematics, geology (plate tectonics), evolution and show more genetics, and the social sciences as well. As a liberal arts major, I was incredibly engaged by his explanations of highly scientific concepts in easy-to-understand ways. it is also a great introduction to many of the scientists who have shaped our current conception of reality. The course is light on visuals, but these pictures and a few illustrations do add to the experience. And Professor Goldman is great to watch--he doesn't have the annoying habits of some Teaching Company Lecturers such as appearing to be reading everything from the lectern. He does talk fast and occasionally stumbles over a word or two--then corrects himself. His intelligence shines through in every lecture and I would love to be able to just sit and have a conversation with him about the developments since the course was recorded.

I found the hard science lectures to be more interesting than the lectures on sociology, history, political science, and economics. Professor Goldman does do a great job in the Linguistics lecture, however, of making it clear why Noam Chomsky is such a controversial pioneer in that field.

I cannot recommend this course highly enough! show less

I've been checking the Great Courses series out of my public library, and have have been listening to them for years. Most are superb; but Steven Goldman's The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It is so fundamentally flawed as to be an embarrassment for them to have in their collection.

This is a philosophy course whose aim is to show how the discoveries of science relate to what is truly real, which is to me a valid and interesting question. He is full fascinating of show more stories about philosophers and scientists throughout history, and how they have dealt with this issue.

However, he gets it stunningly, horribly wrong in the one part of the story I actually know reasonably well― the evolution from Newton's theories of motion to Einstein's. What's profound about this development is that Einstein didn't simply invalidate Newton; he showed how a universe in which Newton's Laws had been very well confirmed to be true (in cases, it so happens, where nothing was moving anywhere near the speed of light) could be tweaked in a way that was subtle and profound to embrace a more complete picture of reality.

For Goldman, however, there is no evolution in scientific understanding, only revolution. There is no way in which Newton's picture could remain true in any sense whatsoever after Einstein, or – critically for him – how it could have been “really true” when Newton formulated it. Newton's Laws, in his presentation, are every bit as discredited as the theory of phlogiston. He underscores his lack of understanding by absurdly declaring that engineers, when building a bridge, use an incorrect (i.e. Newtonian) theory of mechanics. This is totally wrong; for bridge-building, Newtonian mechanics agrees with Einstein's mechanics to every last digit of accuracy engineers need.

Some reviewers thought that Goldman has an axe to grind, and perhaps that's the best explanation for this otherwise thoughtful professor to misrepresent the nature of scientific progress so badly. Perhaps that's true: towards the end of the course, he discusses the possible validity of the theory of Intelligent Design, as advocated by Michael Behe, whom he identifies as a colleague. (For those not familiar, this “theory” was devised as an attempt to dress up Christian Biblical Creationism to look like a scientific theory specifically so that it could be taught in public schools.) Goldman concludes that Intelligent Design is not “scientific”, but still might be worthy of consideration. That conclusion is a lot more plausible if you've bought into the way he's sold science short in his previous exposition. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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! show less