Philosophy of Science investigates the different branches of science and its underlying structure. Central questions are "What is science?" and "What is not science?", as well as "What characterizes science?" and "How to achieve scientific progress?". Philosophy of science is a way of describing how to conduct research, and a way of deciding research design. This course will examine the objectivity of science, the nature of scientific method, the status of scientific knowledge, and the character of scientific explanation.
This course is an introduction on how to design social science research as well as to prepare students to develop their own research projects for a dissertation. The course is a blend of philosophy of social science and research design. The aim of this course is to introduce students to different types of research designs, and the strengths and limitations of each approach.