Philosophy Paper Topic
 

Ok, here is the setup. I am in a class called Philosophy of Natural Science. Over spring break, I need to write a paper, but I want you guys to help me pick the topic. The subject of this paper needs to be a scientific discovery/advancement which occured in the time since Darwin (about 200 years) wrote Origin of the Species. Here's the catch, I need to discuss three things about this scientific topic. First, I need to talk about the metaphysics of the topic, what does this topic assume is real? Secondly, I need to talk about the epistemology. What do you have to be able to know, I mean really know? Lastly, ethics. Is there something dodgy about it? I appreciate all suggestions. Try not to do the really obvious things like cloning or computers, as everybody else in class is going to do that.

Quantum mechanics has some interesting implications on reality and metaphysics. I'm not a scientist, but generally what has been observed is that on a very very small (subatomic) scale, matter behaves in highly unusual ways. These ways don't seem to carry over very closely to larger objects.

You might also do germ theory. That's another biggie. Pasteur and all that.

ok how about stem cells. they go back about 100 years but they just became contraversial. yea this goes into cloning a little but not really. first stem cells was called something like lycocytes (not spelled right) in the back bone used to cure some diseases. then in the 50's it was found to help cure come caners. in the early 90s it was discovered that stem cell were what was helping to cure cancer by becoming new cells. the problem is not about stems cells really but about how to research them. umbiblicords or fetuses. you can go into a lot of when can you say a thing is a thing with a soul or if their is a soul.

another topic could be the discovery of physics or atomic physics. this would be a great epistemology topic. for ethics a topic could be should we continue to delve into basic building block of the univers, or the dangers of this kind of research ie atomic bomb(not that i am anti tech). metaphysics is simple is what we are studing really the reality that we live in? this way you can put in a lot of acient greek philosopher quotes to fill up your page. although not to sure when newton discovered physics. might be just out side of 200 years. then i would take the atomic physics stand point.

i have a few more ideas so if you need more topics just ask. if you get stumped for philosophers to quote i can give you some great ones to look up.

I'd be wary of covering such a topic.
It is incredibly interesting...and does indeed have many profound philosophical implications...but the problem is that it is quite a complex topic, so unless you are prepared to do some really intensive research/study you are going to make things hard on yourself.

Far too often I have seen people embarrass themselves in the name of philosophy when dealing with this subject...and I am far from an expert!

Don't mean to scare you off such a wonderfully interesting topic...just some words of warning! If you do decide to cover this topic...make damn sure you know what you're talking about! :D

DNA
Virus's
Black holes
Theory of the Atom (bohr model)
Relativity (hard, not as hard as quantum)
Information theory (also hard)
Quantum Mechanics (as noted)
More specific: two slit experiment (part of quantum mechanics, one of the "omfg" experiments)
Other galaxies
Red-shift / expanding universe
Human genome project
Cold fusion (silly)
Radioactive decay (curie etc)
Fission
Fission chain reaction
Atom bomb
GPS
Origin of moon (broke off from earth or not, it has see-sawed)
Lucy (anthopological one)
Flight
Nitrogen fixation
Behaviouralism (psychology)

Ok guys, you have inspired me, though indirectly. Yakk, saying Lucy, you reminded me of Liza, a talk bot. For those of you who don't know, talk bots are attempts by computer scientists to teach natural language to computers. Intriguing, but moreso, leads me to think artificial intelligence might be a good topic.

If you're going to look philosophically at AI, maybe you should consider the aesthetic side of it as well.

Check out this link, and make your computer write poetry for you. It's hit or miss, but it's still pretty cool. FYI, it's really buggy on Windows XP.

Link: Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet

I second what CSfilm said. As a caveat to my other post.