Search result: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2019

GESS Science in Perspective Information
Only the topics listed in this paragraph can be chosen as "GESS Science in Perspective" course.
Further below you will find the "type B courses Reflections about subject specific methods and content" as well as the language courses.

6 ECTS need to be acquired during the BA and 2 ECTS during the MA

Students who already took a course within their main study program are NOT allowed to take the course again.

These course units are also listed under "Type A", which basically means all students can enroll
Type A: Enhancement of Reflection Competence
Suitable for all students.

Students who already took a course within their main study program are NOT allowed to take the course again.
Science Research
NumberTitleTypeECTSHoursLecturers
851-0157-31LScience in the 20th CenturyW3 credits2VM. Hagner
AbstractThese lectures covers the extraordinary expansion and significance of science in the 20th century, with examples taken from the natural and engineering sciences as well as the humanities.
ObjectiveNo one will seriously question the great significance that science and technology was beginning to have in the 20th century, pertaining to almost every aspect of life. Treating among others on the examples of genetics, space travel, pharmacology, cybernetics and psychoanalysis, these lectures demonstrate how scientific departures such as these were embedded within broader historical contexts. These lectures aim to develop an understanding of the historical circumstances within which these various disciplines developed and accrued significance.
851-0158-14LLife -- A Critical Instruction ManualW3 credits2SM. Hagner
AbstractThis seminar is devoted to the new book of the French physician and anthropologist Didier Fassin. Taking up some topics, Fassin discusses in his book,we will examine various forms and politics of life in early 21st century.
ObjectiveSince Greek antiquity, the concept of life oscillates between the fact of general life, which accords to all living beings (zoe), and the fact of particular life, which accords to an invididual or a defined group (bios). In our times, the democratically granted appreciation for life as the highest good seems to be in conflict with an erosion of the commitment to protect individual lifes in existential danger. By all means, this is Didier Fassin's diagnosis in his new book. Starting from a discussion of this book, this seminar breaks new ground, because the participants decide which of the topics of Fassin's book we will further treat in this course. Thios experimental procedure will work, if all attendees are willing to read the book with passion and scrutiny. The aim of the seminar is to acquire an overview over one of the most pressing topics of our time.
851-0588-00LIntroduction to Game Theory Information Restricted registration - show details
Does not take place this semester.
Number of participants limited to 400

Particularly suitable for students of D-INFK, D-MATH
W3 credits2VH. Nax, D. Helbing
AbstractThis course introduces the foundations of game theory with a focus on its basic mathematical principles. It treats models of social interaction, conflict and cooperation, the origin of cooperation, and concepts of strategic decision making behavior. Examples, applications, theory, and the contrast between theory and empirical results are particularly emphasized.
ObjectiveLearn the fundamentals, models, and logic of thinking about game theory. Learn basic mathematical principles. Apply formal game theory models to strategic interaction situations and critically assess game theory's capabilities through a wide array of applications and experimental results.
ContentGame theory provides a unified mathematical language to study interactions amongst different types of individuals (e.g. humans, firms, nations, animals, etc.). It is often used to analyze situations involving conflict and/or cooperation. The course introduces the basic concepts of both non-cooperative and cooperative game theory (players, strategies, coalitions, rules of games, utilities, etc.) and explains the most prominent game-theoretic solution concepts (Nash equilibrium, sub-game perfection, Core, Shapley Value, etc.). We will also discuss standard extensions (repeated games, incomplete information, evolutionary game theory, signal games, etc.).

In each part of the course, we focus on examples and on selected applications of the theory in different areas. These include analyses of cooperation, social interaction, of institutions and norms, social dilemmas and reciprocity as well as applications on strategic behavior in politics and between countries and companies, the impact of reciprocity, in the labor market, and some applications from biology. Game theory is also applied to control-theoretic problems of transport planning and computer science.

As we present theory and applications, we will also discuss how experimental and other empirical studies have shown that human behavior in the real world often does not meet the strict requirements of rationality from "standard theory", leading us to models of "behavioural" and "experimental" game theory.

By the end of the course, students should be able to apply game-theoretic in diverse areas of analysis including > controlling turbines in a wind park, > nations negotiating international agreements, > firms competing in markets, > humans sharing a common resource, etc.
Lecture notesSee literature below. In addition we will provide additional literature readings and publish the lecture slides directly after each lecture.
LiteratureK Binmore, Fun and games, a text on game theory, 1994, Great Source Education

SR Chakravarty, M Mitra and P Sarkar, A Course on Cooperative Game Theory, 2015, Cambridge University Press

A Diekmann, Spieltheorie: Einführung, Beispiele, Experimente, 2009, Rowolth

MJ Osborne, An Introduction to Game Theory, 2004, Oxford University Press New York

J Nash, Non-Cooperative Games, 1951, Annals of Mathematics

JW Weibull, Evolutionary game theory, 1997, MIT Press

HP Young, Strategic Learning and Its Limits, 2004, Oxford University Press
851-0158-11LThe Alps in The Early Modern Period, 1500-1800 (Research and Writing Lab) Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 20
W3 credits2ST. Asmussen
Abstract
Objective
851-0158-12LScience And The New Right Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 50
W3 credits2SN. Guettler, M. Wulz, F. Grütter, M. Stadler
AbstractThe New Right is inescapable – both, politically and as a media phenomenon. It also tends to come across as broadly antiscientific (climate denial, “fake news”, conspiracy theories, etc). And yet, as we’ll explore in this seminar, historically speaking ‘real’ science did play a significant role in the rise of New Right.
ObjectiveIn the seminar, we shall discuss pertinent historical sources from ca. 1950-2000 that will shed light on the New Right’s entanglements with scientific and technological subject matters, including fields such as cybernetics, ecology, economics, and ethology. Insofar reactionary thinkers and doers routinely cultivated scientific forms of knowledge, we’re lead to ask: How might a “reactionary” history of science look like? Which institutions were important? And how “new” is this New Right thinking, actually?

The seminar comes as a four-part block-course plus introductory and wrap-up sessions. In between sessions, students will carry out small research-assignments and learn how to interpret and put into context sources and literature pertaining to the New Right as (also) a techno-scientific phenomenon. In addition, students will regularly write short texts that we’ll jointly discuss in the seminar (and that will form the basis of your final grade).
851-0158-13LEcology and Environmentalism Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 40

Particularly suitable for students of D-ERDW, D-HEST, D-USYS, D-BIOL
W3 credits2SN. Guettler
AbstractThe notion of „ecology“ refers to both, scientific research on environments as well as their protection. But how have academic ecology and the environmental movements intersected throughout history?
ObjectiveIn the seminar, students will read and discuss key sources as well as secondary literature on the knowledge transfers between scientific ecology and the environmental movements of the 19th and 20th century. Topics range from 19th-century homeland movement and the rise of ecological awareness in colonial settings, to the rise of an environmental awareness during the Cold War, with a special focus on „green“ politics in Europe. Apart from scientists and „counter-scientists“ the seminar focuses on concepts and ideas that circulated between academic ecology and different nature movements.
The participants learn to engage historically with original texts as well as to handle independently the extensive historical literature on the history of environmentalism. At the same time, they develop a critical understanding of different political agendas that have shaped academic and popular ecology until the present day. Students also learn to communicate their findings by writing short (and fictive) blog posts on different aspects of this history.
851-0157-99LIgnorance in The SciencesW3 credits2SN. El Kassar
AbstractIn this seminar we examine the role of ignorance in the sciences. Ignorance can be a driving force for progress in the sciences, but it can also impede scientific work. How, when and why is ignorance conducive; how, when and why is it impeding? We will address these and related questions by means of philosophical texts and scientific reflections.
Objective- Discuss and reflect the relationship between knowlege and ignorance in the sciences.
- Distinguish different kinds of ignorance.
- Recognize and explain the positive effects of ignorance in different disciplines.
- Identify and explain the negative effects of ignorance in different discipines.
- Identify the conditions for positive effects of ignorance in scientific practices.
- Relating philosophical arguments and (one’s own) scientific practice.
- Juxtaposing and comparing views and claims from different sciences
- Reading philosophical and scientific texts (in German and English)
851-0158-16LCold War Epistemology Reconsidered in a Global ContextW3 credits2SV. Wolff
AbstractWhat was the Cold War and how can we describe its epistemology and history of knowledge? Wikipedia teaches that the Cold War was a conflict between capitalism and communism which ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, while others have argued that Cold War knowledge shapes even today's world.
ObjectiveThis seminar's aim is to develop a critical perspective on the most important positions of Cold War knowledge in a global context. Amongst others these encompass cybernetics as concept of a new universal science, terms like totalitarianism or creativity, the institution of the think tank, the figure of the consult, as well as a popular notion of modern abstract art as an expression of Western freedom .
851-0158-15LThe Human Between Deficiency And Cyborg. Trans- And Posthumanistic Visions
Particularly suitable for student of D-HEST, D-INFK, D-ITET
Number of participants limited to 50
W3 credits2SK. Liggieri
AbstractIn our everyday life we are surrounded by automated, self-regulated machines (smartphones, prostheses, etc.), these techniques are part of our lives and without them a human existence is no longer conceivable. So man needs technology for his life and survival. But how does this technology change people? How and with which techniques does it optimize itself?
ObjectiveApart from the important possibilities of biomedical healing, the question must be asked in the seminar how our view of "man" and "machine" changes. How did man and technology change each other in modern enhancement, in which man intervenes with the machine in himself? What happens when man and technology merge and create new bodies (cyborgs, etc.)? The seminar will be about an assessment of our modern idea of man and machine, which is changing through trans- and posthumanistic visions. To this end, historical and current debates on optimization are to be addressed.
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