 |
Recent Courses |
| |
The Ethics of Scientific Leadership, Fall 2007
Nicholas O. Warner
Professor of Literature
Claremont McKenna College |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Ethics of Scientific Leadership: Literary
Perspectives
A powerful, pervasive, and long-standing theme in
literature focuses on the ethical responsibilities
of scientific leaders. In fact, literature
provides an exceptionally rich site for
investigating the overlap between scientific
discovery, morality, and the leadership roles played
by scientists in human history. What are the
ethical duties of the scientist? How can these
duties be formulated? How have scientists used their
knowledge and position to influence society, whether
for good or ill? To what degree should moral,
religious and political considerations affect
scientific research and the leadership roles of
scientists? The course will examine these and
related questions in a wide range of literary works,
from the Renaissance to the present day.
Readings include Marlowe’s and Goethe’s
treatments of the Faust myth; Mary Shelley’s novels
Frankenstein and The Last Man; poems
by Blake, Wordsworth and Meredith on science and
scientists; various short stories by Hawthorne;
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde; Zola’s Dr. Pascal; Brecht’s
Galileo; Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle;
Byatt’s The Whistling Woman; Kipphardt’s
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer; and
Frayn’s Copenhagen. Students will also
examine background readings on ethical ramifications
of scientific leadership from such thinkers as David
Hume, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert K.
Merton, Edward Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould.
Don Quixote and Leadership, Spring 2008
Aurora Hermida-Ruiz
Associate Professor of Spanish
University of Richmond |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
