University of Edinburgh

This course introduces students to major ideas and themes in contemporary epistemology. Students examine debates about the nature of knowledge and of justified belief, and cover topics including skepticism, contextualism, pragmatic encroachment, knowledge-first epistemology, reliabilism, and a little formal epistemology.

This course offer a close reading of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with a focus on appreciating the aims and coherence of the work as a whole. Topics specifically addressed may include: Locke's arguments against innate ideas and innate knowledge, the nature of ideas, the primary-secondary quality distinction, our ideas of substance and of natural kinds, personal identity, language and meaning, the nature of knowledge, mathematical knowledge, perceptual knowledge, action and the will, knowledge of moral truths, probable judgment and the nature of probability, and, finally, Locke's contributions to political philosophy and their connection to his metaphysics and epistemology.
 

This course is an introduction to the skills and principles involved when working with people, in a voluntary or paid capacity. It is a requirement that students have work experience to draw upon. The focus of this course is on the practical work experiences that the students bring and the tutorial discussion analyzing those experiences. During the tutorials students are encouraged to engage in reflection upon their own and others work experience. Skill development takes place through participation in group learning, based around presentations and discussion. 

In this course, students study practical applications of quantum mechanics. Students begin with a review of the basic ideas of quantum mechanics and give an elementary introduction to the Hilbert-space formulation. They then develop time-independent perturbation theory and consider its extension to degenerate systems. They derive the fine structure of Hydrogen-like atoms as an example. They study the ground state and first excited state of the Helium atom and discuss multi-electron atoms. The Rayleigh-Ritz variational method is introduced and applied to simple atomic and molecular systems. Students then examine quantum entanglement, exploring Bell's inequality, quantum teleporatation, superdense coding, quantum computing including Deutsch's and Grover's algorithms, and the role of information theory in quantum entanglement. Students then study time-dependent perturbation theory, obtain Fermi's Golden Rule, and look at radiative transitions and selection rules. Subsequently students study scattering in the Born Approximation and end by studying the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.

Articulating social network theory and methods, this course seeks to explore the transformations of social life in contemporary societies characterized by the importance of connectedness and geographic mobility. The course introduces students to the theories, concepts, and measures of social network analysis (SNA) through a mixture of classroom teaching and hands-on computer work. It discusses in particular (1) to what extent social life is more networked in late modern societies; (2) how SNA is a powerful way of capturing empirically social life; (3) to what extent social networks are more individualized; (4) how physical and virtual mobility play an increasing role in meetings and social relationships. Key notions are addressed and illustrated through both the discussions of major thinkers and the use of the UCINet software and its visualization program NetDraw on real-world data sets.