University of Edinburgh

This course investigates how knowledge is embodied within artistic processes and artifacts. Students study the process of artistic research from artists producing knowledge avant la letter through to more scholarly approaches. The course acts as a bridge between art and more standard scholarly humanities research. This course is taught via a combination of lecture and seminar discussions with a greater emphasis placed on the discursive aspects of group discussion. This course may take place in standard lecture and seminar rooms but increasingly seeks alternate platforms for discussion of artistic research such as the studio, the walk, or the gallery. 

This course is an introduction to the history of the Islamic world from 550 to 1050 CE. It covers the pre-Islamic background to Islam, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the Arab conquests, the formation of the first Muslim world empire (the Caliphate), the emergence of the "orthodox" Islamic traditions of Sunni and Shi'i Islam, and the fragmentation of the Caliphate into a "commonwealth" of successor states.

This course provides an introduction to modern evolutionary biology, covering the origin of hereditary variation, natural selection, the origin of species, methods of phylogeny construction, major evolutionary events, and coevolution. Examples are drawn from all major taxa; molecular, cellular, morphological, and behavioral evolution are considered. 

The course is an introduction to the study of ancient historiography, itself a crucial element of the study of history, past and present. I.e. the course encourages students to analyse a good number of ancient historians and histories, especially the key figures and key texts in the development of the practice we call history, including Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Livy, Cassius Dio, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and others. The selection of authors to be studied in any one year depends on the research expertise of staff teaching the course so as to allow maximum scope for cutting-edge teaching based on new research undertaken by staff at 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.