Human Sciences: Human/Nonhuman Encounter (SCIE20002)

This subject is the second subject in a Human Sciences subject sequence that can stand alone, or contribute to the Human Sciences program in the BSc. The sequence and program seek to compare and contrast the ways that a variety of scientific disciplines understand ‘the human’, from standpoints at the scale of the cell, the body, or the society. In order to provide this varied perspective on ‘the human’, the subject will be co-taught by staff from several discipline areas: biological and biomedical sciences, Psychology and Geography. Note that scientific perspectives here are being presented from the perspectives of social sciences as well as the physical and biological sciences.

An issues-based mode of inquiry will be used in the subject, in which we will pose particular questions that involve humans centrally, and ask how the discipline areas participating in the subject understand and shed light on these questions.

In this subject, groups of students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds will work together in an investigation that will respond to an assigned question from the perspectives raised in the study of Human Sciences. They will be allocated to investigation groups by the subject coordinator. Students will meet together in the first and last two weeks of the semester, to set up and later report on their projects. The questions posed for the investigations will fall under the general theme of ‘human/nonhuman encounter’. So, for example, questions posed for groups might be: how has exposure to mosquitoes affected humans and human societies; how can the presence or absence of certain fauna alert us to levels of human-caused and dangerous environmental change; what are the potential benefits and pitfalls of the evolution of human cyborgs?