Scientific research is often equated with ‘information’ that can be acquired by and transmitted between abstract minds. However, in practice, research is a complex human activity into which students are ‘apprenticed’ through years of formation and which is realised in communities that use specific language and are guided by particular codes and rituals. This suggests that learning and knowing might first require, at least in some cases, ‘learning how to learn’ and ‘knowing how to know’, i.e., acquiring certain particular modes of thought and conduct; and that this happens in and is sustained by (but sometimes perhaps also corrupted by) particular communities.

We will begin the course by looking at recent (e.g., by Linda Zagzebski), and some not-so-recent, work in epistemology and philosophy of science that tries to explore these unappreciated dimensions of scientific and, more generally, intellectual practice, stressing the importance of skills, habits, rituals, and exemplars for scientific learning and knowing.

In the second part, we will look at anthropological theories (specifically those of Mary Douglas) that try to capture the dynamics of human communities. We will try using them to interpret some of the features of academic and scientific communities. We will then move on to examples from the history of science, especially molecular biology. We will listen to oral history recordings that give the ‘background story’ of some of the seminal developments in modern science, with a view to identifying diverse elements that made successful scientific practice possible. This part of the course will equip the participants to better understand the world of science, with its complexity and limitations.

Finally, when wrapping up the course, we will look for practical lessons for our own intellectual life, be it in science or other academic disciplines. Here, in addition to the material covered in other parts of the course, we will look at fragments of the classic manual of ‘the intellectual life’ written by the French Dominican, A.G. Sertillanges and of a booklet written by a Kolegium friend Martin Lukačišin on working on a PhD. This general outline will be followed in a flexible fashion, with short reading expected for each meeting.