RE-RELEASE – Knowing the Universe: History and Philosophy of Astronomy

Chris Impey
Summer 2024
OFFERED ORIGINALLY: SPRING 2022 |  
(5 THREE-HOUR CLASSES)
Available for a Limited Time
Course Format: Recorded Course (Re-Release)
Location: Online
Tuition: $95

This course will cover the history of the oldest field of science, from prehistory and the ancient Greeks to research on the earliest instants of our 14-billion-year-old universe. We will be looking at the history of ideas and discoveries and the more profound questions of how knowledge is created. This class addresses fundamental issues of time, space, and our place in the universe.

Ted and Shirley Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award
— 2022 Award-Winning Course —

The teaching excellence displayed in this course earned this professor the highest honor that the Humanities Seminars Program has to bestow: the Ted and Shirley Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award. This award is given annually by the Humanities Seminars Program. It is based entirely on student evaluations and seeks to honor the pedagogical skill, depth of expertise, and commitment to students demonstrated by the most outstanding faculty who teach for the Humanities Seminars Program.

We are delighted to re-release this award-winning course during the Summer 2024 season.

  • This course is offered as a recording. No live class sessions or meetings are scheduled with the professor or fellow students.
  • Access – enrolled students have complete access to course materials via the HSP Learning Portal online from the day of their registration until August 31, 2024. On September 1, 2024, the class video recordings will be removed; however, students will retain access to all other course materials online.
  • Price – has been reduced from our regular course tuition rates. Enrollment provides access to all course materials, including the original syllabus, reading materials, and video recordings of all class sessions for a limited time.
Required Reading
  • No textbook is required. All materials will be distributed to students electronically.
  • Rather than readings, a set of YouTube videos are recommended for enrichment.
Recommended Reading
  • Ferris, Timothy. Coming of Age in the Milky Way. New York, NY: Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Meet Your Instructor

University Distinguished Professor

CHRIS IMPEY is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has more than 450 publications on education, observational cosmology, quasars, and galaxies, and his research has been funded by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has received eleven teaching awards and has taught four online courses with over 420,000 students enrolled and 8 million minutes of video lectures viewed. Chris Impey is a former Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, and he has received its Career Education Prize. He has also been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He has authored over 120 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology, and education, two textbooks, a novel titled Shadow World, and ten popular science trade books.

Location

THIS COURSE WILL BE OFFERED ONLINE ONLY

Classes will be live streamed during the time and dates specified in the course details section above. Instructions about how to access the course online will be sent to all enrolled students before the course begins.

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