Teaching Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE)

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of an interdisciplinary course at UTSA aimed at enhancing understanding of space science and philosophy, addressing science skepticism and promoting critical thinking about space exploration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interdisciplinary course combining philosophy and science of space exploration to improve science literacy and critical thinking about space issues.

Findings

Course aims to reduce science skepticism

Enhances understanding of space science and ethics

Develops tools to critically examine space exploration

Abstract

Capitalizing on the enthusiasm about space science in the general public, our goal as an interdisciplinary group of scholars is to design and teach a new team-taught interdisciplinary course, "Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE)" at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where we currently teach. We believe that this course will not only help overcome disciplinary silos to advance our understanding of space and critically examine its ethical ramifications, but also will better educate the public on how science works and help overcome the science skepticism that has unfortunately become more prominent in recent years. In what follows, we first juxtapose two seemingly contradictory trends: increased interest in space science on the one hand and increased skepticism about and distrust in science on the other. We then turn to how our anticipated Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE) course will develop tools that could dismantle distrust in science while also enhancing the scientific and philosophical understandings of space science. We explain the content and the questions we will examine in POSE and conclude with how we will measure our success and progress.