Human Sciences: From Cells to Societies

This subject will introduce the perspectives of the major, and the scales at which the varied scientific disciplines of Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Psychology and Geography understand ‘the human’. This will take up the first 3 weeks of the subject. A question will be identified, that will be analysed by each of the four disciplines in turn; this will take up the next 8 weeks of the semester. (The questions chosen will vary year by year, as the subject is taught by staff with different specialist interests). For example, questions chosen for study in the subject might be: how does a particular disease, in a certain time and place, spread from being an epidemic to a pandemic; what is the relationship of humans to particular natural disasters; over the next century, should (and will) most humans become vegetarian? In the final week of semester, the views of ‘the human’ that are held by the four disciplines will be compared and contrasted, in light of what has been revealed in studying the question chosen for focus. This concluding discussion will demonstrate the aspects of the human to which each discipline gives priority, and at which scales.