Laws Of Nature
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What is "Evil"? This playlist contains lectures on the concept of Evil and things we consider "Bad"....more
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Natural Laws - physical, biological, and moral....more
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What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why can't we tickle ourselves? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, religion, persuasion, love, lust, hunger,
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In this course, we will seek to interpret capitalism using ideas from biological evolution: firms pursuing varied strategies and facing extinction when those strategies fail are analogous to organisms struggling for survival in nature. For this reason, it is less concerned with ultimate judgment of capitalism than with the ways it can be shaped to fit our more specific objectives – for the natural environment, public health, alleviation...more
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This course explores main answers to the question "when do governments deserve our allegiance?" It starts with a survey of major political theories of the Enlightenment—Utilitarianism, Marxism, and the social contract tradition—through classical formulations, historical context, and contemporary debates relating to politics today. It then turns to the rejection of Enlightenment political thinking. Lastly, it deals with the nature of, and...more
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Differential Equations are the language in which the laws of nature are expressed. Understanding properties of solutions of differential equations is fundamental to much of contemporary science and engineering. Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) deal with functions of one variable, which can often be thought of as time. Topics include: Solution of first-order ODE's by analytical, graphical and numerical methods; Linear ODE's,...more
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Part 1 - Hired Guns?: During the Civil War, men drafted into war had the option of hiring substitutes to fight in their place. Many students say they find that policy unjust, arguing that it is unfair to allow the affluent to avoid serving and risking their lives by paying less privileged citizens to fight in their place. This leads to a classroom debate about war and conscription. Is today’s voluntary army open to the same...more
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Real Estate is the biggest asset class and of great importance for both individuals and institutional investors. An array of economic and psychological factors impact real estate investment decisions and the public has changing ideas of real estate as a profitable investment. People's demand to buy a home by taking on long-term debt, called a mortgage, is often tied with the overall health of the economy and financial markets. In...more
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Exploitation is an important technical--not normative--concept in the theory of Karl Marx. Although we are dealing with voluntary Pareto transactions, under capitalism, exploitation occurs whether or not an individual is better off. Capitalism is destined to fail, says Marx, because of (1) the possibility for liquidity crises, (2) the nature of capitalist competition inducing declining marginal profit on the industry-wide level, (3) the...more
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Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School, summarizes insights from one of his books by comparing private and public rights in India and China. Khanna argues that in India, private rights are favored over the public interest whereas in China the opposite is true. These tradeoffs affect the nature of doing business in each country and development. Elsewhere in his presentation, Khanna also suggests that India and China differ in...more
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Professor Blight offers a number of approaches to the question of southern distinctiveness. The lecture offers a survey of that manner in which commentators--American, foreign, northern, and southern--have sought to make sense of the nature of southern society and southern history. The lecture analyzes the society and culture of the Old South, with special emphasis on the aspects of southern life that made the region distinct from the...more
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Professor Mazzotta begins this lecture by recapitulating the ambivalent nature of Ulysses' sin and its relevance to Dante's poetic project. Inferno XXVII is then read in conjunction with the preceding canto. The antithetical relationship between Dante's false counselors, Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro, anchors an overarching discussion of the relationship between rhetoric and politics. The latter half of the lecture is devoted to...more
