Lecture Notes: The Socratic Method

So, we start the course again. We are at the beginning so now if the time to start good habits and eliminate bad ones. The readings in this course have a way of building up and can overwhelm you if you let them slide more than a week or two.

The lectures will follow the Socratic Method in terms of style following a form laid down by yet another dead Greek ... Socrates. Just once it would be nice to reference a living Greek. In any event this is the description of his method.

"To illustrate the use of the Socratic method; a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine one's own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.""

Now, to be fair, in my opinion the Socratic Method is a bit aggressive and students can be a bit intimidated. You should come to class expecting to be asked questions. The first part of the lecture will be the easy stuff ... what did the source actually say and this. We will then likely have a class exercise : assignment or debate and finish with an analysis of the source for the day.

But Prof. H. I hear you say ... I am just a timid woodland creature and do not have an opinion until you tell me what it is. Well, to paraphrase the immortal Soup Nazi ...

NO A FOR YOU !

So, in the face of such a harsh system what is a poor student to do?

1) Read the source
2) Know the source
3) Form an opinion
4) Ask questions and make comments (this last point is an important one, in past years I have had students that had the knowledge base of a well trained Labrador Retriever but they still had exceptional subjective evaluations because they would ask questions. I have also had students that easily threw away 10% of their final mark (three whole grade fractions) because they refused to particpate). You get to decide. Decide well.