Bachelor of Arts - Natural Sciences (Shimer Great Books)

The Shimer School Natural Sciences Major revolves around a series of questions into fundamental aspects of the natural world and methods devised to investigate them. Classic and major contemporary works of cosmology, biology, chemistry and physics, as well as historical analyses of their development, form the core sequence in the Natural Sciences curriculum.  Students come to know and understand these texts and the direct inquiries they guide partly through individual reflection, but also through collaborative experimentation, small-class discussions and intensive writing, peer-editing and revision of essays and accounts of experiments. While each course focuses on a single theme of inquiry, the Natural Sciences sequence as a whole pushes students to grapple not only with the complexities within seemingly simple questions, but also to understand the larger social, cultural and historical contexts in which natural scientific knowledge is developed.