Overview

The Science in Human Culture program of Northwestern University welcomes premedical students and science majors interested in thinking beyond the problem sets assigned in their specialized courses, as well as students in the humanities and social sciences who aspire to overcome the division of knowledge that accompanied the rise of modern science.

Program highlights

Students join the program because it offers them a chance to integrate their understanding of science, medicine, and technology into a liberal arts education, and because it offers them the freedom to tailor an adjunct major or minor to their own particular interests. Above all, the major appeals to students who rebel against the claim that human knowledge can be sharply divided into disciplinary fields, or into the "two cultures"—so neatly symbolized at Northwestern by the north and south ends of campus.

Here are some of the questions students in the program address:

• Why have we come to rely on scientific explanations?

• How has scientific knowledge been translated into radical new technologies—from the atomic bomb to the genetic testing of fetuses?

• In what ways have different places and people around the world served as a venue for scientific innovation and conceptual discovery?

• How has the rise of medical science altered the relationship between physicians and patients and diseases and environments?

• What are the religious implications of our changing understanding of space, time, and biological evolution?

• How has science contributed to (and undermined) our sense of human difference, including racial and sexual difference?

• Why is the impact of different expert fields so uneven globally?