515 search results
Imagination: The missing mystery of philosophy
History & The Arts

Imagination: The missing mystery of philosophy

...cast of characters, and invent a chronology of events, then they have to think through the implications of all this to tell a coherent story. Indeed, on White's own conception, ‘imagining’ means thinking of a possibility and ‘embroidering’ on it. But does this not involve, at least in some cases, supposing that this possibility obtains and exploring its...
View course Imagination: The missing mystery of philosophy
Level 3: Advanced 20 hrs
Changing cities
Society, Politics & Law

Changing cities

...cast in Sheffield and becomes a local issue. I think the city centre was probably declining anyway and it had a very difficult physical form, a long, spread out physical form that made it hard to, for the planners to deal with when shops were closing. But to me that showed the links between, sort of, large scale economic change, something that looks quite similar across...
View course Changing cities
Level 3: Advanced 15 hrs
The meaning of crime
Society, Politics & Law

The meaning of crime

...cast them in a different light. Evidence can come from a variety of sources. Quantitative evidence, in the form of official statistics, appeared to give some support to the common-sense story. But, as soon as we began to think about how the evidence was collected, and by whom, doubts set in: the crime rate has actually been falling in recent years, there are grounds for...
View course The meaning of crime
Level 1: Introductory 8 hrs
Travelling for culture: the Grand Tour
History & The Arts

Travelling for culture: the Grand Tour

...casts Byron as an especially glamorous tourist – like the dying gladiator, these stanzas suggest, he is an exile, far from home, defeated by the inevitability of death, but his emotions are the centre of attention all the same. A tourist to Rome might well feel trite or belated – but not if he or she could channel Byron. For this reason, Murray’s guidebook excerpted...
View course Travelling for culture: the Grand Tour
Level 1: Introductory 8 hrs
What happens to you when you read?
Health, Sports & Psychology

What happens to you when you read?

...cast of interesting individuals, Heroes and Heroines, Villains, Witches, Wizards and Vampires, all depending on our literary tastes. By putting on the shoes of another in a story we read, we can inhabit the lives of others, and learn something of our social world and the inner lives of others, without even setting foot outside our own front door. Strikingly, studies have...
View course What happens to you when you read?
Level 1: Introductory 3 hrs
Psychological research, obedience and ethics
Society, Politics & Law

Psychological research, obedience and ethics

...cast in the role of the ‘teacher’, and the ‘shock generator’ was simply a simulator. The sounds (the moans and cries) that the participants heard were a recording played from the adjacent room. Importantly, however, the deception was so good that participants believed that they were actually administering shocks. So the study presented an ingenious way of...
View course Psychological research, obedience and ethics
Level 1: Introductory 5 hrs
Systems thinking and practice
Digital & Computing

Systems thinking and practice

...cast by the upright barometer and by the tower and used the ratio so found to calculate the tower's height. The marketing person went to the Sexton and said ‘If you tell me the height of the tower, I will give you this barometer’. The story illustrates two important points – first that people and their viewpoints are part of the situations we normally have to deal...
View course Systems thinking and practice
Level 2: Intermediate 8 hrs
Introducing the Classical world
History & The Arts

Introducing the Classical world

...sands of Egypt, you can immediately draw conclusions about the sorts of things people bought in Egypt, but you will find yourself immediately wanting to know who these people were: rich or poor, natives or foreign, and so on. Not even documentary sources are completely straightforward. A further, more general, issue relating to written sources follows on from these...
View course Introducing the Classical world
Level 2: Intermediate 20 hrs