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Understanding science: what we cannot know
Understanding science: what we cannot know

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

Understanding science: what we cannot know

Introduction and guidance

Welcome to this free badged course, Understanding science: what we cannot know. It’s been developed in collaboration with Marcus du Sautoy, The Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, inspired by his book What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge.

This course is dedicated to the memory of Professor Uwe Grimm whose enthusiasm and expertise led its production.

It comprises eight weeks with approximately three hours of study time each. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time after completing one week, there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week. This course covers a broad range of scientific topics: probability, particle physics, quantum physics, space, time, neuroscience, and infinity.

There are opportunities to check your learning throughout the course. At the end of each week, there is a quiz to help you check your understanding. And, if you want to receive a formal statement of participation, at the end of Weeks 4 and 8 there is a quiz which you need to pass. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

  • understand current knowledge in a diverse range of scientific fields
  • describe some events in the history of scientific discovery
  • outline where scientific investigation might lead us next and what might be discovered
  • describe some potential limitations of human understanding.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you can find a link to the next one. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Course content’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course. Alternatively, use the week links at the top of every page of the course.

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.