Handbook

In this course you will be confronted with fascinating riddles. You will explore how isolated and seemingly random pieces of data are actually embedded in larger frames of social and informational significance, and how crime scene investigation reflects sociological rules. You will explore the question of human agency and individual culpability, eyewitness testimony and memory, the relationship between individual behaviours and social norms, and how this material complicates our understanding of personhood, the nature of evidence, truth and social justice. You will also investigate “the two cultures problem” which divides scientific practices - with their attention on factual and objective evidence - from approaches in the humanities that underline the subjective and unreliable nature of truth claims. Several CSI tools, among them - forensic facial reconstruction, profiling, DNA, plant and insect evidence - will be introduced to illustrate the empirical and philosophical implications of these debates.