Class Logistics

21.01 is seminar-style and taught in a “flipped classroom” format, with in-person contact hours spent on active group discussion, activities, and debates. There are no traditional lectures during in-person contact hours; instead, students will watch pre-recorded video lectures as homework preparation. Some lessons will have a podcast, in which MIT professors from diverse disciplines discuss big questions in the contexts of their fields and lives. In addition, the class includes field trips to a variety of local arts events, from which students may choose one or more to attend.

Each section is taught by one or two faculty, who will lead the two-hour in-person class. There will also be one-hour recitation each week, led by a TA. Sections will be small with no more than 18 students. In Spring 2025, we plan to offer sections at the following times (subject to change):

  • Mondays 10am-12pm:  Adam Albright and Emily Richmond Pollock 
  • Mondays 7-9pm: Alex Byrne
  • Tuesdays 1-3pm: Arthur Bahr, Lily Tsai, and Esther Duflo
  • Wednesdays 2-4pm: Anne McCants and Linda Rabieh
  • Thursdays 9-11am: Sally Haslanger, Rebecca Saxe, and Esther Duflo
  • All sections have Friday recitation

If you are in the Thursday section, for example, a typical week might look like this:

  • Monday-Wednesday: prepare for the week’s lesson (including short readings and a pre-recorded lecture focused on the question of meritocracy in the case of civil service exams in imperial China ).
  • Thursday 9-11am: in your 2-hour faculty-led class, you discuss the lecture’s implications on college admissions and, in small groups, design a civil service exam for U.S. senators
  • Friday: in your 1-hour TA-led recitation, debate whether meritocracy is desirable

This class meets CI-H requirements and therefore includes a communication component, which the class will fulfill through a combination of written and oral assignments. It is also a HASS-E, meaning it counts towards HASS elective credit.

Lessons

INTRODUCTION

1. How do we think and talk with each other about being human? Social contracts and designing a class compact for the semester. (Lily Tsai, Political Science)

PART 1: WHAT DO WE VALUE AND WHY?

2. What is value? Are there different kinds of value? How do we address conflicting values? (Sally Haslanger, Philosophy)

3. What is artistic greatness? What makes a “genius”? (Emily Richmond Pollock, Music)

4. What is merit? Is there “meritocracy”? (Tristan Brown, History)

5. What is the value of reading? (Arthur Bahr, Literature)

PART 2: WHAT DO WE KNOW AND HOW DO WE KNOW IT?

6. What do we know – but don’t know that we know? The universals of human language. (Adam Albright, Linguistics)

7. What is truth? The difference between belief and knowledge. (Alex Byrne, Philosophy)

8. Is there a “scientific method”? (Anne McCants, History)

9. What counts? How to live and think with metrics. (Will Deringer, Science, Technology, and Society [STS])


PART 3: WHAT DO WE OWE TO EACH OTHER AND WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT?

10. How do we distribute resources fairly? Taxes and climate change (Esther Duflo, Economics)

11. What is power? What is legitimate authority, i.e. government? (Susan Silbey, Anthropology)

12. How do media, including social media, affect thinking and talking about being human? What should we do about it?  (Esther Duflo, Economics and  Lily Tsai, Political  Science)

13. Who should govern science? The role of scientific authority and technical expertise in politics and governance. (Robin Scheffler, Science, Technology, and Society [STS])