The Heavens and How We Know What We Know
12 hours total | 8 sessions, beginning January 4, 2024
Learn how thinkers across centuries came to understand the movements of planets, moons, and stars—and thereby gain a deeper understanding of what it means to know.
How can you know, through evidence and logic, that the Earth revolves around the Sun? How can you measure the distance to the Moon without leaving Earth? Can understanding the methods and processes involved in learning such things help you to think more clearly and live more fully? It can.
In this course, Joseph Tabenkin will survey various methods used by Eudoxus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, and more to reach their world-changing discoveries. And he will show you how to understand such truths based on your own perceptual observations and logical integrations.
You will learn:
- What to look for when you gaze up at the stars,
- How to conceptualize what you see,
- The basic mechanisms governing the movements of celestial bodies,
- How these mechanisms play out on a cosmic scale,
- And how knowledge of the principles involved apply to your life, here on Earth.
The course does not assume any prior knowledge of math or physics. You will learn the methods of scientific thinking from scratch.
Instructor
Joseph Tabenkin
Joseph Tabenkin is a product designer. He is currently building tools, resources, and training materials with Lisa VanDamme to help make the principles of VanDamme Academy more widely available. He has built a number of products that help make teaching more accessible including Let’s Diagram, the Read With Me app, and the Touching the Art app.
Course & Session Schedule
- January 4, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- January 11, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- January 18, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- January 25, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- February 1, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- February 8, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- February 15, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
- February 22, 2024, 9am–10:30am PT
How the Course Works
This course is interactive and discussion-driven, so enrollment is limited. Register early to secure your spot.
The course is held live on Zoom, which you can download for free here. Sessions are video recorded, so if you miss a session (or want to review), you can watch the recording. OSI may sell course recordings and/or use them for marketing, promotional, or educational purposes.
The course is 12 hours long, consisting of 8 sessions of 1.5 hours each. Homework assignments are optional. Doing them may require an additional hour or more per week but will greatly enhance what you learn in this course.
Course handouts and supplementary materials are delivered via email. Course participants are invited to an exclusive OSI Courses group on Facebook, where they can post questions and engage in discussions with the instructor and other participants.
Have a question that wasn’t answered here? Read our FAQ or email us at [email protected].
By enrolling, you agree to OSI’s Course Terms and Conditions.
