Students who have taken other astronomy courses should be forewarned that they may find a significant overlap with materials covered in those courses. Science students may find that the course is not as rigorous as they would like and may find the introductory material concerning the history of the subject and a brief survey of ancients attempts understanding the Universe, superfluous. That being said, the course material, lectures and readings, will introduce concepts that even undergraduate specialist students are unlikely to seen previous. These notions and ideas, stemming from on-going research at the very frontiers of our knowledge about the Universe, are guaranteed to stretch and bend the mind in unimaginable ways.

Since the dawn of civilization (literally), human beings have exhibited an unquenchable curiosity concerning our Cosmic Origins.

How, when and why did the Universe come in existence?

How did galaxies and frothy large-scale structure that they delineate form?

How did the stars and the planets around them form?

Is life unique to our solar system?

What is our place in the Grand Scheme?

The questions have, in different forms, been pondered by mankind for centuries. They fire the imagination, ignites a sense of awe, touch something deep in the human psyche. It is therefore not surprising that astronomy, which in essence involves peering into the sky in search for answers, holds a favoured position in the public eye. As evidence, one only has to look at the popularity of the public lectures on the subject and the degree of coverage that astronomical discoveries and controversies receive in the popular media. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that amateur astronomy is one of the two most popular hobby activities in the world.

The search for answers to the cosmic questions takes many forms: mysticism, philosophical, artistic, scientific, or any combination thereof. This course will focus on the scientific search.

The last half-century has seen astonishing progress towards answering these questions from a physical perspective and for the first time in the history of mankind, we are on the threshold of being able to address many of the age-old questions. Cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is entering an exciting new phase when, as Sir Martin Rees the Astronomer Royal (who, by the way, gave a public lecture here in March of 1999) puts it, "the big picture is coming into focus for the first time. The latest in technological advances are being incorporated into new telescopes and instruments, both land and space-based. And we can expect a crescendo of discoveries in the new millennium, clarifying how the cosmos has evolved, and the role that life plays in it." In fact, we can now even begin to speculate that our Universe may be only one of a family, even an infinity, of unique universes.

This course is an attempt to share to share with you the discoveries, the excitement and the speculations that defines our rapidly receeding horizon.

Second, I would like to show you the exciting and richly layered nature of scientific endeavors. Most non-scientists, and even undergraduate science students, have a very myopic view of the world of science best represented by the following verses by Walt Whitman:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, 
and measure them,                     
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much 
applause in the lecture-room,         
How soon unaccountably I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

There is no question that there exists a large gulf that separates the scientists from the non-scientists, and in between flow the murky waters of misunderstanding and miscommunication. Much has been written about on this, starting with the famous essay titled Two Cultures by C.P. Snow. I recommend reading the following short essays and articles on the subject:

  The Place of Science in a Liberal Education             by R.A. Raimi

  The Cultural Challenge to Scientific Knowledge       by D.K. Dadachanji

In addition, I also recommend reading various articles and commentaries on a recent brouhaha often referred to as the The Sokal Affair and of these, I highly recommend the article titled: What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove   by Alan D. Sokal Follow this link (caveat emptor) to Science Wars webpage to learn more about the subject.

Non-scientists hold many myths about science. There is the myth that the main function of science is to divide and compartmentalize. This, of course, ignores the fact that many of the great scientific theories are intrinsically unifying in nature, bringing together phenomena that were previously thought to be independent and distinct. There is also the commonly held misperception that science is simply an exercise in reducing natural phenomena to a few mathematical equations. Nothing can be further from the truth.

One of Richard Feynman's favourite metaphor will serve to illustrate what I mean. Suppose you came upon two people playing an unfamiliar game, chess. By observing the various moves, you would be able to deduce the rules of the game. The physicist likewise finds patterns in the natural world, and learns about what dynamics and transformations govern its basic elements. Sometimes, this understanding arises from repeated sets of carefully controlled experiments, something it is come upon by seredipity, sometimes as a result of intuition, and sometimes by appeal to aesthetic principles of "simplicity" and "beauty". In this process, mathematics is simply a language for describing the patterns in a manner that allows us to transcend our common-sense experience and limitations. A physical understanding of the phenomena, a narrative if you will, is just as important. But, as in chess, learning how the pieces move is a trivial element of the game. The essence of the game lies in the variety implicit in a few simple rules. Similarly, it may be that the rules governing the entire structure of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the origin and evolution of life, may be described by a few sets of equations and while discovering what these basic rules may be the primary goal of certain branches of physics, on the whole exploring the endless complexities and possibilities inherent in the few simple rules is what physics and science in general is all about.

At this point, it should be noted that the fact that science involves creating narratives has, over the past decade or so, led some sociologists and literary intellectuals to mount attacks on the normative conception of scientific inquiry as a search for truths or approximate truths about the world; they have sought to reduce science to yet another social practice that produces ``narratives'' and ``myths'' which are no more valid than those produced by other social practices. In defence of science, Alan Sokal demonstrated that many of these commentators have little or no understanding of how science functions, or about the nature of scientific theories. While present and important, the narrative or rather the theoretical picture describing a phenomenon is not grounded in wishful thinking, superstition and demagoguery. Rather, it is a systematic attempt to understand the phenomenon, a product of observations, evidence and logic. Most importantly it is subject to incessant confrontation with the real world, with failure being fatal.

Such discussions are especially important in our increasingly polarized world. One aspect will be of interest to some of you is the relationship between science and religion. The two have co-existed for several millenia, some times in harmony and some times in acrimony. To have a meaningful discussion, it is important to understand what science is -- and what it isn't.