HAPS Programme
What is HAPS?
HAPS is a meeting ground for academics and students in Science, Arts and Engineering, as well as the Christchurch School of Medicine. HAPS degrees on offer are for qualifications at 400, Master's, and PhD levels in both Science and Arts. A new 100-300 level sequence in HAPS also affords Science, Engineering and Arts students the opportunity to sample this field as undergraduates or even ‘minor' in it for a B.Sc. or B.A.
HAPS students
Students of HAPS draw in from varied fields. Someone who has completed a B.Sc. in physics, for example, may feel that she wants to broaden her interests at master's level, rather than narrow them down, which is often required in traditional research areas. Or someone who has completed a B.A. in history may feel that he is not going to understand well the feats and foibles of humankind until he has an adequate perspective on science.
The HAPS programme, undergraduate as well as postgraduate, is a place for such different, but similarly reflective students, to meet and pool their understanding and experience. An undergraduate student undertaking HAPS will doubtless bring special strengths from out of science or humanities but probably not both, and thus will have certain gaps to fill. The courses are useful precisely so as to afford to humanities students opportunity to reflect upon science, and to science students some of the research skills and strategies of humanities reflection and thinking.
HAPS Student Profiles
Since the programme's inception in 2002, many fine 400 level students have successfully completed in HAPS and then proceeded on to interesting destinations, including further postgraduate study of HAPS at Canterbury or overseas. One such graduate had worked on history of medicine and thereafter returned to the practice of medicine, another had worked on the history of the question of the stability of the solar system and proceeded initially to successful further postgraduate study in meteorology and thence back to professional engineering. A former student of history and law undertook HAPS 400 level and then went on to article for a year in Wellington for a NZ High Court Judge. Placements in overseas HAPS programmes so far include the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto. Indeed so far all HAPS graduates who have applied for anything have got what they have applied for and all have applied for amazing things.
What makes HAPS popular and important?
The strengthened interest in HAPS in the present day is explained by many factors. Perhaps it signals that self-preoccupation is on the wane. People are asking more reflective questions about themselves and the path that humankind is following. No-one is completely confident any longer that the drivers of research and study are as they should be. Are humans appropriately mobilising the assessment of risks and potentialities? Where has science come from and where is it going? Is our path with it as fully helpful as it might be to our safety and creativity? In increasing numbers, reflective people seek thus to take stock of our situation. They want to know what determines the human prospect and what would it be to make the greatest positive difference to it.
The value of a HAPS qualification
There is as never before a need for people with HAPS background in New Zealand. We are the only English speaking nation that has not long had university programmes in HAPS at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Yet people with these qualifications are needed in the fields of education, science policy, science communication, museums, libraries and the like.
For comparison, Australia has long had HAPS programmes in some of its universities. It is estimated that at any time in Australia roughly 100 HAPS thesis students are at work. Many research historical contributions that Australians have made to science, or the past social relations of science in Australia. New Zealand needs work of this sort to be done here, and needs the wisdom of the people who have done such work.
HAPS is important to the self-understanding of any nation. Canterbury's HAPS programme was CUAP approved in November 2001. It was the first of its kind in New Zealand. The students it has attracted have come from diverse undergraduate backgrounds and are especially searching and broad-minded. When the programme was CUAP reviewed in 2007, these former and current students commented in glowing terms about the programme's worth. Experts from other universities nationally and internationally also generously endorsed the University of Canterbury programme in HAPS.
HAPS degrees
Canterbury's HAPS programme newly includes a sequence at 100, 200 and 300 levels that can lead to an undergraduate 'minor' in the field. HAPS can also be approached by a knight's move at postgraduate level, leading in one full-time year of study to (fourth-year only) B.A.(Hons) or P.G.Dip.Sc. degrees, or in two full-time years of study to M.A. or M.Sc. degrees. Students may enter postgraduate studies in HAPS at the University of Canterbury from any university and with various different undergraduate backgrounds.
The undergraduate HAPS offerings currently include:
- HAPS101 Cultures of Inquiry and the Origins of Science
- HAPS201 The scientific method debate; European science 1200-1700
- HAPS202/302 Theory, measurement, reality; World science since 1700
Currently at Canterbury there are five degrres available in HAPS:
- Post-graduate diploma in science (P.G.Dip.Sc.)
- B.A. Honours
- Master of Arts (M.A.)
- Master of Science (M.Sc.)
- Ph.D.
The coursework components for the postgraduate HAPS degrees are existing 400 level courses in programmes such as Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Sociology, Political Science, Psychology and Civil Engineering. Research essay and thesis components of the degrees can be done under the supervision of academics in these and a number of other programmes, including Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, Biological Sciences and Classics, as well as the Christchurch School of Medicine.
The course of study for each student will be specially tailored under the advice of the Coordinators of the programme.
Learning Outcomes and Skills
Learning outcomes
Qualifications in HAPS will help enable students to:
- Improve their understanding of the causes and character of the rise of science
- Have insight into the intellectual and social circumstances, and the personalities, which have helped make science possible
- Read primary writings of historical scientists and study science in the making
- Appreciate in a critical way the interplay of science and society
- Understand the risks to science – why the culture and tradition of scientific excellence is fragile
- Recognise science as too young to have yet asked, let alone answered, all its potentially important questions
- Assess critically both dismissals of science and apologetics for it
- Understand interrelations between both experimental and theoretical science and science and technology
- Appreciate in a critical way the interplay between science and other inquiries
- Analyse the social implications of emerging sciences, technologies and science & technology policy in a historically and theoretically informed manner
- Evaluate critically arguments concerning the nature of science
- Consider reflectively and critically the conceptual foundations of science or of special sciences
- Develop sophistication as interpreters of the methodology of science
- Acquire the skills listed below
Skills
- For evaluating arguments (critical reasoning)
- For arguing cogently and clearly both orally and in writing
- Of philosophical acumen
- For discussing ideas and listening to others
- Of historiography (concepts, theories, traditions in the historical interpretation of science)
- Of analysis (identifying the parts of an argument and how they fit together)
- In basic scholarly conventions (referencing, bibliographies, rejecting plagiarism, appropriate use of quotations)
- Of information gathering
- Of writing communicatively about science for a general audience
- Of writing forcefully for an audience of scientists
- Of planning and executing professionally supervised, responsible, sustained original research
- Of structuring a major writing project and executing it successfully
CHiPSS
The Canterbury History and Philosophy of Science Society (CHiPSS) which meets many times during the year nucleates discussions among the various graduate students and academics involved in HAPS work. 2008 has seen significant visits by international stars in both philosophy of science and history of science; every year CHiPSS also hosts talks by local researchers. Apart from HAPS students who will be notified automatically, anyone wishing to be included in the electronic notifications about CHiPSS events should e-mail philip.catton@canterbury.ac.nz