In this assignment you will write a 3-5 page review of a source on some topic related to the course.

The requirement here is that you both summarize and critique a particular source that makes a significant claim. The source may be a book, essay, article, pamphlet, play, movie, video, blog post, or any other such thing. You may argue that your source has provided enough evidence for its claim or that it falls short and fails to consider (or dismisses outright) valid objections to the claim.

For example, you may find sources that:

• Claim science provides proof of a trancesdent, personal, creator deity
• Claim science provides proof that gods are not necessary to create something from nothing
• Claim anything just outside the boundaries of accepted science, but are done by serious scientists that suggest these claims will be ultimately accepted
• Claim anything paranormal
• Deal with the singularity
• Are written by Ray Kurzweil
• Claim that philosophy will never be replaced by science, or that science has shown that we have no need for philosophy
• Are dismissive of Emergence
• Claim that culturally-relativistic science is valid (or even that it is a good thing)
• Claim to have true answers on questions of morality, consciousness, or free will

Your review may be on the whole favorable, scathing, or balanced, but you must demonstrate a good understanding of the claims and their ramifications.

You will be assessed on your understanding of the main arguments made in the source you are considering, the manner in which you critique the source's evidence and reasoning (based on our study of the philosophy of science in class), the quality of sources you cite, and the professionalism of your finished work: typesetting, title, grammar and spelling, paper structure (introduction, thesis, argument, evidence, conclusion), footnotes, citations, and bibliography.

Here are some examples of strong critiques (they don't have footnotes and citations — yours will — but they illustrate how to take the claimer to task):

• David Albert's critique of Krauss's A Universe From Nothing.
• Jeremy Fox's answer to E. O. Wilson's claim that great scientists don't need to be good at math.
• Steven Pinker's takedown of E. O. Wilson and others' claims about group selection. (This one does not directly address any particular work of Wilson's, but is notable nevertheless for its structure and thoroughness.)

You can find other examples of critiques by finding just about any essay on edge.org and browse some of the "Reality Club" responses to the essay.