Introductory description

This module explores the ways in which order is discussed, included, inescapable and integral to fields across science, art, society, family, material culture, and the built environment. Using problem-based learning, students explore rich case studies that cut across a range of historical, scientific, social, and conceptual boundaries.

The case studies are organized around central themes that require students to connect theoretical frameworks and methodologies to specific actions, conceptual and material objects, texts, datasets, and academic fields in order to tackle complex problems. While the specific content of the case studies are dynamic, changing year on year in response to specific cohort interests, they retain their thematic structures to help students build knowledge transfer and critical thinking skills. Students will work individually and in groups with a wide range of diverse materials; these student-led activities require that students interrogate existing professional, academic, and social paradigms through concepts around order, such as structures, patterns and systems.

This module will not tell you how to think about Order. Instead, it will challenge your existing preconceptions and encourage you to develop critical thinking skills around the interdisciplinary concept of order through encounters with theoretical frameworks, detailed case studies, and focussed problems. The module will combine a wide variety of perspectives drawn from disciplines across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Case studies included in this module change from year-to-year. The syllabus for this module is flexible as it will depend on the expertise of the module convenor and student interests. The module will always be interdisciplinary in nature, but will feature a wide variety of case studies which may change from year to year. An indicative syllabus may include case studies such as:

-Ordering Science in the 19th Century

• The development of the periodic table
• Classifying life: botany and biology
• Ordering people: lies, damned lies and the 'gentleman scientist'

Technology and Science today:

• AI, algorithms and the structures of the future
• Order and complexity in systems thinking
• Data, archives and knowledge
• Ordered geographies and infrastructure

Ordered Societies:

• Higher order-thinking and taxonomies of learning
• Order and structure in the academy
• Order and the family
• Political order

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Articulate their own understanding/conceptualisation of order and why it is an important critical issue
• Examine case studies related to the issue of order from an interdisciplinary perspective
• Critically analyse themes of order across scientific and technological spheres, societies, disciplines, and time periods
• Demonstrate an improvement in their ability to express and structure an evidence-based argument
• Demonstrate foundational research and professional communication skills

Indicative reading list

Berlin, Isaiah, and Edited by Henry Hardy, Liberty, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2002; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Nov. 2003), https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1093/019924989X.001.0001, accessed 1 Apr. 2025.

Hiruta, Kei. Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1515/9780691226132

Maxwell, James. 1865. “VIII. A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 155 (155): 459–512. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1865.0008.

Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems : International Bestseller. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.

Ball, Philip. Why Society Is a Complex Matter: Meeting Twenty-First Century Challenges with a New Kind of Science. New York;Berlin: Springer, 2012.

Research element

Students will conduct independent secondary research for their assessments.

Interdisciplinary

All modules in Liberal Arts/Arts and Sciences are interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary by definition. This module is no exception. It features theories and ideas from a wide range of disciplines.

International

The module will employ case studies from around the world. As students will have input into which case studies they would like to explore, the module will embody the best principles of representative curriculum design.

Subject specific skills

As a first-year optional core module, students who take this module will gain skills such as critical thinking, writing skills, sources and referencing, learning to navigate interdisciplinary approaches, hone their reading skills (with regard to complex theory), gain independent research skills, etc...

These skills will be foundational for their future modules in Liberal Arts and Sciences which will build on them.

Transferable skills

All skills gained in a Liberal Arts module are transferrable by definition.

Like all Liberal Arts modules, students on this module will learn time managment, project management (by working in weekly groups), critical thinking, teamwork, communication and gain greater confidence in their own ability to express and structure evidence-based arguments.

In terms of personal development, this module will encourage students to think critically about their own preconceptions and to consider concepts of order from a complex and multifaceted perspective.