About the Course
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.
Missed the course? We’ll notify you the next time it's offered!
How This 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
OSI courses are live, interactive, and discussion-driven, so enrollment is limited. Register early to secure your spot.
Courses are held on Zoom, and sessions are recorded, so if you miss a session (or want to review), you can watch the recording. You can download Zoom for free here.
Courses vary in length. And some involve homework. Please see the specific course pages for details.
Course handouts and supplementary materials are delivered via email (please register with an active email address). Participants have access to an exclusive OSI Courses group on Facebook.
Zoom is a free video-conferencing app that we use to conduct our courses. You can download it here.
Sessions are video recorded, so if you miss a session (or want to review), you can watch the recording. That said, we highly recommend attending each live session so that you can ask questions and engage with your instructor(s) and other participants.
If you do miss a session, we recommend that you watch the recording before attending the next session.
Anyone aged 29 or younger may apply for an OSI scholarship to cover the full cost of a course. For information on how the scholarships work, please visit our Scholarships page.
You can see all current and past courses here.
If you have a question that isn’t answered in the FAQ or course description, please email us at [email protected].
