BUILDING CONFIDENCE, INTEGRITY & EXCELLENCE

ACADEMIC AMBITION

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Academic Ambition Seminars

At SWPS we want to stretch and challenge all of our students. Therefore we hold a series of seminars after school, which seek to inform, provoke, stretch and challenge our intellectually ambitious students.

The seminars are open to all SWPS students, though Academic Scholars are expected to attend some, if not all, of these sessions. These one hour sessions are led by the Head and introduce students to new ideas in philosophy and science, great texts from the western canon, as well as wider historical and political trends and theories. The seminars are intellectually demanding but both fascinating and exciting; they are based on what university courses are like and so will give a flavour of what to expect. Indeed we hope that our students will come away from these sessions more inspired to read and think more deeply.

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PREVIOUS SEMINARS TOPICS

Moby Dick - the greatest American novel? Why Read War and Peace? What is Hate Speech? How to make an Egyptian Mummy Cultural Relativism - is nothing really Abandon Hope - the Divine Comedy wrong or right? Karl Popper’s Brilliant Idea AI - problem or solution for the future? Can we have values without religion? The Freedom to Dissent: the politics of King David and Solomon - did they exist? John Milton All you need to know about Obelisks Pride - Dante’s sin in Purgatory The culture of capitalism Don Giovanni - introduction to Mozart’s Opera (part 1) Les Liaison Dangereuses - a modern warning The ancient world of Delphi and Olympia How do we know right from wrong? Pere Goriot - Balzac’s masterpiece Logical Positivism The Waiting Room - Dante’s Purgatory Socrates - who? Introduction to Plato’s Dialogues Why is Georg Buchner important? Meaning in Einstein’s Philosophical World The Final Circles of Hell in Is science nothing but classical empiricism? Dante’s Inferno Where are the classical liberals? Christian environmental ethics The Law and Euthanasia Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot Purgatory: the waiting room for bliss Can your values ever be facts? What is the Philosophy of Science? Who was John Milton? Introduction to Anthropology

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BUILDING CONFIDENCE, INTEGRITY & EXCELLENCE

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SIR WILLIAM PERKINS’S SCHOOL

GUILDFORD ROAD | CHERTSEY | SURREY KT16 9BN

01932 574900 | [email protected] | www.swps.org.uk