Committee on Conceptual and
Historical Studies of Science
THE
Autumn 2006
An Introduction to
Science Studies
|
Adrian
Johns |
|
James
A. Evans |
|
Social
Sciences 505 |
|
Social
Sciences 420 |
|
773.702.2334;
johns@uchicago.edu |
|
773.834.3612;
jevans@uchicago.edu |
|
Office
Hours: Fri. 10:00-12:00 |
|
Office
Hours: Thurs. 3:00-5:00 |
This course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary
study of the scientific enterprise.
During the twentieth century, sociologists, historians, philosophers,
and anthropologists raised original, interesting, and consequential questions
about the sciences. Often their work
drew on and responded to each other, and, taken together, their various
approaches came to constitute a field, "science studies." The course furnishes an initial guide to this
field. Students will not only encounter
some of its principal concepts, approaches, and findings, but will also get a
chance to apply science-studies perspectives themselves by performing a
fieldwork project. Among the topics we
may examine are: the sociology of scientific knowledge and its applications; actor-network
theories of science; constructivism and the history of science; notions of
normal and revolutionary science; and debates concerning the fate of research
in the commercial university.
Members
are expected to provide themselves with the following texts:
Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Shapin, Steven and S.J. Schaffer.
1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump.
Latour,
Bruno. 1987. Science in Action.
Evelyn
Fox Keller, 1983. A
Feeling for the Organism.
All other
readings are available via the web through e-reserve and linked from our course
website at http://chalk.uchicago.edu.
As well
as the following suggestions, we have compiled a selective list of additional readings for those wishing to pursue
particular topics.
A. DISCUSSIONS AND QUESTIONS
Students are expected to read and
reflect on the assigned readings before class, to attend each class, and to
participate in class discussion.
Students are also required to develop a short, one- to two-paragraph
document proposing one or more discussion questions before each class. They will email this to both instructors by
9pm on the Tuesday evening prior to each Wednesday’s session. This document should pose and briefly
motivate a question or questions, often through the development of a specific
puzzle or problem in the text. The goal
of these questions should be to penetrate the text and engage with its most
significant parts.
For example, for the second session’s reading, a question
might look like this:
In “The Normative Structure of Science,” Merton states
that “The ethos of science is that affectively toned complex of values and
norms which is held to be binding on the man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of
prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences, and permissions. They are legitimized in terms of institutional
values. These imperatives, transmitted
by precept and example and reinforced by sanctions are in varying degrees
internalized by the scientist, thus fashioning his scientific conscience or, if
one prefers the latter-day phrase, his super-ego.” These values supposedly “derive from the goal
and the methods” of science—“the extension of certified knowledge” through
logically consistency and empirical confirmation. But what exactly does this mean—what is the
ontology and etiology of the four norms that Merton goes on to develop in this paper
(and the other he adds in his article on priorities)—what are they and where do
they come from? Specifically, are norms
attitudes, morals, rules or means; are they held by every scientist, “average”
scientists, exemplary scientists, or only those who share “the goal and the
methods” of science Merton describes? Do
they differ from the norms of comparable nonscientists (e.g., engineers,
lawyers, plumbers)? And did they result
from a rational social contract to further preexisting goals and practices of
science, did they coevolve as homologues, or do science’s shared goals,
practices and norms simply coexist as epiphenomena of some deeper, “Western”
ethos of progress.
B. TERM PAPER
Students
enrolled in HPSS 40137 will be expected to produce a 20 page research paper
that engages with issues raised by the course, and which includes an empirical
component. The empirical component might
include observation of a research or discourse setting; interviews; the
shadowing of a particular researcher; or an archival project examining the
papers of a scientist. Instructors will
provide a menu of (and access to) possible research settings. Students must turn in the proposed topics of
their papers by November 1; fieldwork/archival memos based on completed
fieldwork/archival work by November 22; and the final papers by December
6.
Final
grades are constituted as follows:
Class participation and reading
questions 20%
Term paper 80%
Sep 27.
Introduction: Course outline and
research discussion
Course syllabus
Oct 4. Sociology of Science
a. Merton, Robert K.
1973 [1942]. “The Normative Structure of Science,” in Norman Storer
(ed.), The Sociology of Science:
Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. University of Chicago Press, pp.
267-278.
b. _____. 1973 [1957].
“Priorities in Scientific Discovery,” in The Sociology of Science, pp. 286-324.
c. Zilsel, Edgar.
1942. “The Sociological Roots of
Science.” American Journal of Sociology 47,
pp. 544-562. Online here.
d. Dasgupta, Partha, and Paul David. 1994. “Towards a New
Economics of Science.” Research Policy
23, pp. 487-521.
Oct 11. Philosophy of Science
a. Popper, Karl. 1959. The
Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Routledge, pp. 27-48.
b. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Malden, MA: Blackwell, remarks 1-32,
65-71, 197-205, 240-282, 340-345 (pp. 1-14, 27-29, 68-70, 75-82, 93-94).
c. Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago
Press, chs. 3-10.
Oct 18. Knowledge and Power
a. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The
Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Routledge, pp. 21-63, 135-56, 178-95.
b. Foucault, Michel. 1970. The
Order of Things. New York: Random House, pp. xv-xxiv, 125-65.
b. Hacking, Ian. 2002.
Historical Ontology.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-26.
Oct 25. Social Studies of Knowledge
a. Bloor, David.
1976/1991. Knowledge and social imagery. University of Chicago Press, pp.
3-23, 131-56 (chs. 1, 7).
b. Collins, Harry.
1975. “The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the
Replication of Experiments in Physics,” Sociology
9, pp. 205-224.
c. Pickering, Andrew.
1993. “The mangle of practice:
agency and emergence in the sociology of science.” American
Journal of Sociology 99, pp. 559-89.
Nov 1. Actor Network Theory
a. Latour, Bruno. 1983. “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will
Raise the World,” in K. Knorr-Cetina and M. Mulkay (eds.), Science Observed:
Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. London: Sage, pp. 141–70.
b. _____.
1987. Science In Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through
Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 103-44, 179-213,
215-57 (chs. 3, 5, 6)
Nov 8. SSK and the history of science
a. Shapin, Steven and Simon J.
Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump:
Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, pp. 22-79, 110-54.
b. Shapin, Steven.
1994. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17th
Century England. University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-41, 243-309, 409-17.
Nov 15. Gender and Scientific Knowledge
b. Keller, Evelyn Fox. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock.
San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, chs. 3-12.
c. Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and Lifetimes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
pp. 74-105.
Nov 22. No Class meeting – Thanksgiving Week
Nov 29. Science, government, and the market
a. Bush, Vannevar, 1945. Science – the endless frontier. http://www.nsf.gov/about/history/vbush1945.htm.
b. Ben-David, Joseph. 1983. The Scientist’s Role in Society: A Comparative Study. University of
Chicago Press, pp. 139-68.
c. Shreeve, James. 2004.
The Genome War: How Craig Venter
Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World. New York: Knopf, pp.
55-67, 77-90, 195-206, 224-236, 244-254, 310-324, 336-357 (chs. 4, 6, 15, 17,
19, 24, 26).
d. Sulston, John and Georgina Ferry. 2004. The
Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, pp.
vii-ix, 81-113, 149-86, 226-59 (preface, chs. 3, 5, 7).