Committee on Conceptual and
Historical Studies of Science
THE
Autumn 2007
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: Wed. 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 efforts to apply science-studies
approaches beyond the sciences themselves.
Members
are expected to provide themselves with the following texts:
Fleck, Ludwig. 1981. Genesis and development of a scientific fact.
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, either on e-reserve or in the ‘Course
Documents’ section of our Chalk site (http://chalk.uchicago.edu)
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 Monday evening prior to each Tuesday 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
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. By
October 30, students must turn in a 600 word (one page, single-spaced) project “pitch”
that describes 1) their research site, the data they will undertake to gather
there, and a brief description of preliminary data already gathered; and 2) the
broad arguments they expect to make with this data. On November 20, students will present their early
projects in class, involving both a rendition of their questions/arguments, the
significance of these in the context of course readings, and the data students
use to address them. Final papers must
be turned in, electronically or in print, no later than December 20. We understand that this is past the
conventional grading deadline, but want students to have time to develop their
papers after course readings have been completed. Final papers can, of course, be turned in
earlier.
Final
grades are constituted as follows:
Class participation and reading
questions 20%
Term paper 80%
Sep 25. Introduction:
Course outline and research discussion
Course syllabus
Oct 2. 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 9. Philosophy of Science
a. Popper, Karl. 1959. The
Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Routledge,
chapter one, “a survey of some fundamental problems” (pp. 27-48).
b. Quine, W.O. 1951. “Two dogmas of empiricism,” Philosophical
Review 60, pp.20-43.
c. Hacking,
Oct 16. Fleck and Kuhn
a. Kuhn, Thomas. 1962 and later
editions. The
structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, chs. 3-10.
b. Fleck, Ludwig. 1979 [1935]. Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
pp.38-51, 82-125.
[Note that these two short but canonical works deserve to be read in their entirety.]
Oct 23. 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. 1981. “The hunting of the
quark.”
Oct 30. 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.
**600 word research “pitch” due in class**
Nov 6. SSK and the history of science
a. Shapin,
Steven and Simon J. Schaffer, 1985. 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 13. Gender and Scientific Knowledge
a. Keller, Evelyn Fox. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock.
San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, chs. 3-12.
b. Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and Lifetimes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, pp. 74-105.
Nov 20. Presentation and Discussion of Preliminary Research
Projects
Nov 27. Science studies takes on the world
a. MacKenzie, Donald. 2001. “Physics and Finance: S-Terms and
Modern Finance as a Topic for Science Studies,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 26: 115-144.
b. MacKenzie,
Donald, and G. Spinardi, 1995. “Tacit
Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of
Nuclear Weapons,” American Journal of Sociology 101: 44-99.
c. Pinch, Trevor, and Bijker, W.
1989. “The social construction of facts
and artifacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology
might benefit each other.” In W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, T.J. Pinch (eds.), The social construction of technological
systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 17-50.