Goals. This graduate course offers an introduction to the field of science and technology studies. In this course, you have three major objectives: (1) careful reading of a range of writings that contribute to our knowledge of science, technology and human experience; (2) developing an informed, integrated perspective on the relations of science and technology with society; and (3) applying the knowledge and skills you gain to a practical problem, through the preparation of an essay that will serve as your seminar paper.

Meetings. We will meet once a week in seminar. Some weeks of the class will feature one or more common readings that everyone will do. In other weeks each person in the class will be assigned a book or collection of articles. Read the assigned selections carefully. Each week, chose a theme or question that you find especially interesting and write a brief paper, no more than two pages long, single-spaced, that explores it. Please send a copy of your paper to the class email list no later than Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. These papers will serve as the basis for our discussions. Each week, one or more students we be chosen in advance to help lead the following Monday's seminar.

Books. Several books for course are available for purchase in the bookstore. Others can be found in Folsom Library. In addition, some assigned articles will be placed in the STS graduate student lounge.

Term Project. Each member of the seminar will write a term paper, approximately 15-20 pages double-spaced, due at the end of the term. Each member will also make an oral presentation of this material, approximately fifteen minutes long with fifteen minutes for discussion, the evening of December 3. Development of the project will be shown by these steps: (1) tentative topic selected, September 24; (2) discussion of topic with Prof. Winner, the Week of Sept. 24; (2) preliminary bibliography, October 8; (3) preliminary two page sketch of themes in the paper, October 29; (4) first draft, Nov. 12 (give me as much as you've written); The final version is due, no later than 3:00 p.m., Friday, December 7.
Grades. Your grade will be determined equally by:

1. the quality of your participation in seminar discussions, including the short weekly papers, leadership of one or more seminar sessions and your lively, thoughtful contributions to class discussion;
2. the quality of your term paper and oral presentation at the end of the semester.
Late papers willnot be accepted, period. Don't ask. You are expected to do all work independently. Plagiarism will result in failure in the course.

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CLASS SCHEDULE:

August 27: Introductions

Lecture: "STS, its historical origins and contemporary significance"

Learn the use of the RPI and regional libraries as well as the campus reference and computer services. Write a four or five sentence description of the range of your personal interests in science and technology studies.

September 3:

(Labor Day holiday, no class meeting) Because we have two weeks, please read both of the books listed for September 10

September 10: Changing Conceptions of Scientific Knowledge

Readings:

A.J Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Also read: Richard Rorty, "Untruth and Consequences" (available in grad lounge)

Your paper this week should identify significant differences between the approaches described in Ayer and Kuhn.
September 17: History of Science: The Scientific Revolution

Readings:

David Hess, Science Studies, pp. 127-134 (available in grad lounge)
H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historigraphical Inquiry

In Cohen's book, everyone read Ch. 2, "The Great Tradition" and Part III, "Summary and Conclusion". In addition, each person in class will be assigned to read and given a brief oral report on another segment of Cohen's book:
Ch. 3: "The New Science in a Wider Setting"
Ch. 4: "The Emergence of Early Modern Science from Previous Western Thought on Nature"
Ch. 5 "The Emergence of Early Modern Science from Events in the History of Western Europe"
Ch. 6 "The Emergence of Early Modern Science from Outside Western Europe"

The question your weekly paper and oral presentation should address: What are the distinguishing features of modern, Western science, if any?

Recommended books (background):

Michel Foucault The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.
Boris Hessen, The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's Principia. In P.G. Wersky (ed.), Science at the Crossroads.
Margaret Jacob, . The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.
Carolyn Merchant, Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution.
Robert Merton, Science and Society in Seventeenth Century England.
Joseph Needham, The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. David Noble, A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science.
Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science.
Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution
Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth
September 24: The Social Construction of Everything

Common reading: Karin Knorr-Cetina, "Laboratory Studies: The Cultural Approach to the Study of Science," in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies.

Students select one of the following:

Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch, The Social Construction of Technological Systems
Harry Collins, Changing Order
Karin Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge
Bruno Latour, Science in Action
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life
Donald Mackenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance
Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes
Robert Proctor, Cancer Wars

October 1: Technologies, Cultures and Power (I)

Reading: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, Parts 1 and 2

October 8: Technologies, Cultures and Power (II)

Reading: Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, Parts 3 and 4.
October 15: Science, Technology and Politics

Everyone read: Susan Cozzens and Edward J. Woodhouse, "Science, Government, and the Politics of Knowledge," Chapter 23 in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies.

Students select one of the following:

Daniel Kevles, The Physicists
Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power
David Noble, Forces of Production
Walter McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age
Stuart Leslie, The Cold War and American Science
G. Paul Zachary, Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century
Daniel Sarewitz, Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress
Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco
Steve Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge
Richard Sclove, Democracy and Technology
Sheila Jasanof, Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology in America

October 22: Feminist/Multicultural STS

Everyone should read: Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural?

In addition, each student should browse one or more of the following:

Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod. Gender and Technology in the Making
Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave
Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science
Evelyn Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock.
Evelyn Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science.
Helen Longino and Sally Kohlstedt. Women, Gender, and Science: New Directions.

October 22: Feminist/Multicultural STS (cont.)

Readings: (con.t)
Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action,1940-1972.
Bonnie Spanier, Impartial Science: Gender Ideology in Molecular Biology
Barbara Wright, Women, Work, and Technology

October 29: The Technological Society and the Search for Alternatives

Common reading: Langdon Winner, "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology," Also: Brian Martin, "The Critique of Science Becomes Academic"; copies of these readings are available in the STS student lounge.

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Andrew Feenberg, Alternative Modernities
Ullrich Beck, The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs
Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization
Murray Bookchin, Ecology of Freedom
Wofgang Sachs, Greening the North
Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovings, Natural Capitalism
Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor

November 5: Globalization, Work and the "New Economy"

Chose one of the following:

Carla C. Freeman, High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean
Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society
Lawrence Lessig, The Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace

November 12: no class

(Use this week to work on your term papers.)
November 19: Scholarship in an Interdisciplinary Setting

Panel discussion by members of the STS faculty. Readings will be assigned by the faculty members who speak. Your weekly paper will be written after this session, giving your thoughts on interdisciplinary approaches in our field of study.

November 26: no class

December 3: Presentation of student term projects

December 7 — Final papers are due in Mr. Winner's box in the STS office no later than 4:00 p.m.