51³ÉÈËÁÔÆæ

Course Description

Summary

This course introduces students to science and technology studies. Studying the laboratory as a foreign culture, technology as a built argument, and objectivity as a disembodied vision, this course approaches science as a history of the present; that is, as an unfolding force that is actively shaping the texture and significance of social life in the present. Readings will describe how scientific practice, whether in the isolation of genetics or the order of statistics, is an effective social author in its own right. Several questions will guide our inquiries: What kind of society is enacted in scientific practice and deployed technologies? Who can thrive and who is thwarted within such societies? What role should expertise play in a democracy? Topics include: the separation of the natural from the social, how science impinges on public policy (and vice versa), formatting the economy, modeling climate change, and techno-science and democracy.