Course Program

Lecture Slides are available here (to be updated weekly)

Week 1 & 2 (22 Feb): Introduction

  • What are Science and Technology Studies?
  • Why study the role of science and technology in society?

In-session Reading:

Task: In Chapter 2, Okasha describes a type of inference called “inference to the best explanation” (IBE) and he says that IBE is a non-deductive type of inference. Describe in your own words what makes IBE non-deductive and what this means for scientists who use IBE.

Week 2 (01 Mar): Basic Concepts

  • Induction, deduction, inference to the best explanation
  • The problem of induction
  • Underdetermination
  • The Quine-Duhem Thesis

Presentation handout
Presentation slides

Preparatory Reading:

Task: On p. 187 Duhem compares physics to an organism. In your own words and in light of the problem that he discusses in the preceding pages, explain Duhem’s choice of the organism metaphor.

Week 3 (08 Mar): What is Technology?

Presentation slides
Presentation handout

Preparatory Reading:

Complimentary Reading:

Task: Answer question 6 at the end of Chapter 2 of Dusek (2006).

Week 4 (15 Mar): Technology and Human Nature

Preparatory Reading:

Task: We sometimes use the parable of Pandora’s box in contexts where we discuss unintended harmful consequences of scientific and technological developments. Watch this short clip describing the myth of Pandora and read the passage from Hesiod’s Works and Days, in which Hesiod tells the story of Pandora. Explain in your own words what elements of the myth justify the application of the box metaphor to science and technology.

Week 5 (22 Mar):  The Kuhnian Theory of Scientific Revolutions

Preparatory Reading:

Task: The counselor to President Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway has become famous (among other things) for having coined the expression “alternative facts” on NBC’s Meet the press. In this context, Conway has been accused of promoting a radical relativism, according to which everyone can have their own facts (although that is probably not what she meant). Explain the difference between the radical relativism that Conway allegedly promotes and the kind of relativism that can be associated with Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions as described by Ladyman in Chapter 4.7.

Week 6 (29 Mar): The Kuhnian Theory of Scientific Revolutions (cont.)

Preparatory Reading:

Complimentary Reading:

Task: On p. 2 of the Introduction to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn confronts the historian of science with two options:

“The more carefully they [historians of science] study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more cer­tain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date be­liefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today.”

Briefly discuss the implications of both choices for the history of science. What follows if one treats old scientific paradigms as “myths” and what if one treats them as “science”?

 Semester Break

Week 7 (26 Apr): The Strong Program and The Sociology of Knowledge

Preparatory Reading:

Task: Barnes and Bloor introduce an equivalence postulate (also known as the symmetry thesis) for the sociology of knowledge according to which “all beliefs are on a par with one another with respect to the causes of their credibility” (p. 22). This means that “the effect of ‘the facts’ on a believer plays the same general role whether the belief that results is a true or a false one” (p. 33). Note that Barnes and Bloor do not assume that all beliefs are equally true or equally false. Given Barnes‘ and Bloor’s equivalence postulate, how can a sociologist distinguish between true and false beliefs when studying a system of knowledge? And: What concept of truth is employed the equivalence postulate?

Week 8 (03 May): Actor-Network Theory 

Presentation handout
Presentation slides

Preparatory Reading:

  • Latour, Bruno. 2013. “Actor-Network-Theory (ANT).” In: Scharff, Robert C, and Val Dusek. 2013. Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 278-288.
  • Sismondo, Sergio. 2013. “Actor-Network Theory: Critical Considerations.” In: Scharff, Robert C, and Val Dusek. 2013. Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 289-296.

Complimentary Reading:

Task: Read pp. 92-99 of Ch. 4 of Fashionable Nonsense. Describe what Sokal and Bricmont call “the fundamental problem for the sociolo­gist of ‘science in action'” and how this problem relates to the title of their book.

Week 9 (10 May): Science and the Public: The Intelligent Design Debate

Presentation handout
Presentation slides

Preparatory Reading:

Complimentary Reading:

Task: Read the message on evolution by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The Pope writes:

As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.

According to this view, theories of evolution are inspired by specific “philosophies”. Which philosophies do you think does the Pope have in mind here? And do you agree that theories which are based on these philosophies are unable to serve as a basis for the dignity of the human person?

Week 10 (17 May): Science and the Public: The Intelligent Design Debate (cont.)

Presentation slides

Reading:

Task: Read this 2005 article by Stanley Fish in Harper’s Magazine mentioned in A Flock of Dodos and summarize its main point (apologies for bad copy quality).

Week 11 (24 May):  Wrap-up: Why Trust Science?

Preparatory Reading:

Complimentary Reading:

Naomi Oreskes’ Tanner Lectures on Human Values: Day 1; Day 2.

Task: Watch Naomi Oreskess TED talk entitled “Why We Should Trust Scientists?“. Compare the answer she gives in the talk to the one she gives in the excerpt from her forthcoming book.