ENVS 5110
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Studies

3 credits Fall 2010

Location

University of Colorado, GEOG 201E (View Map)

Time

Tuesdays, 5:00-7.30 pm

Instructor Contact Information

Prof. Carl Mitcham (Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines; Faculty Associate, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research) with guest seminars by Prof. Jen Schneider (Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines)

Basic Course Description

A critical introduction to science, technology, and society relationships and their scholarly analysis.

Elaborating Introductory Note

The rise of modern science and technology has presented a series of challenges to society.

  • In the 1500s and 1600s (with the Scientific Revolution led by such figures as Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton) and again in the 1800s (with Charles Darwin) conflicts arose between science and religion; these conflicts have continued into the present.
  • In the late 1700s and 1800s (with the Industrial Revolution, typified by inventors such as James Watt and theorized by economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo) special problems arose for economics and politics; these problems have been resolved by neither capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, nor democracy.
  • During the 1900s the advent of nuclear weapons, electronic computers, and biotechnologies — followed in the 2000s by globalization, nanotechnology, and emergent-convergent technosciences — have only intensified multiple challenges that range across issues of personal belief and social justice to technological risk, environmental pollution, cultural integrity, and self-identify.
  • Issues of professional ethics and responsibility among scientists and engineers, as well as science and technology policy, are further dimensions of STS studies.

The present seminar will constitute a broad but critical general introduction to the scholarship related to such issues.

As STS studies have developed from the early-1900s until the present, it is possible to identify at least six different (but often overlapping) strands:

  1. pre-STS STS, including work by John Dewey, Robert Merton, Lewis Mumford, and others;
  2. classic STS, as found in the work of Rachel Carson, Thomas Kuhn, Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, E.F. Schumacher, and others;
  3. applied professional STS, as represented by fields such as biomedical ethics, engineering ethics, computer ethics, etc.;
  4. pro-science STS, science and technology as supreme achievements of human culture and STS as an effective science pedagogy for non-scientists;
  5. academic (social constructivist) STS, from Wiebe Bijker to Bruno Latour and beyond; and
  6. policy STS, from Vannevar Bush and Harvey Brooks to David Guston, Daniel Sarewitz, Roger Pielke, Daniel Kleinman, and others.

The class will touch base with each of these strands but not in strict chronological order.

Purposes and Expectations

Goals: To develop an informed appreciation of the problematic character of the relations between science, technology, and society

Objectives: After taking this course, students should be able

  • provide some analysis of the development of STS relationships;
  • give an account of the interdisciplinary STS studies field as a scholarly activity;
  • compare and contrast different approaches to the analysis of STS relationships; and
  • critically assess different assumptions (including their own) about relations between science, technology, and society.
General Class Mechanics

The class will be conducted as a seminar. The general approach will be the reading and discussion of a series of representative and/or influential works in the STS studies field. We are all students of the arguments of the scholars we are reading, and we will all be trying to give their writings the most sympathetic and insightful interpretations we can.

For each class meeting, unless otherwise noted all students will be expected to turn in brief, one-page response papers on some assigned reading. Additionally, each class will require at least one brief student presentation on an assigned reading. But all students are expected to participate actively in all seminar discussions.

Some kind of publication should come out of this course, most probably a book review.

Grades do not reflect the amount of work or effort put into a course but achievements and results. Grades will be determined on the basis of four factors:

(a) Class participation (including presentations)

(b) Writing assignments

(c) Final exam

(d) Publication

Classroom integrity and intellectual honesty are important issues. Plagiarism is a serious offense that will result in course failure.

Texts

The following texts, which will be dealt with more or less completely, are recommended for purchase:

Bruno Latour. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. ISBN 978- 0674948394

Sergio Sismondo. An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. ISBN 978-0631234449

Sharon Traweek. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0674063481

E.O. Wilson. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage, 1998. ISBN 978-0679450777

A singificant number of other texts will be available through the class web site.