Course Introduction

The objective of this course is to analyze the social factors that affect the development of the institution and profession of science, the production of scientific knowledge, the uses made of science by various groups in society, and moral beliefs about science, technology and rationality.

The second goal of the course is to help students to understand the different logics that are used in sciences and their relationships to logics used in other kinds of efforts to understand ourselves and the world around us. The course is divided into four parts. Part I examines the development of what we call science, and considers the roles of religion, capitalism, liberalism and race in shaping the form that science has taken in the U.S. Part II is concerned with the daily practices of scientists. Among the questions addressed in this section are: Is science a unique form of knowing? If not, in what ways is it similar to other ways of knowing? How it is socially organized? What does it mean to be objective? The division of rewards (prestige, funding, and occupational rank) and their determinants is the focus of Part III. What difference do network ties make in acquiring resources? The last section of the course focuses on three contemporary controversies: teaching with the Internet, the uses of knowledge about genes, and the household division of labor. In every section of the course, we will focus on the moral meanings embedded in scientific practices.