Class Syllabus

Part I: Institutional and Professional Development of Science

For Discussion

1. Why take a class like this?
2. When and why did this class originate in the curriculum?
3. What are your thoughts and feelings about science?

Write these down without putting your name on the paper, in sentence form (no more than 10 sentences), and then we will exchange them with each other for consideration and discussion.

Reading

For Discussion

1. If the sort of science that had become victorious had been the science that was practiced in China, how would it, or would it not look different than the science that is currently practiced in the United States?

2. How important do you think the economic or religious systems in which science is practiced are in shaping the questions or methods of science?

Reading

Shapin, Steven. 1994. "Knowing About People and Knowing About Things: A Moral History of Scientific Credibility." Chapter 6 in A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Merton, Robert K. 1957. "Puritanism, Pietism, and Science." Chapter 3 in The Sociology of Science, ed. by Bernard Barber and Walter Hirsch. New York: The Free Press.

Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. "Nature as Female," (chapter 1); "Organic Society and Utopia," (chapter 3), "Dominion Over Nature," (chapter 7), and "The Mechanical Order" (chapter 8) in The Death of Nature: Women, Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Reading

Reading

Barry Barnes. 1985. Chapter 1, "The Rise of Science" in About Science. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.

Kleinman, Daniel Lee and Mark Solovey. 1995. "Hot Science/Cold War: The National Science Foundation After World War II." Radical History Review 63 110-139.

Noble, David. 1980. "Corporate Roots of American Science." Pp. 63-75 in Science and Liberation, ed. by Rita Arditti et al. Boston: South End Press.

Questions

1. How did state-building affect the growth of the profession of science?

2. Science and religion used to be closely linked. After 1850, they became less connected. What sorts of moral claims did scientists make for their profession? How did they view the social and moral benefits of science?

Part II: The Day to Day Practice of Science

Reading

Group Work in Class

1. Begin by writing down the paradigm in your own field of study. What are some of the major assumptions? What are the classic texts? What are the main methods of investigation? And, if you are up to the challenge, what are some of the things that are left out or not considered in your field.

2. Before exchanging this with your partner, write down what you think the paradigm is in your partner's field.

Exchange the papers, and briefly discuss your experience with each other, before we return to a general class discussion.

For discussion

1. Why do we find it hard to identify the paradigms in our fields?

2. How did we learn about the paradigms in other fields? Are these reliable and valid sources of information? How else do you think we can get better information about scientific paradigms?

Reading

Merton, Robert King. 1973. "The Normative Structure of Science." Chapter 13 in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mitroff, Ian I. 1974. "Norms and Counternorms in a Select Group of The Apollo Moon Scientists: A Case Study of The Ambivalence of Scientists." American Sociological Review 39: 579-595.

Mulkay, Michael J. 1974. "Norms and Ideology in Science" Social Science Information 15: 637-656.

For discussion

Reading

Ludwik Fleck. 1979. "How the Modern Concept of Syphilis Originated." Chapter 1 in Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Figert, Anne. 1993. "The Three Faces of PMS." Social Problems 42: 56-73.

Reading

Part III: Stratification in Science

Reading

Merton, Robert K. 1973. "The Matthew Effect in Science." Chapter 20 in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fox, Mary Frank. 1991. "Gender, Environmental Milieu, and Productivity in Science." Chapter 8 in The Outer Circle: Women in the Scientific Community, ed. by Harriet Zuckerman, Jonathan R. Cole and John T. Bruer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Henry Etzkowitz, et al. 1992. "Athena Unbound: Barriers to Women in Academic Science and Engineering." Science and Public Policy 19: 157-79.

For discussion

1. Why do you think that American women are more highly represented in biological and medical sciences, given that this is not the case in other countries? I am asking you to consider explanations other than "women like to work with things related to life."

2. Why do you think that there is more salary equality between male and female industrial chemists than between men and women scientists in other fields and settings? How can we use this to bring more women into science?

3. How do you think that different teaching methods might promote the involvement of more different kinds of people? Things to consider:

a. how people are evaluated and graded
b. whether people work alone, in groups, or in hierarchical or horizontal groups,
c. how much theoretical vs. experimental work is done
d. role models of the same or different social characteristics?
e. the relative importance of mathematics? f. the attitudes and behaviors of teachers an mentors

Reading

Hubbard, Ruth. 1990. "Fact Making and Feminism." Chapter 2 in The Politics of Women's Biology. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Ruskai, Mary Beth. 1996. "Are `Feminist Perspectives' in Mathematics and Science Feminist?" Pp. 437-441 in The Flight From Science and Reason, vol. 775 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Radcliffe Richards, Janet. 1996. "Why Feminist Epistemology Isn't." Pp. 385-412 in The Flight From Science and Reason, vol. 775 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Part IV: Contemporary Debates: Technologies and Contemporary Life

Reading

Reading

Daniel J. Kevles. 1985. "A New Eugenics," "Varieties of Presumptuousness," and "Songs of Deicide." Pp. 251-301 in In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Chapter 1, Chapter 22, and Appendix 5.

Stephen J. Gould. "Mismeasure by Any Measure." pp. 3-13 in The Bell Curve: History, Documents, Opinions. ed. by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman. New York: Times Books.

Charles Lane. 1993. "Tainted Sources." pp. 125-139 in Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman.

E.J. Dionne. "A Long Tradition." in Jacoby and Glauberman.

Margaret Chon. "The Truth About Asian Americans." Pp. 238-240 in Jacoby and Glauberman.

For discussion

1. Since there is no way for anyone to be completely objective, how can we use the social characteristics of different people to help make better, more objective (that is, more about the object) science?

2. Or, should be find ways to help people eliminate biases in their thinking? How can we do that?

3. Is there any way that science can AVOID reproducing the power systems that are in place at a given time, if the work is related to human beings? Why do you think so?