| Inhalt |
What is science? What, if anything, is special about the way that scientists and engineers generate knowledge? In university courses, we absorb many implicit rules about what makes for good scientific work—lab reports should be written in the third person, papers must have citations (but not to ChatGPT or Wikipedia, of course!), double-blind studies are better than anecdotal evidence—but rarely do we have the opportunity to reflect on why it is that we are taught to know in this way. This course identifies and questions common (but often unstated) assumptions about what science is and how it works, with the aim of revealing the connections between the STEM fields and our social, cultural, economic, and political lives. The first unit introduces central ideas in Science and Technology Studies (STS), a field that uses perspectives from the humanities and social sciences to analyze STEM. We will examine whether the scientific method is an accurate description of how science and technology development operate in practice, and if not, what kinds of descriptions might be put in their place. Unit two examines how culture, economics, and politics interact with science and technology development. We will ask who benefits from how particular research agendas or new technologies are designed, and who bears the risks of living with uncertain science or dangerous technologies. The final unit explores how societies can engage with controversial issues in STEM. After exploring the rationales for and barriers to involving non-scientists in decision-making, we will collectively choose several controversial current topics to explore in depth (such as stem cell research, digital media and copyright, or bioterrorism), and one of these topics will be the basis for an in-class exercise in participatory science policy. This course is aimed at students with backgrounds in either the sciences or the humanities who want to think more critically about the interactions between of science, technology, and society. |