Introductory description

Reduced version of a module (from 2 to 1 term) regularly given since 2005.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1— Is it rational to have an unconditional faith in science: How can science be a public
good if very few people practice it or know much about it?
Week 2 -- Are the natural and social sciences fundamentally different?
Week 3 -- How does an understanding of the history of science contribute to an
understanding of contemporary science?
Week 4 -- To what extent can a philosophy be judged by the sociological conditions
responsible for its emergence and maintenance?
Week 5 -- What can we learn about the nature of science from the study of non-Western
cultures?
Week 6-- Does the transition from academic to intellectual inevitably involve `dumbing
down' or is something added in the process?
Week 7 -- There is a popular image of the intellectual as always championing unpopular
causes — sometimes even being 'an enemy of the people'. Is the image justified?
Week 8 -- How do the issues raised by Kuhn's and Popper's theories of science illustrate
the differences and similarities between being a scientist and being an intellectual?
Week 9 -- Is rule by experts inevitable in liberal societies?
Week 10 — Are science and technology taking us to 'Humanity 2.0'? Should we embrace
or combat this propsect?

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• -- Students will demonstrate in essay form an understanding of the role of knowledge as a source of authority in society
• -- Students will demonstrate in essay form an understanding of the similarities and differences of science and religion as sources of authoritiative knowledge.
• -- Students will demonstrate -- either essay or exam — an understanding of the role and prospects of the public intellectual as a producer and disseminator of social knowledge.
• -- Students will demonstrate — either essay or exam — the extent to which science and technology have transformed our understanding of what it means to be a human being.

Indicative reading list

Adams, Hazard. (ed.) (1971). Critical Theory since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Baudrillard, Jean (1983). Simulations. New York: Semiotexte.
Bazerman, Charles (1987). Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Bell, Daniel (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Harper & Row.
(1982). 'The Return of the Sacred: The Argument about the Future of Religion,' in G.
Almond, M. Chodorow, and R. Pearce (eds.), Progress and Its Discontents Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 501-523.
Ben-David, Joseph (1984/1971). The Scientist's Role in Society. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
and Collins, Randall (1966). 'Social factors in the origin of a new science: The
case of psychology'; American Sociological Review 31: 451-465
Beniger, J. The Control Revolution. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Biagioli, Mario, ed. The Science Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1999).
Brooke, John Hedley. (1991). Science and Religion. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Brush, Stephen (1975). 'Should the History of Science Be Rated X?' Science 183: 1164-1183.
Butterfield, Herbert. (1955). Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, Donald and Stanley, Julian. (1966). Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for
Research. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Ceccarelli, Leah (1995). 'A Rhetoric of Interdisciplinary Scientific Discourse: Textual Criticism of
Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origins of Species'. Social Epistemology 9: 91-112.
Chubin, Daryl and Hackett, Edward (1990). Peerless Science. Albany: SUNY Press.
Cohen, H. Floris. (1994). The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Collier, James. (1997). Scientific and Technical Communication: Theory, Practice and Policy.
Walnut Creek CA: Sage.
Collins, Harry. (1985). Changing Order. London: Sage.
. (1991). Artificial Experts. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
and Pinch, Trevor (1993). The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Collins, Randall (1998). The Sociology of Philosophies, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Cozzens, Susan. (1985). 'Comparing the Sciences: Citation Context Analysis of Papers from
Neuropharmacology and the Sociology of Science'. Social Studies of Science 15:127-153.
Crabbs, Jack. (1984). The Writing of History in 19th Century Egypt. Detroit: Wayne University
Press.
Crowther, J. G. (1968). Science in Modern Society. New York: Schocken Books.
Delanty, Gerard. (1997). Social Science. Milton Keynes UK: Open University Press.
De Mey, Marc (1982). The Cognitive Paradigm. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Dorn, Harold. (1991). The Geography of Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Drahos, Peter. (1995). 'Information Feudalism in the Information Society'. The Information Society
11:209-222
Drucker, Peter. (1993). Post-Capitalist Society. New York: Harpercollins
Duhem, Pierre. (1913) Le Systeme du Monde. Paris: Hermann.
Durant, John; Evans, Geoffrey; Thomas, Geoffrey (1989) 'The Public Understanding of Science'.
Nature 340: 11-14.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. (1979). The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. Cambridge UK:
Cambridge University Press..
Elster, Jon. (1984). Sour Grapes. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Febvre, Lucien, and Martin, H.-1. (1971/1958). L'apparition du Iivre. Paris: Albin Michel.
Feyerabend, Paul. (1975). Against Method. London: New Left Books.
. (1979). Science in a Free Society. London: New Left Books.
Fukuyama, Francis. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Fuller, Steve. (1988). Social Epistemology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
(1993a/1989). Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents. 2nd edn. New York: Guilford Press.
(1993b) Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science &
Technology Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
(2000a). The Governance of Science. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
(2000b). Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
(2003). Kuhn vs. Popper. Cambridge UK: Icon.
(2005). The Intellectual. Cambridge UK: Icon.
(2011). Humanity 2.0. London: Palgrave.
Gellner, Ernest. (1988). Plough, Sword, Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gerschenkron, Alexander. (1962). Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press.
Gilbert Nigel and Mulkay, Michael. (1984). Opening Pandora's Box. Cambridge UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Gjertsen, Derek. (1989). Science and Philosophy: Past and Present. Harmondsworth UK: Penguin.
Gong, Gerritt. (1984) The Standard of 'Civilization' in International Society Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Goodman, David and Russell, Collin (1991) The Rise of Scientific Europe, 1500-1800. Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
Goodson, Ivor. (1988). The Making of Curriculum. London: Falmer Press.
Gould, Stephen Jay. (1989). Wonderful Life. Harmondsworth UK: Penguin
Graff, Harvey (1987). The Legacies of Literacy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Graham, Loren (1982). Between Science and Values. Columbia University Press.
Grant, Edward (1977) Physical Science in the Middle Ages Cambridge UK: Cambridge University
Press
Gross, Alan and Keith, William (eds.) (1996) Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and
Interpretation in the Age of Science. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Hacking, Ian (ed.) (1982). Scientific Revolutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Halsey, A. H. (1992). The Decline of Donnish Dominion, 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harding, Sandra. (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
. (ed.) (1993). The Racial Economy of the Science. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Hedges, Larry. (1987). 'How Hard is Hard Science, How Soft is Soft Science?' American
Psychologist 42: 443-455.
Hempel, Carl. (1965). Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harper & Row.
Hess, David (1993). Science in the New Age. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
(1995). Science & Tecchnology in a Multicultural World. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Hess, David (1997). Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (New York University Press
Hollis, Martin and Lukes, Steven (eds.) (1982). Rationality and Relativism. Cambridge MA: MIT
Press.
Holmes, Brian and McLean, Martin. (1990). The Curriculum: A Comparative Perspective. London:
Routledge.
Hooker, Clifford. (1987). A Realistic Theory of Science Albany: State University of New York Press.
Horgan, John (1996). The End of Science. Reading MA: Addison & Wellesley
Huff, Toby. (1993) The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Cambridge UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Hull, David. (1988). Science as a Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Humphrey, George (1951) Thinking London: Methuen.
Inkster, lan (1991) Science and Technology in History: An Approach to Industrial Development

London: Macmillan.
Johnson, Jeffrey (1990). The Kaiser's Chemists: Science and Modernization in Imperial Germany.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Journet, Debra (1995). 'Synthesizing Disciplinary Narratives: George Gaylord Simpson's Tempo
and Mode in Evolution.' Social Epistemology 9: 113-150.
Katz, R.L. (1986). 'Measurement and Cross-National Comparisons of the Information Work Force'
The Information Society 4: 231-278.
Keddie, Nikki (1968). An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of
Sayyid ad-Din 'al-Afghani'. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Keller, Evelyn Fox. (1985). Reflections on Science and Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kitcher, Philip. (1993). The Advancement of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kleinman, Daniel (1995). Politics on the Endless Frontier: Postwar Research Policy in the United
States. Durham NC: Duke University Press.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin (1981). The Manufacture of Knowledge Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Kuhn, Thomas. (1970/1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
. (1977). The Essential Tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan (eds.) (1970). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Laqueur, Walter. and Mosse, George. (eds.) (1967) Education and Social Structure in the 20th
Century New York: Harper & Row.
Latour, Bruno (1987). Science in Action. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
and Woolgar, Steve. (1986/1979) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific
Facts. 2nd edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Laudan, Larry. (1977). Progress and Its Problems. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Leach, Joan. (1996). Healing and the Word: Sophistical Rhetoric and Hippocratic Medicine in
Classical Antiquity. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
LeGoff, Jacques. (1993). Intellectuals in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Blackwell.
Leplin. Jarrett. (ed). (1984). Scientific Realism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lewenstein, Bruce (ed.) (1992) When Science Meets the Public Washington DC: American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
Lewis, Bernard. (1982). The Muslim Discovery of Europe. New York: Random House.
Lindley, David. (1993). The End of Physics. New York: Basic Books.
Maclntyre, Alasdair (1970). 'Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing?' in B. Wilson
(ed.), Rationality (Oxford: Blackwell), 62-77.
MacKenzie, Donald (1995). Knowing Machines. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
MacKenzie, D.and Wacjman, J., eds. Social Shaping of Technology. Open University Press.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1954). Magic, Science and Religion. Garden City NY: Doubleday.
Manicas, Peter (1986). A History & Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mannheim, Karl. (1936/1929). Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Marks, John (1984). Science and the Making of the Modern World. London: Heinemann
Mason, Stephen. A History of the Sciences. London: Macmillan.
Matthews, J. Rosser (1995) The Quest for Medical Certainty. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
McCloskey, M. (1983) 'Intuitive Physics'. Scientific American 4:122-130.
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Royal Society 21: 109-130.
Merton, Robert. (1970/1938). Science and Technology in Seventeenth Century England. New
York: Harper & Row.

Midgley, Mary. (1992). Science as Salvation. London: Routledge.
Mirowski, Philip (1989). More Heat than Light. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Montgomery, Scott (1995). The Scientific Voice New York: Guilford Press.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1994). The Technological Transformation of Japan. Cambridge UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Mulkay, Michael (1990). Sociology of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Needham, Joseph. (1971). The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. London:
Allen & Unwin.
Parfit, Derek. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Pinch, Trevor (1990). 'The Sociology of the Scientific Community,' In R. Olby, G. Cantor, J. Christie,
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Interdisciplinary

Students read texts in history, philosophy and sociology of science -- as well as journalistic accounts and policy reports related to contemporary developments in science and technology.

Subject specific skills

knowledge and critical understanding of the well-established principles of their area(s) of study, and of the way in which those principles have developed
ability to apply underlying concepts and principles outside the context in which they were first studied
knowledge of the main methods of enquiry in the subject(s) relevant to the named award, and ability to evaluate critically the appropriateness of different approaches to solving problems in the field of study
an understanding of the limits of their knowledge, and how this influences analyses and interpretations based on that knowledge.
use a range of established techniques to initiate and undertake critical analysis of information, and to propose solutions to problems arising from that analysis
a systematic understanding of key aspects of their field of study, including acquisition of coherent and detailed knowledge, at least some of which is at, or informed by, the forefront of defined aspects of a discipline

Transferable skills

the ability to manage their own learning, and to make use of scholarly reviews and primary sources (for example, refereed research articles and/or original materials appropriate to the discipline).
apply the methods and techniques that they have learned to review, consolidate, extend and apply their knowledge and understanding, and to initiate and carry out projects
critically evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and data (that may be incomplete), to make judgements, and to frame appropriate questions to achieve a solution - or identify a range of solutions - to a problem
an ability to deploy accurately established techniques of analysis and enquiry within a discipline
conceptual understanding that enables the student:

• • to devise and sustain arguments, and/or to solve problems, using ideas and
    techniques, some of which are at the forefront of a discipline
• • to describe and comment upon particular aspects of current research, or
    equivalent advanced scholarship, in the discipline
    an appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity and limits of knowledge