Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHSS 32000 ANTH 32305 SOCI 40137 HIST 56800
Autumn 2014
An Introduction to Science Studies
Adrian Johns
Karin Knorr Cetina
Social Sciences 505
Social Sciences 424
773.702.2334;
johns@uchicago.edu
773.834.3312
Office Hours: Fri. 10:00-12:00
Tues. 2:00-4:00
The Course
This course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of science, medicine, and
technology. During the twentieth century, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and
anthropologists raised original, interesting, and consequential questions about the
sciences. Often their work drew on and responded to each other, and, taken together, their
various approaches came to constitute a field, "science studies." The course furnishes an initial
guide to this field. Students will not only encounter some of its principal concepts, approaches,
and findings, but will also get a chance to apply science-studies perspectives themselves by
performing a fieldwork project. Among the topics we will examine include: the sociology of
scientific knowledge and its applications; actor-network theories of science; constructivism and
the history of science; and efforts to apply science-studies approaches beyond the sciences
themselves.
Required Readings
Members are expected to provide themselves with the following texts, which should be available
at the Seminary Co-op:
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action.
Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures.
Other readings are listed below. Those with a double asterisk (**) are compulsory; others are
helpful but not absolutely required. These readings should be available via the web, either on ereserve or in the ‘Course Documents’ section of our Chalk site (https://chalk9.uchicago.edu/).
Course Requirements
DISCUSSIONS AND QUESTIONS
Meetings take place every week on Wednesdays, 9:30-12:20, in WB130.
Students are expected to read and reflect on the assigned readings before class, to attend each
class, and to participate in class discussion. Students are also required to develop a short, one- to
two-paragraph document proposing one or more discussion questions before each class. They
should upload this to the relevant section of the ‘Discussion Board’ part of the Chalk site by
9pm on the Tuesday evening prior to each Wednesday session. This document should pose and
briefly motivate a question or questions, often through the development of a specific puzzle or
problem in the text. It should not summarize the text’s own argument except in so far as this is
necessary to convey the student’s point.
For example, a question might look like this:
In “The Normative Structure of Science,” Merton states that “The ethos of science is
that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the
man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions,
preferences, and permissions. They are legitimized in terms of institutional
values. These imperatives, transmitted by precept and example and reinforced by
sanctions are in varying degrees internalized by the scientist, thus fashioning his scientific
conscience or, if one prefers the latter-day phrase, his super-ego.” These values
supposedly “derive from the goal and the methods” of science—“the extension of
certified knowledge” through logically consistency and empirical confirmation. But what
exactly does this mean—what is the ontology and etiology of the four norms that Merton
goes on to develop in this paper (and the other he adds in his article on priorities)—what
are they and where do they come from? Specifically, are norms attitudes, morals, rules or
means; are they held by every scientist, “average” scientists, exemplary scientists, or only
those who share “the goal and the methods” of science Merton describes? Do they
differ from the norms of comparable nonscientists (e.g., engineers, lawyers,
plumbers)? And did they result from a rational social contract to further preexisting
goals and practices of science, did they coevolve as homologues, or do science’s shared
goals, practices and norms simply coexist as epiphenomena of some deeper, “Western”
ethos of progress.
These submissions are visible to all participants in the course. This is by design: the idea is that
an online ‘conversation’ in parallel with the classroom sessions may develop as we proceed.
Note that the Chalk site gives participants the opportunity to reply to posts, thus creating threads
on particular topics. We encourage you all to use this facility – it is not a requirement, but
everyone may find it helpful.
TERM PAPER
Students will be expected to produce a final project. This should be a roughly 20-page (doublespaced) research paper that engages with issues raised by the course, and which includes an
empirical component. The empirical component might include observation of a research or
discourse setting; interviews; the shadowing of a particular researcher; or an archival
project. Instructors will help devise possible research tropics. At least 10 distinct primary
sources should be used in your analysis (e.g., a research articles, notebooks, commentary or
instruments from the time period of investigation). Essays should have a guiding organization
and deploy signposting (e.g., an introduction with a roadmap and conclusion) and standard
referencing.
Students should have prepared by November 5 a one-page (600 word), single-spaced “pitch”
that describes their chosen topics and the broad arguments they expect to make. They will
briefly present their early work in class, involving a rendition of their questions/arguments, the
significance of these in the context of course readings, and the data they mean to use to address
them. Final papers/exhibits must be turned in no later than December 19. We understand that
this is past the conventional grading deadline, but we want students to have time to develop their
work after course readings have been completed. They may, of course, be turned in earlier.
Final grades are constituted as follows:
Class participation and reading questions
20%
Term paper
80%
Calendar of Lecture and Discussion Topics and Reading
Assignments
Oct. 1. Introduction
Course syllabus
Oct. 8. The beginnings of the modern sociology of Science
**Merton, Robert K. 1973 [1942]. “The Normative Structure of Science,” in Norman Storer
(ed.), The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. University
of Chicago Press, pp. 267-278.
**Merton. 1973 [1957]. “Priorities in Scientific Discovery,” in The Sociology of Science, pp.
286-324.
**Zilsel, Edgar. 1942. “The Sociological Roots of Science.” American Journal of Sociology
47, pp. 544-562.
Bucchi, M. 2004. Science in Society. An Introduction to Social Studies of Science. London,
Routledge, ch. 1: “The Development of Modern Science and the Birth of the
Sociology of Science,” 7-23.
Oct. 15. The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
**Bloor, David. 1976/1991. Knowledge and social imagery. University of Chicago Press,
pp. 3-23, 131-56 (chs. 1, 7).
**Collins, Harry. 1975. “The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or
the Replication of Experiments in Physics,” Sociology 9, pp. 205-224.
**Fleck, Ludwig. 1979 [1935]. Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, pp.38-51, 82-125.
Pickering, Andrew. 1981. “The hunting of the quark.” Isis 72, pp.216-36.
MacKenzie, D. 1978. "Statistical Theory and Social Interest: A Case Study." Social Studies
of Science 8: 35-83.
Oct 22. Actors, networks, boundaries, and translations
** Latour, Science In Action, pp. 103-44, 179-213, 215-57 (chs. 3, 5, 6)
** Star, S. L. and J. Griesemer. 1989. "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary
Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley´s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 190739." Social Studies of Science 19: 387-420.
Galison, P. 1997. Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago, The
University of Chicago Press. Ch. 9, pp. 781-844.
Latour, B. and S. Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life. The Construction of Scientific Facts.
Beverly Hills, Sage, ch. 5: Cycles of Credit, 187-233.
Oct 29. Places and thresholds: the laboratory
**Latour, Science in Action, 63-100, 215-257.
**Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures, 26-45.
**Latour, Bruno. 1983. “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World,” in K. KnorrCetina and M. Mulkay (eds.), Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of
Science. London: Sage, pp. 141–70.
Hirschauer, S. 1991. "The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery." Social Studies of Science 21:
279-319.
Shapin, S. 1988. The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England. Isis 79:373404.
Nov. 5. Virtue and Credit
**NB: 600 word research “pitch” due in class **
**Shapin, S. and Simon J. Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and
the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 22-79, 110-54.
Shapin, Steven. 1994. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17th Century
England. University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-41, 243-309, 409-17.
Shapin, S. 2008. The Scientific life: a moral history of a late modern vocation. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. 165-208.
Nov. 12. Standpoints in Theory and Practice: Gender, Race, and Others
**L. Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World
(Harvard, 2004), Ch 2 (73-104).
**S. Harding, “From the Woman Question to the Science Question,” The Science Question in
Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 15-29.
D. Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of
Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies 14(3) (1988), 575-599.
L. Schiebinger, “Has Feminism Changed Science?” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society, 25 (2000),1171-6.
C. Hayden, When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in
Mexico (Princeton, 2003), Ch. 1 (19-47).
S. Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (Chicago, 2007), Ch 2
(30-52).
Nov. 19. Algorithms and Models or Expert and lay knowledge: Public and popular
science
We will decide which topic to pursue depending on student interests. For Expert and Lay
Knowledge, the readings would be:
**Gieryn, T. F. 1999. Epilogue: Home to Roost: Science Wars as Boundary Work. Cultural
Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago, University of Chicago Press:
336-363.
**Epstein, S. 1996. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge:
University of California Press.
**A. Winter, Memory: Fragments of a Modern History (Chicago, 2012), Ch 10 (225-55).
A. Secord, “Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-century Lancashire,”
History of science 32 (1994), 269-315.
A. Johns, “Experimenting with Print,” Piracy (Chicago, 2009), ch 4 (57-82).
Nov. 26. No meeting – Thanksgiving week
Dec. 3. Information and Economic Knowledge
**MacKenzie, Donald. 2001. “Physics and Finance: S-Terms and Modern Finance as a Topic
for Science Studies,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 26: 115-144.
**Callon, M. and F. Muniesa. 2005. "Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices."
Organization Studies 26(8): 1229-1250.
MacKenzie, D. and M. Yuval 2003. "Constructing Markets, Performing Theory: The
Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange." American Journal of
Sociology 109(1): 107-145.
Callon, M. 1998. Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economies. The
Laws of the Markets. Oxford, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishers/Sociological
Review: 1-57.
Carruthers, B. and W. Espenland. 1991. "Accounting for Rationality: Double-Entry
Bookkeeping and the Rhetoric of Economic Rationality." American Journal of
Sociology 97(1): 31-69.
Knorr Cetina, K. 2009. “The Architecture of Information in Financial Markets." To appear
as Chapter 6 in Maverick Markets: Cultural Structures of a Global Financial Form.
Geertz, C. 1978. "The Bazaar Economy: Information and Search in Peasant Marketing."
American Economic Review 68: 28-32.