STS Ph.D. Preliminary Exam Reading List
Revised DRAFT, 2009
Philosophy of Science and Technology
Books
Basalla, George, 1988. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Curd, M., and Cover, J.A. 1998. Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues. WW Norton and Company.
From the Curd and Cover anthology:
Kitcher, P "1953 and all that: A tale of two sciences"
Musgrave, A, "NOA's Arc: Fine for realism"
Psillos, Stathis Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth."
Laudan, "Demystifying Underdetermination."
Duhem, Pierre, 1969. To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from
Plato to Galileo, trans. E. Doland and C. Maschler. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Feyerabend, Paul, 1981. Realism, Rationalism, and Scientific Method (Philosophical Papers,
vol. 1) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chaps. 1, 2, and 4: “On the Interpretation
of Scientific Theories;” “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience;” and
“Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism,” pp.1-36 and 44-96; plus “Against Method” in
M. Radner and S. Winokur, eds., Analyses and Methods of Physics and Psychology
(Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 4). Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1970, pp. 17-130.
Fine, Arthur, 1996. The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory, 2nd ed.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Galison, Peter, 1987. How Experiments End. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Galison, Peter and David J. Stump, 1996. The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and
Power. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Giere, Ron, 1988. Explaining Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Haack, S. Defending Science, Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism (2003, Prometheus Books)
Hacking, Ian, 1983. Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of
Natural Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Harding, Sandra, 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hempel, Carl G., 1965. Aspects of Scientific Explanation. NY: The Free Press. Chapters 1, 4,
and 10 (“Studies in the Logic of Confirmation,” “Empiricist Criteria of Cognitive
Significance: Problems and Changes,” and “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”).
Koertge, Noretta, 1988. A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Kitcher, P. 2001. Science, Truth, and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S., 1962, 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, Imre and Alan Musgrave eds., 1970. Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Laudan, Larry, 1977. Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth.
Berkeley, CA: University Of California Press.
Longino, Helen, 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific
Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Machamer, P. and Silberstein, M (eds.) 2002. Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell Publ.
Mayo, C, 1994. Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Mitcham, Deborah, 1996. Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Pitt, Joseph, ed. 1995. New Directions in the Philosophy of Technology, Vol 11 in Philosophy
and Technology series, Dordrecht: Kluwer [articles by Pitt, Kroes, Wachtel, and
Hickman].
Popper, K. Conjectures and Refutations (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). Introduction
(“On the Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance”) and Chaps. 1-3 and 10-11 (“Three
Views Concerning Human Knowledge,” “Science: Conjectures and Refutations, “The
Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science,” “Truth, Rationality, and
the Growth of Scientific Knowledge,” and The Demarcation Between Science and
Metaphysics”), pp. 3-119 and 215-292.]
Rouse, Joseph, 1996. Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Tuana, Nancy, ed. 1989. Feminism and Science. Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press.
Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1990 (1980) The Scientific Image. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Vincenti, Walter, 1990. What Engineers Know and How They Know It. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press. Especially chapters 1, 7, and 8.
Articles and Chapters
Kroes P, and Meijers, A (eds) 2000. The Empirical turn in the philosophy of Technology, Vol. 20) Oxford:
Elsevier Science Ltd:
Rip, A "There's no turn like the empirical turn," pp. 3-17
Kroes, P "Engineering design and the empirical turn in the philosophy of technology,"
pp. 19-43
Bos, B "To what extent should a critical philosophy of technology be constructivist,"
pp. 45-64
Bucchiarelli, LL "Object and social artifact in engineering design," pp 67 - 80
Meijers, AWM "The relational ontology of technical artifacts," pp. 81 - 96
Pitt, JC "Design mistakes: the case of the Hubble space telescope." pp. 149 - 163
Layton, Edwin, 1971. “Mirror Image Twins: The Communities of Science and Technology in
Nineteenth Century America,” Technology and Culture 12:562-580.
Layton, Edwin, 1987. “Revisiting Mirror Images,” Technology and Culture 12:562-580.
Pitt, Joseph, 1998. “Developments in the Philosophy of Science 1960-1995.” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Supplementary volume.
Quine, W.V.O., 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Philosophical Review. Multiply
reprinted, most prominently in Quine, From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1953.
Shapere, Dudley. Review of The Structure of Scientific "Revolutions," Philosophical Review 73
(1964): 383-394.
And "Meaning and Scientific Change." In R. Colodny, ed., Mind and Cosmos: Essays in
Contemporary Science and Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966).
pp. 41-85. Reprinted in Shapere, Reason and the Search for Knowledge: Investigations
in the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984) and, in large part in I. Hacking
(ed.), Scientific Revolutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 28-59.
Suppe, Frederick, 1974. “Introduction” and “Postscript," The Structure of Scientific Theories.
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Winner, Langdon, 1993. “Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social
Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology,” Science, Technology and Human
Values 18: 362-378.