HIST 17502/HIPS 17502
Science, Culture, and Society III
Instructor: Adrian Johns
Assistants: Adam Shapiro, Christina Fradelos
Syllabus
Course Outline
In recent years science has provided some of the biggest headlines in the world's press.
From the argument over genetically modified foods to the debate over nuclear missile
defense, and from the controversies over alleged spying at Los Alamos to the struggle
over intellectual property in digital media, many of the major issues of the day emerge
from the worlds of science, medicine and technology. This course finds much of its
rationale in such cases, where scientific questions become inseparable from social ones.
It has two main aims. First, it helps students to understand what science itself is, as a
social as well as intellectual enterprise. And, second, it helps us to decide what role that
enterprise plays - and should play - in our society.
The course is organized around a series of broad questions about science. These
questions are addressed by means of examples drawn from both the past and the present.
The historical cases arise in chronological sequence, ranging from the development of
experimental methods in the late seventeenth century to the advent of biotechnology in
the modern era. They furnish a selective set of materials for a history of scientific
practice. Their larger purpose here, however, is to highlight the depth and importance of
many problems still confronting the world of science today. We'll conclude by
considering two areas in which those problems loom largest: global warming and
biotechnology.
No scientific knowledge of any kind is needed to take this course.
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Course Requirements
Class sessions meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12:00-1:20 in HM 130.
Written work. This falls into three categories.
1. Students are to prepare a one-page paper every week (except for April 27 and June
1), due at the time of the class on Tuesdays. They will generally be returned at the
Thursday class. In total these papers amount to 20% of your final grade.
2. A short (5-7 page) paper is due on April 27. 30%. This should be an analysis of an
issue or subject raised in the first half of the course.
3. A longer (12-15 page) paper is due on June 1. 50%. This should be a more
extensive study of an issue or subject addressed in the course; it cannot be on the same
subject as the short paper.
Students should obtain the approval of an assistant for the title of the longer essay before
writing it. For both of the two papers, they should use academic conventions - in
particular, they should cite full bibliographic and page information for any source from
which they quote or use ideas. They should also include bibliographies. These essays
should try to do more than simply describe; they should attempt some critical
engagement with ideas and issues. They should also strive to be grammatical. Papers
should be word-processed and stapled, and you must retain copies of them. They may
not be submitted electronically. Students who submit papers late without reason may be
penalized.
Readings
There is no textbook for this class. Readings are assigned for each week on a case-bycase basis. However, two highly readable and very controversial works dealing with the
processes of science are recommended - you should have read through these volumes by
the end of the quarter. They are available at the Seminary Co-op:
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
J. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the
Structure of DNA (many editions; orig. 1968).
D. Kevles, The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character
(1998).
Ancillary texts, intended for those writing their longer papers on particular topics, may be
made available on the course's Chalk site in due course.
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It is further recommended that you inform yourself of relevant developments by means of
a major newspaper (the New York Times is a good choice). Periodicals such as The
Economist, The New Yorker, New Scientist, and Scientific American also contain regular
reports on relevant topics. It is especially interesting to contrast the stances towards
science and scientific claims taken by such different periodicals: The Economist and the
Wall Street Journal, for example, are consistently very different in this respect from
Newsweek, which is in turn very different from the New York Times.
Appointments
My office is in Foster 510. I have office hours on Fridays at 10-12. You are welcome to
come by at this time and ask me anything about the course. You are also welcome to
schedule appointments at other times. My network phone number is 2-2334. My email
address is johns@uchicago.edu.
Science, Culture, and Society 3
Schedule of Topics
This is a provisional schedule of topics. The subjects we actually address may differ
from these, depending partly on developments in science itself.
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What is a scientific fact?
3/30/04, 4/1/04
Facts are the bedrock of science. They are commonly taken to be incontestable bits of
truth, discovered objectively and shorn of all social or cultural content. Some of these
facts have enormous influence. But humans have not always thought of nature in terms
of "facts." So where did these things come from, and why did we come to believe in
them? We can understand what facts are (and are not) by looking at how they are arrived
at, how they become the subjects of controversy, and how they sometimes disappear.
Historical example: Robert Boyle and the "experimental philosophy" (17th century).
Modern examples: DNA fingerprinting, missile defense.
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T. Sprat, History of the Royal Society (1667), 95-109.
S. Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (1996), 89-117.
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R. Dawkins, "Arresting Evidence," The Sciences, November-December 1998, 2025.
H. Collins and T. Pinch, The Golem at Large (1998), 7-29.
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What is a scientific discovery?
4/6/04, 4/8/04
Science makes discoveries. That is, it reveals to us new things in the natural world:
things like oxygen, electrons, and living coelacanths. The endless parade of new
discoveries is largely what has given science its immense cultural value. Looked at
closely, however, the process of discovery itself becomes distinctly mysterious. Is there a
"logic" of discovery - a method by which discoveries may be attained? If so, what is it?
What is the relation between the discovery and its discoverer? Finally, how do we decide
that a dramatic new claim is in fact a discovery after all?
Historical example: Joseph Priestley and the discovery of oxygen (18th century).
Modern example: Joseph Weber and the non-discovery of gravity waves; (perhaps) cold
fusion and the recent Oak Ridge fusion claims.
 Extracts from Priestley, in J.B. Conant (ed.), Harvard Case Studies in
Experimental Science (1957), I, 88-103.
 T.S. Kuhn, "The historical structure of scientific discovery," in Kuhn, The
essential tension (1977), 165-77 (orig. 1962).
 H. Collins and T. Pinch, The Golem: What you should know about science (2nd
edn., 1998), 91-107.
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What is a scientist?
4/13/04, 4/15/04
The figure of the scientist is an enormously influential one in modern society. But what
are the characteristics that denote a scientist? Where do they come from, and why are
they so respected? Above all, how are they changing today? To answer these questions
we'll begin with the coining of the term "scientist" itself, and with sociologist Max
Weber's classic formulation of science as a "vocation." Then we'll compare that
formulation to the portrait given in James Watson's Double Helix - the first modern
warts-and-all account of a scientific discovery, and itself something of a classic. Finally
we shall consider how the figure of the scientist is changing as university researchers
engage in today's realm of biotechnology.
Historical examples: The invention of the "scientist" (1830s-40s); Max Weber on science
as a vocation (1918).
Modern examples: James Watson and the discovery of DNA; the culture of biotech.

[W. Whewell], extract of review of Mary Sommerville, On the connexion of the
physical sciences, Quarterly Review 51 (1834), 58-60.
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M. Weber, "Science as a vocation," in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds.), From
Max Weber (1946), 129-56.
Watson, Double Helix, esp. chs. 7, 10, 21-29.
P. Rabinow, Making PCR: A story of biotechnology (1996), 19-45.
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Did science slay God?
4/20/04, 4/22/04
Ever since its first publication, the Darwinian theory of evolution has been the focus of
bitter controversies about science and religion. One recent biography of Darwin barely
escaped being given the subtitle The man who slew God. Here we'll look at how those
controversies flared up at the outset, with the development and reception of Darwin's
theory in his own day. Then we'll move forward in time to consider the Scopes Trial in
1920s Tennessee, at which proponents of evolution clashed head-on with defenders of
fundamentalist Christianity. Finally, we'll address current arguments about "intelligent
design" in the context of debates about science and secularism.
Historical examples: Darwin; the Scopes Trial (1850s-80s;1920s).
Modern example: "Intelligent design" and the politics of science education.
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C. Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), "Introduction," "Variation under
Domestication," "Variation under Nature," "Struggle for Existence,"
"Recapitulation and Conclusion." These are available in many printings; a
convenient source is D.M. Porter and P.W. Graham (eds.), The Portable Darwin
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), 107-59, 194-215.
J.H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some historical perspectives (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1991), 275-96.
E. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing
Debate over Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 170-93.
.M.J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The biochemical challenge to evolution (NY:
Free Press, 1996), 26-48 - read alongside:
R.T. Pennock, Tower of Babel: the evidence against the new Creationism
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 263-72.
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What is a scientific laboratory?
4/27/04
No meeting 4/29/04
Scientific experiments and tests are most commonly carried out in places called
laboratories. The word is an old one, coined in the seventeenth century. It originally
seems to have referred to an alchemist's den - a place of work (in Latin, labor) and a
place of prayer (oratorium). But today's laboratories are highly professionalized places.
How do the characteristics of the lab affect the work that goes on there? And how can we
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be confident that the artificial conditions of the lab properly reflect the circumstances of
the "real world" outside? To answer those questions we'll consider the fortunes of Louis
Pasteur in the late nineteenth century, when he attempted to use laboratories to
revolutionize the life sciences of his time. But we'll also find that they remain live issues
today in the testing of Genetically Modified Organisms.
Historical example: Louis Pasteur (1870s-80s).
Modern example: GMO testing.
 Translated extracts from Pasteur's "Memoir on the organized corpuscles which
exist in the atmosphere," in J.B. Conant (ed.), Harvard case studies in
experimental science, II (1957), 508-17.
 B. Latour, "Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world," in K. Knorr-Cetina
and M. Mulkay (eds.), Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of
Science (London: Sage, 1983), 141–70.
 C.C. Mann, "Biotech goes wild," Technology Review July/August 1999.
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What is a scientific prediction?
5/4/04, 5/6/04
Scientists supposedly test their claims. They do so largely by making predictions and
then seeing if those predictions come true. But what tolerances do they adopt when they
perform such tests? More generally, how much certainty should the public place in
scientific predictions, especially of great events that cannot be closely modeled in a
laboratory? Major policy issues may hang on such questions, as in the case of nuclear
waste disposal, which demands an understanding of events 100,000 years in the future.
And what about disciplines whose predictions don't work, as has been the case with
earthquake science?
Historical example: Albert Einstein and the testing of relativity (1880s-1930s).
Modern examples: nuclear waste disposal; earthquake science.
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"Joint eclipse meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society,"
The Observatory 42 (1919), 389-98.
Collins and Pinch, The Golem, 27-55.
G. Polakovic, "Predicting the Big One a Big Zero," Los Angeles Times,
September 7, 1999, A1, A6.
J. Wheelwright, "For our Nuclear Wastes, there's Gridlock on the way to the
Dump," The Smithsonian, May 1995, 40-50.
7 What is a scientific instrument?
5/11/04, 5/13/04
Scientific tests and predictions often rely on machines called instruments. The
manufacturing of scientific instruments is an enterprise centuries old, but in the last
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hundred years or so the scope, scale and size of such instruments has increased
dramatically. Today's devices are no longer the children's toys that Isaac Newton bought
from his local fair in order to investigate the behavior of light. They are specialized,
complex equipment, often developed specially for the purpose. But as we depend ever
more on these machines, we need to ask the simple question: what comes first, the
instrument or the science? Do ideas drive technology, or does the available technology
determine the science that is done?
Historical example: cloud and bubble chambers (1890s-1980s).
Modern example: LIGO (and we may also talk about the Hubble Space Telescope).
 C.T.R. Wilson, "On a Method of Making Visible the Paths of Ionising Particles
through a Gas," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 85 (1911), 285-88
(online at JSTOR here).
 P. Galison and A. Assmus, "Artificial Clouds, real particles," in D. Gooding, T.
Pinch, S. Schaffer (eds.), The uses of experiment (1989), 225-69.
 S. Faber, "Gravity's secret signals," New Scientist 144/1953, 26 November 1994:
http://archive.newscientist.com/archive.jsp?id=19534200.
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Is there a scientific ethos?
5/18/04, 5/20/04
It is fairly common to hear science characterized as an ethical enterprise - one with its
own norms of conduct, which are policed by the scientific community itself. Thus many
people believe that science is less subject to fraud or hucksterism than most human
activities, and that when such misconduct does occur it is quickly rooted out by virtue of
the very process of testing that makes science what it is. If this is so, then what exactly
are the norms of science? Where did they come from? What effect do they have on the
practice of scientific work? And, perhaps most important, who makes sure that they are
observed? We'll begin to answer these questions by looking at the classic description of
the scientific ethos as moral and self-sufficient - one written against a background of total
interventionism by Nazi and Stalinist states. We shall then examine three recent cases
where important elements of that ethos have been questioned: the so-called "Baltimore
case," in which Congress insisted on imposing outside oversight of laboratory practices;
the Wen Ho Lee case, in which the world of Los Alamos - a world in which the openness
of science did not obtain - was put on embarrassing display; and the recent declaration by
the Union of Concerned Scientists that the Bush administration was actively censoring
the scientific process.
Historical example: Totalitarianism and the "norms" of science (1930s-40s).
Modern examples: the Baltimore case; the Wen Ho Lee case.
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R.K. Merton, "The Normative Structure of Science," in Merton, The Sociology of
Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (1973), 267-78 (originally
published in 1942).
D. Kevles, The Baltimore Case, 198-265.
Dan Stober, Ian Hoffman, A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of
Nuclear Espionage (2002), 17-44.
Union of Concerned Scientists, "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking":
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/report.html
9 How certain does science need to be? 5/25/04, 5/27/04
There is no more controversial science today than that of global warming. On the one
side, most of the scientific community affirm that human pollution is at least exacerbating
an increase in temperatures across the planet, and that this could well lead to major
environmental and social effects. On the other, a relatively small number of skeptics some of them prominent scientists - argue that the evidence for this remains sketchy,
correlative (rather than causal), and interpretative. The issue has gained even greater
importance since the election of President Bush, whose administration sides strongly with
the skeptics and against the majority of scientists. Here we look at the problems raised
by this dispute, and in particular at the statistical character of modern scientific facts. An
important question is this: how sure do we need to be of global warming in order for
serious action to be warranted?
Historical example: the rise of statistics and cost-benefit analysis.
Modern example: global warming.
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T. Porter, Trust in numbers: the pursuit of objectivity in science and public life
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 148-89.
B. Lomborg, "The truth about the Environment," Economist, August 4, 2001.
"Misleading math about the Earth," Scientific American, January 2002, 61-71.
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Who owns science?
6/1/04
No meeting 6/3/04
One of the "norms" that Merton posited for science was what he called "communism."
He meant that scientific knowledge itself was common to all humanity. But it turns out
that knowledge can be made a subject of property, at least temporarily: this is what
patents and copyrights are for. But where should property rights in knowledge stop?
And if science is now a business, dedicated to the pursuit of patents, how can its allimportant reputation for disinterested investigation be preserved?
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Example: intellectual property in biotechnology.
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J. Boyle, "The Intellectual Land Grab," in Boyle, Shamans, Software, and
Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society (Cambridge, Ma.,
1996), 125-30.
D. Kevles, "Patenting Life," unpubl. Yale Law School paper:
http://www.yale.edu/law/ltw/papers/ltw-kevles.pdf
J.R. Brown, "Privatizing the University--the New Tragedy of the Commons,"
Science 290 (December 1, 2000). Online at
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5497/1701.
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