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Science and Scientific Knowledge from the Perspective of Historical Sociology

Class at Faculty of Humanities |
YMH5033

Syllabus

Lessons‘ topics:

1.     Introduction: pre-modern forms of knowledge and modern science

2.     The origin of scientific disciplines

3.     Intellectuals and the intellectual field (Pierre Bourdieu)

4.     Professions and professionalization

5.     Bureaucracy and the process of bureaucratization

6.     Ideologies and the critique of ideology

7.     Science and power, science and the state (Michel Foucault)

8.     Critique of technical knowledge (Bruno Latour, Ullrich Beck)

9.     Social constructionism and the critique of scientific knowledge

10.  Feminist and post-colonial analyses of science

11.  Knowledge-based society and its inner contradictions

12.  Conclusion: the evolution of science and historical sociology   Course materials Course readings, slide decks used for each class, and webcasts summarizing select classes can be downloaded from Moodle (https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=7681).   Recommended further readings: Beck, Ulrich, Risk Society: Towards a New Moderity, transl. Mark Ritter, London: Sage

1992. Fleck, Ludwik, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Chicago: Chicago University Press,

1979. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, transl. Alan Sheridan, Harmondsworth: Penguin

1991. Freeden, Michael, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press

2003. Hacking, Ian, The Social Construction of What? Harvard: Harvard University Press

2000. Harding, Sandra (ed.), The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader, Durham: Duke University Press

2011. Illich, Ivan, Deschooling Society, New York: Harper & Row

1971. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press

1970. Latour, Bruno, Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press

1987. Sismondo, Sergio, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, 2nd ed., Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell

2010. Yearley, Steven, Making Sense of Science: Understanding the Social Study of Science, London: Sage

2005. And the readings required for lessons.

Annotation

The course introduces students to how historical sociology is analyzing modern science. Upon completing this course, the students will be informed about the basic historical transformations that science and scientific knowledge have undergone in modern society and will be able to identify and grasp the main analytical methods applied in social studies of science.

The first part of the course focuses on key structural presuppositions of modern science: scientific disciplines, intellectual market, professions and bureaucracy as ways of organizing knowledge, and political ideologies. Second part focuses on the main methods used in analysis and critique of scientific knowledge: the approach of Michel Foucault, sociology of science, social constructionism, post-colonial and feminist studies of science.

The course concludes by a discussion of contemporary society as a “knowledge-based society”.