SOC452

041409

This course explores the rise of modern science, from the birth of the Royal Society, the first scientific society and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, its first journal. In recent years, science has provided some of the biggest headlines in the world's press. From the concern over Japan's degrading nuclear reactors to the argument over genetically modified foods, 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 domains of science, technology and medicine. This course finds much of its rationale in such cases, where scientific questions become inseparable from social ones.

The course is organized around a series of scientific institutions. These institutions are explored by means of historical cases, which arise in roughly 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 other purpose here, however, is to highlight the depth and importance of many problems still confronting the world of science today--problems that are cultural as well as scientific, and that demand of us an understanding of what science is and how it works. While this class will be of interest to students curious about engineering and science, among others, no scientific knowledge of any kind is needed to take this course.

GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E

Undergraduate

WE - WEC (Writing Emphasis Course)