8. 강의진도계획
Course Overview
This course introduces key concepts, debates, and theoretical traditions in Science and Technology Studies (STS). It examines how scientific knowledge, technological systems, expert authority, laboratory practices, gender, politics, coloniality, public participation, and environmental crisis have been analyzed within STS. The course begins with classical sociology of science and moves through the sociology of scientific knowledge, social constructivism, actor-network theory, feminist science studies, postcolonial technoscience, public understanding of science, and Anthropocene studies.
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## Weekly Schedule
Week 1. Course Introduction
Topic: Introduction to the course
Overview:
This week introduces the overall structure, aims, themes, and requirements of the course.
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Week 2. The Origins of Science and Technology Studies: Robert K. Merton’s Sociology of Science
Overview:
This week discusses the role and distinctive academic character of STS through an examination of Robert K. Merton’s sociology of science. As one of the foundational figures in the sociological study of science, Merton developed an influential account of the normative structure of scientific communities.
Required Reading:
Merton, Robert K. (1973). “The Normative Structure of Science.” In Robert K. Merton, *The Sociology of Science*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 267–278.
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Week 3. Is Scientific Knowledge a Process of Gradual Development or Revolutionary Rupture? Thomas Kuhn’s *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*
Overview:
This week examines the impact of Thomas Kuhn’s *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* on the academic study of science. It asks whether science develops through linear and cumulative progress, or whether it proceeds through revolutionary breaks and paradigm shifts.
Required Reading:
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962). *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Week 4. Is Scientific Knowledge Absolute? The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Overview:
This week introduces the Strong Programme developed by the Edinburgh School in the sociology of scientific knowledge. It explores how science can be studied sociologically and considers the meaning and implications of a relativist view of scientific knowledge.
Key Questions:
1. What is the Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge?
2. How should we understand social approaches to science?
3. What is a relativist view of science?
Required Readings:
Barnes, Barry, and David Bloor. (1982). “Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge.” In Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds., *Rationality and Relativism*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 21–47.
Bloor, David. (1991). *Knowledge and Social Imagery*. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chapters 1–3, Conclusion, and Afterword.
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Week 5. Is Science a Social Construct? The Social Construction of Science
Overview:
This week examines debates over whether science is socially constructed or whether it possesses an independent and self-contained integrity of its own. Through a historical case study of Hobbes, Boyle, and experimental life, the class explores the social foundations of scientific facts.
Required Reading:
Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. (1985). *Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life*. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Week 6. Scientific Practice as an Association of Humans and Materials: Actor-Network Theory
Overview:
This week introduces actor-network theory and its understanding of science as a process formed through constantly shifting networks of association among humans and nonhumans.
Key Questions:
1. Is symmetry between humans and nonhumans possible?
2. What does the concept of technoscience mean?
3. How can science be understood as a process of network formation, dissolution, and reassembly?
Required Reading:
Latour, Bruno. (1987). *Science in Action*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, and 6.
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Week 7. The Transmission of Tacit Knowledge: Laboratory Studies
Overview:
This week examines laboratory studies and the role of tacit knowledge in scientific practice. It asks whether the laboratory is simply a reproduction of nature or an artificially constructed environment, and how we should understand the social phenomena that occur within laboratory spaces.
Key Questions:
1. Is the laboratory a simple copy of nature, or an artificially constructed environment?
2. How should we understand the social phenomena that take place inside laboratories?
Required Reading:
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. (1986). *Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts*. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Week 8. Technology and Society: The Social Construction of Technology
Overview:
This week introduces the Social Construction of Technology, or SCOT. It examines whether technology is a self-contained process governed by its own rationality, or whether it is produced through interaction with social systems.
Key Questions:
1. Is technology a complete and rational process in itself?
2. Or is technology formed through interaction with social systems?
3. What is the Social Construction of Technology?
Required Reading:
Pinch, Trevor, and Wiebe Bijker. (1984). “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” *Social Studies of Science* 14(3): 339–441.
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Week 9. Is Feminist Science Possible?
Overview:
This week explores feminist science studies. It asks whether science is gender-neutral or whether scientific practices and concepts are already shaped by embodied gender differences.
Required Reading:
Keller, Evelyn Fox. (1987). “The Gender/Science System: Or Is Sex to Gender as Nature Is to Science?” In Mario Biagioli, ed., *The Science Studies Reader*, pp. 234–242.
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Week 10. Is Science Political? The Politics of Science
Overview:
This week examines the political dimensions of science. It asks whether science and politics are fully separate domains, and explores the recovery of politically marginalized scientific fields through the concept of “undone science.”
Key Questions:
1. Are science and politics completely independent from each other?
2. How can politically marginalized areas of science be recovered?
3. What is “undone science”?
Required Readings:
Scott, P., E. Richards, and B. Martin. (1990). “Captives of Controversy: The Myth of the Neutral Social Researcher in Contemporary Scientific Controversies.” *Science, Technology, & Human Values* 15: 474–494.
Foucault, Michel. (1991). *Discipline and Punish*, pp. 3–31.
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Week 11. Is Science Universal? Non-Western Science and Postcolonial Science
Overview:
This week examines non-Western science and postcolonial technoscience. It asks whether context-specific forms of science and technology are possible in non-Western societies. It also considers the possibility of expanding decolonial science beyond local and political decolonization toward a decolonization of nature-human relations.
Key Questions:
1. Is context-specific science and technology possible in non-Western societies?
2. How can postcolonial or decolonial science be expanded?
3. Can decolonization be extended beyond politics to the relationship between humans and nature?
Required Reading:
Anderson, Warwick. (2002). “Introduction: Special Issue on Postcolonial Technoscience.” *Social Studies of Science* 32(5–6).
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Week 12. Experts and the Public: The Public Understanding of Science
Overview:
This week examines the relationship between experts and the public through the framework of the Public Understanding of Science. It also introduces the concept of “lay experts” and explores how non-experts can possess situated, practical, and socially significant forms of knowledge.
Key Questions:
1. What is the Public Understanding of Science?
2. How did the concept of “lay experts” emerge?
3. How can the divide between expert knowledge and lay knowledge be reconsidered?
Required Reading:
Wynne, Brian. (1996). “May the Sheep Safely Graze? A Reflexive View of the Expert-Lay Knowledge Divide.” In S. Lash, B. Szerszynski, and B. Wynne, eds., *Risk, Environment and Modernity*. London: Sage, pp. 44–83.
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Week 13. The Science of the Anthropocene
Overview:
This week examines the Anthropocene as a concept for understanding global crisis produced by extreme human intervention in nature. It considers the formation of the Anthropocene concept and the possibility of an Anthropocene science.
Key Questions:
1. How has human intervention in nature produced planetary crisis?
2. How did the concept of the Anthropocene emerge?
3. What would an Anthropocene science involve?
Required Reading:
Hamilton, Clive. (2018). *The Anthropocene*. Korean translation. Seoul: Isangbooks.
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Course Themes
By the end of the course, students will have examined the following major themes:
1. The emergence of the sociology of science
2. Scientific norms and scientific communities
3. Paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions
4. Relativism and the sociology of scientific knowledge
5. The social construction of scientific facts
6. Actor-network theory and technoscience
7. Laboratory studies and tacit knowledge
8. The social construction of technology
9. Feminist science studies
10. The politics of science and undone science
11. Postcolonial and decolonial technoscience
12. Expert-lay relations and public understanding of science
13. Anthropocene science and planetary crisis
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Expected Learning Outcomes
Students who complete this course will be able to:
1. Explain the major theoretical traditions in Science and Technology Studies.
2. Compare different approaches to scientific knowledge, including Mertonian sociology, Kuhnian paradigm theory, the Strong Programme, social constructivism, and actor-network theory.
3. Analyze science and technology as social, material, political, and cultural practices.
4. Critically examine the relationship between expert knowledge and lay knowledge.
5. Discuss how gender, coloniality, politics, and environmental crisis shape scientific knowledge and technological systems.
6. Apply STS concepts to contemporary issues in science, technology, and society.