# History of Science 303A Syllabus

Reading and class attendance Please come to class each week with the readings completed. The primary purpose of class discussion is to understand the arguments made by influential thinkers and to situate them in the landscape and development of our field. This requires close reading and discussion closely tied to the texts. Copies of the relevant readings should be brought to class each week. Where books are assigned, unless otherwise specified you are expected to read the whole book. Articles will be posted on the course web site.

Writing Please come to class each week with a one–page summary of the assigned book. If more than 1 book is assigned, please write a 1-page summary of each. Where articles are assigned, please write 1-2 paragraphw on each article. The summary is exactly that: a summary of the argument of the piece. Do NOT—I repeat do NOT—write a critique of the work. That will come later. For useful advice on how to write succinctly, I recommend: Zinsser, [On Writing Well](https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504536265&sr=8-1&keywords=on+writing+well+by+william+zinsser).

Class presentation Each week the first hour of class will be a discussion of the arguments presented in the assigned readings. In the second hour, we will have a group of students present a discussion of critiques of the work, based on published reviews. You will have to seek out and sort out major reviews of the assigned works.

**Assessment**

Regular attendance and intelligent and balanced class participation (by balanced I mean listening as well as speaking): 30%

Writing assignments, due in class each week: 40% (no late papers accepted except in case of illness)

Class presentation on reviews of works: 30%

**Academic Integrity**

My philosophy of academic integrity is simple: DON’T CHEAT! Sometimes students say they are confused about what constitutes cheating. Frankly, I find this a bit hard to believe, but just so that there is no ambiguity: No cheating means that all work that you present as your own must be your own. Collaborative work much be properly identified as such. Harvard University has provided an extensive discussion of [Academic integrity](https://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/academic-integrityLinks). I encourage you to follow this guidance.

Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs. You are welcome and encouraged to discuss the readings and your ideas about them with any one you like, but when you sit down to write, your words must be your own. Materials borrowed, paraphrased, or quoted from other sources must be identified as such. If you have questions about this, the responsibility is on you to request clarification in advance of submitting any homework, paper, or exam. Harvard provides guidance on this here: https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/Links to an external site..

Finally: please note that I follow what I call the academic integrity corollary to the 9th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: The enumeration by me, the University, or any other authority of certain forms of dishonesty shall not be construed to deny or disparage others that a commonsense interpretation of the word “dishonest” would imply. If something seems dishonest, it probably is. If something seems questionable, ask a question. Academic standards are not always the same as business, media, or artistic standards. If you are unsure about those standards, please ask for guidance.

Other resources Graduate school can be great, but it can also be tough, disorienting, and confusing. You are also encouraged to seek support from the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, which is full of useful resources. https://bokcenter.harvard.eduLinks to an external site.

Accommodations Any student needing academic adjustments or accommodations is requested to present their letter from the Accessible Education Office (AEO) Links to an external site.and speak with the professor by the end of the second week of the term. Failure to do so may result in the course head's inability to respond in a timely manner. All discussions will remain confidential, although AEO may be consulted to discuss appropriate implementation.

Collegiality We are an intellectual community, but also a human one. I expect all of you to treat each other with respect and collegiality. If you are unhappy about something that someone in class has said or done (including me), your first response should be to talk to that person if you feel able to do so. If you do not, then you should come see me forthwith. You should not complain, bitch, moan, or groan to other students, at the water cooler, on Facebook, or in any other way behind people’s backs. I take this extremely seriously, and you should, too.

SCHEDULE

Week 1 September 1 Introduction.

Meet and greet. Sign up for class presentations. Read and discuss in class:

Lynn Nyhart, 2016. Historiography of the History of Science. Download Lynn Nyhart, 2016. Historiography of the History of Science.

Week 2 No class Labor Day. Try not to labor.

Week 3 September 13 Thomas Kuhn: Paradigms, revolutions, and incommensurability

No one has been more influential in our thinking about science that Thomas Kuhn. But what did he really say? What is normal science? what is the role of consensus in science? What causes and constitutes revolutions? And what is incommensurability?

Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Any edition.

Week 4 Sept 20 Foundations of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK)

More than any other single person, David Bloor shaped the growth of the field of the sociology of scientific knowledge. In His views on “symmetry” have been particularly influential, although not (to my mind) necessarily well understood.

David Bloor, 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery, University of Chicago Press.

Bruno Latour 1999. For David Bloor… and Beyond. Stud. His. Phil. Sci. 30(1): 113-129
David Bloor, 1999. Anti-Latour Stud. Hist.Phil. Sci. 30(10): 81-112.
[No student reviews this week]

Week 5 Sept 27 Philosophy of Science before Science Studies: Positivism
Both Kuhn and Bloor were reacting strongly against the traditions that preceded them, particularly positivist philosophy of science, and Karl Popper. So to understand the roots of science studies, we really need to understand what they were reacting against. Many people say a lot of bad things about positivism; most of them don't know what it is, or why it ever seemed to people to make sense.

Auguste Comte, Entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ (Links to an external site.)
A J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic, 1952. Dover Reprint edition.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, any edition.

Pp 3-136, 184-193, 215-140; 253-293; 336-346.

There are many online copies of this book; the key essay can also be found at

http://worthylab.tamu.edu/Courses_files/Popper_ConjecturesandRefutations.pdf (Links to an external site.)

Week 6 October 4 The ethnographic approach to knowledge production
Bruno Latour’s work defies ready description. Read these two books and come prepared to talk.

Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton University Press

Bruno Latour, 1988. Science in Action Science: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press.

Week 7 October 11 No class. University Holiday

Week 8 October 18 History embraces social construction
Many scholars took up the ideas and challenges raised by SSK, but none as deftly or with as much impact as Steven Shapin and Simon Schaeffer, who situated an important debate about natural facts in a context that was thoroughly social and political.

Steven Shapin and Simon Schaeffer, 1989. Leviathan and the Air Pump. Princeton University Press.

Week 9 October 25 Science, Gender and Social Epistemology
Kuhn’s work coincided with the rise of 1960s-era consciousness of race, class, and gender, and by the 1980s there was a huge literature on these topics “and” science. The scholar who most effectively situated gender in the philosophy of science is Helen Longino, who helped to establish the concept of a ‘social epistemology’ of knowledge, in which diversity is essential for its success. The scholar who probably did the most to mainstream gender into history of science is Londa Schiebinger. Both argue that diverse science is better science.

Helen Longino, 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry , Princeton University Press Chapters TBD.

Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science Ed. (2004), chapters TBD.

Week 10 November 1 Science and Race
The role of race in science, and science in defining race, is a complex and difficult topic that defies easy summary. One of the best books on the topic was written in 1984, and remains pertinent today.

Kenneth Manning, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (1984)

Christopher Crenner, “Race and Laboratory Norms: The Critical Insights of Julian Herman Lewis,” Isis, 01 September 2014, vol. 105(3), pp. 477-507

Week 11 November 8 Beyond disciplines: Objectivity
Sarton and many other historians of science traditionally focused their attention on disciplines and wrote histories of topics in them. Recently, historians have taken up themes that transcend particular fields of study, such as patronage, trust, objectivity, quantification, and motivation. This is one great example.

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, 2010. Objectivity. Zone Books.

Week 12 November 15 Science and politics.

For all their epistemological radicalism, social constructionists have been strangely quiescent about science and politics. In recent years, historians have taken up the theme with gusto. Tiago Sariava’s prize-winning book reminds us that Politics--with a capital P--are rarely irrelevant to knowledge production.

Sariava, 2018, Fascist Pigs.

Week 13 November 22 Agnotology
History of Science has often responded to theoretical challenges from outside our field. But one of the most interesting recent theoretical developments with respect to understanding knowledge production came in large part from within our field: Agnotology, the study of the social production of ignorance.

Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, 2008. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance Chapters 1, 5, 6, 7 and 10.

Naomi Oreskes, 2021. Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean, Introduction, Chapters 4, 5, 9 and Conclusion.

Hannah Marcus, 2020. Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science and Censorship in early Modern Italy. Introduction, Chapters 2, 5 and 6. Download Hannah Marcus, 2020. Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science and Censorship in early Modern Italy. Introduction, Chapters 2, 5 and 6.

Week 14 November 29 Science Beyond Europe and North America
Some of the most interesting work in our field takes the perspective of post-colonial studies and/or science in contexts beyond Europe and the United States. Our own Gabiela Soto-Laveaga is a leader in this respect.

Gabriela Soto-Laveaga, 2009. Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill.