hpscga59 syllabus 2015-2016

Department ofScience and Technology Studies

HPSCGA59Special Topics in Science and Technology Studies

Syllabus

Session 2014-15

Web site See Moodle

Moodle site

Timetable www.ucl.ac.uk/timetable

Description

What role has science played in twentieth-century ‘continental’ thought? While the discipline of philosophy of science has been largely dominated by anglo-american thought, continental philosophers have exerted a crucial influence in the development of the social studies of science –including sociology, anthropology and cultural studies– and many of them remain foundational figures and active resources in such fields. This module offers an introduction to some of the central twentieth-century thinkers and philosophers in the so-called ‘continental’ tradition that have engaged with questions of science and technology and have influenced, and still contribute to shaping, research in STS. Focusing primarily on the French tradition, we will discuss the particular character of continental thought, read the original work of central thinkers who have proven influential in contemporary social studies of science, and consider the specific questions and problems they raise in their engagement with the sciences, technology, medicine and society.

Key Information

Assessment 100% 5000 word essay

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Prerequisites none

Required texts readings listed on Moodle

HPSCGA59 Special Topics in Science and Technology Studies 2015-16 syllabus

Module tutor

Module tutor Dr Martin Savransky

Contact [email protected]

Web www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/staff

Office location 22 Gordon Square, Room B14

Office hours: TBC

Aims and objectivesThis module offers an introduction to some of the central twentieth-century thinkers and philosophers in the so-called ‘continental’ tradition that have engaged with questions of science and technology and have influenced, and still contribute to shaping, research in STS. It invites a critical and creative engagement with key readings of the work of central thinkers who have proven influential in contemporary social studies of science, and it offers an engagement with the specific questions and problems they raise in relation to the sciences, technology, medicine and society.

By the end of this module student should have developed:

◦ knowledge of the intellectual history of the social studies of science◦ knowledge of some continental approaches to science◦ knowledge and understanding of the aims and nature of continental thought in relation to science,

technology and medicine.◦ Understanding of the various ethical and political sensibilities informing theoretical approaches to

science◦ Awareness of connections between debates in continental thought and broader debates in the

social studies of science, social theory, and the philosophy of science.

Course expectations

Where there is one specified students are expected to read the essential reading before class and come prepared to discuss it.

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Schedule

UCL Wk Date Topic Activity

20 11th Jan An adventure in continental thought: Welcome to the course and overview

21 18th Jan What is a Scientific Problem? Gaston Bachelard, Scientific Minds, Epistemological Breaks

22 25th Jan Health, Normativity and the Question of the Living: Georges Canguilhem

23 1st Feb Knowledge, Power and Subjectivity: Michel Foucault and The History of Sexuality

24 8th Feb Does Science Have a Sex?: Luce Irigaray

25 Reading Week no lectures

26 22nd Feb

Creativity, Evolution and Time: The intuition of Henri Bergson

27 29th Feb

Science, Difference and the New: Deleuze (and Guattari)

28 7th Mar Wonderful Science: Thinking with Isabelle Stengers

29 14th Mar

Between Science and Literature: Michel Serres’s Poetics

30 21st Mar

Knowledge, Language and Invention: Judith Schlanger

Essay Due 1 st April

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Module plan

Week 1: An Adventure in Continental Thought: Welcome to the course & overview

Essential Reading:

Borges, J. L. (1998), ‘The Library of Babel’. In: Collected Fictions. Penguin: New York. Critchley, S. (2001), Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. Chapter 1.

Recommended Reading:

Belsey, C. (2002), Post-structuralism: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gelndinning, S. (2006), The Idea of Continental Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press. Rajchman, J. & West, C. (1985), Post-Analytic Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Braver, L. (2007), A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism. Chicago:

Northwestern University Press.

Week 2: What is a Scientific Problem? Gaston Bachelard , Scientific Minds, Epistemological Breaks

Essential Reading:

Bachelard, G.; Maniglier, P. ; Tiles, M. (2012), ‘Dossier: Bachelard and the Concept of Problematic’. Radical Philosophy, 173, 21-32

Bachelard, G. (1991), ‘The Epistemological Break: Beyond Subject and Object in Modern Science’. In McAllester Jones, M. (Ed.), Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist: Texts and Readings. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 46-55


Tiles, M. (1984), Bachelard: Science and Objectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tiles, M. (2005), ‘Technology, Science and Inexact Knowledge: Bachelard’s Non-Cartesian

Epistemology’. In Gutting, G. (Ed.), Continental Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 157-175

Bachelard, G. (2001), The Formation of the Scientific Mind: A Contribution to the Psychoanalysis of Objective Knowledge. Manchester: Clinamen Press

Bachelard, G. (1992), The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. Savransky, M. (forthcoming 2016), ‘Open the Social: On Problematic Sociology’. In Marres, N. et

al. (Eds.), Inventing The Social. London: Mattering Press.

Week 3: Health, Normativity and the Question of the Living: Georges Canguilhem

Essential Reading:

Canguilhem, G. (1989), ‘From the Social to the Vital’. In: The Normal and the Pathological. Brooklyn: Zone Books. pp. 237-256

Greco, M. (1998), ‘Between social and organic norms: Canguilhem and “somatization”’. Economy & Society, 27, 234-248


Canguilhem, G. (2008), Knowledge of Life. Fordham: Fordham University Press. Greco, M. (2005), ‘On the Vitality of Vitalism’. Theory, Culture and Society, 22, 1, 15-27 Greco, M. (2004), ‘The Ambivalence of Error: “scientific ideology” in the history of the life

sciences and psychosomatic medicine’. Social Science & Medicine, 58, 687-696

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Rabinow, P. (1996), ‘Georges Canguilhem: A Vital Rationalist’. In Essays On the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Foucault, M. (1989), ‘Introduction’. In Canguilhem, G., The Normal and The Pathological. Brooklyn: Zone Books.

Week 4: Knowledge, Power & Subjectivity: Michel Foucault and the History of Sexuality

Essential Reading:

Foucault, M. (1988), The History of Sexuality: Vol 1.London: Penguin. “Part Three: Scientia Sexualis.”

Alcoff, L. (2005),'Foucault's Philosophy of Science: Structures of Truth/ Structures of Power'. In Gutting, G. (Ed.), Continental Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 211-223


Foucault, M. (1976), The Order of Things. London: Routledge Dreyfus, H. & Rabinow, P. (1983), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics.

London: Routledge. Rabinow, P. (1996), Foucault - Essential works: Power. New York:Semiotext(e) Deleuze, G. (2008), Foucault. London: Continuum. Bell, V. (2007), Culture and Performance. London Berg. Savransky, M. (2014), 'Of Recalcitrant Subjects'. Culture, Theory & Critique, 55, 1, 96-113 Gutting, G.(1989), Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Scientific Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Week 5: Does Science have a sex?: Luce Irigaray, Feminism, and the Sexual Imaginary

Essential Reading:

Irigaray, L. (2002), 'In Science, Is the Subject Sexed?'. In To Speak is Never Neutral. New York: Routledge. pp. 247-258.

Grosz, E. (2004), 'Irigaray and the Ontology of Sexual Difference'. In Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics and Art. Durham & London: Duke University Press. pp.99-112


Grosz, E. (2004), Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics and Art. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Deutscher, P. (2005), 'On Asking the Wrong Question'. In Gutting, G. (Ed.), Continental Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 265-282

Deutscher, P.(2002), A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray. Irigaray, L. (1985), This Sex Which is Not One. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sedgewick, E. (2008), Epistemology of the Closet. Los Angeles: University of California Press

Week 6: Creativity, Evolution and Time: The Intuition of Henri Bergson

Essential Reading:

Bergson, H. (2003), Creative Evolution. Mineola: Dover Publications. "Becoming in Modern Science: Two views of TIme"

Ansell-Pearson , K. (2005), 'Bergson's Encounter with Biology: Thinking Life'. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 10, 2, 59-72


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Guerlac, S. (2006), Thinking in Time: An introduction to Henri Bergson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Deleuze, G. (1991), Bergsonism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Canales, J. (2015), The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That

Changed our Understanding of Time. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kreps, D. (2015), Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence. Basingstoke and New York:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Week 7: Science, Difference and the New: Deleuze's (and Guattari's) Image of Thought

Essential Reading:

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1994), What is Philosophy?. London: Verso. Chapter. "Conclusion: From Chaos to the Brain".

Gaffney, P. (2010), The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science, and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minesotta Press. "Introduction: Science in the Gap".


Shaviro, S. (2010), ‘Interstitial Life: Remarks on Causality and Purpose in Biology’. In Gaffney, P. (ed.), The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science, and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minesotta Press. pp. 133-146

Delanda, M. (2002), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum. Rajchman, J. (2000), The Deleuze Connections. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stengers, I. (2010), ‘Experimenting with What is Philosophy?’. In Brunn Jensen, C. (Ed.)

Deleuzian Intersections in Science, Technology and Anthropology. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. 39-56

Week 8: Science, Wonder and the Event: Thinking with Isabelle Stengers

Essential Reading:

Stengers, I. (2000), The Invention of Modern Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. “ Chapter 5: Science Under the Sign of the Event”.

Savransky, M. (2015), ‘The Humour of Problems: Thinking with Stengers’. Paper presented at the “Thinking with Stengers” Conference, UCL, 09/05/15.


Fraser, M. (2010), ‘Facts, Ethics, and Event’. In Brunn Jensen, C. (Ed.) Deleuzian Intersections in Science, Technology and Anthropology. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. 57-83

Latour, B. (2004), ‘How to talk about the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies’. Body & Society, 10, 205-229

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2010), ‘Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things’. Social Studies of Science, 4, 85-106

Stengers, I. (1997), Power and Invention: Situating Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Week 9: Between Science and Literature: Michel Serres’s Poetics

Essential Reading:

Serres, M. (1989), ‘Literature and the Exact Sciences’. SubStance, 18, 2, 3-34 Brown, S. (2002), ‘Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite’. Theory,

Culture & Society, 19, 1-27


Abbas, N. (2005), Mapping Michel Serres. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Herzogenrath, B. (2012), Time and History in Deleuze and Serres. London: Continuum. Connor, S. (2005), ‘Topologies: Michel Serres and the Shapes of Thought’. Available from:

http://www.stevenconnor.com/topologies/

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http://www.stevenconnor.com/topologies/


Serres, M. & Latour, B. (2005), Conversations on Science, Culture and Time. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.

Week 10: Knowledge, Language and Invention: Judith Schlanger

Essential Reading:

Schlanger, J. (1992), ‘Knowledge as Exploration and Conquest’. Diogenes, 160, 59-73 Pradeau, C. (2002), ‘Judith Schlanger: Explorer of Lettered Space’. SubStance, 97, 67-76


Paulson, W. (1988), The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Information. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 155-172

Stengers, I. (1994), ‘The Humour of The Present’. In McDonlad, C. & Wihl, G. (Eds.), Transformations in Personhood and Culture after Theory. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 25-34

Schlanger, J. (1994), ‘How Old is Our Cultural Past?’. In McDonlad, C. & Wihl, G. (Eds.), Transformations in Personhood and Culture after Theory. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 13-24

Schlanger, J. (1970), ‘Metaphor and Invention’. Diogenes, 69, 12-27

Reading listPlease see Module Plan for readings.

Some relevant journals for this module are:

Configurations Theory, Culture and Society Social Studies of Science Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities Body & Society Economy & Society SubStance Social Text Biosocieties Public Culture Common Knowledge

Some useful, general readings on continental thought, science and science studies (including authors and traditions not directly covered in the lectures) may be:

Gutting, G., (2005) (Ed.), Continental Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell. Ashman, K. & Baringer, P. (2001) (Eds.), After the Science Wars: Science and the Study of Science.

New York: Routledge. May, T. (2014), Emerging Trends in Continental Philosophy. London: Routledge

Please get in touch with me if you need recommendations that are specific to the topic/question you are working on.

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Assessment

summary

Description Deadline Word limit

Individual essay 1st April 5000

coursework

Assessment on this module is comprised of one piece of coursework:

Essay (due 1st April)

A 5000 word academic essay focusing on an author or on a philosophical problem tackling some of the interconnections between science, technology or medicine and society/culture/politics/history, etc. One of the aims of this assignment is to allow you to carry out a more in-depth exploration of one or some of the ideas, thinkers and issues discussed throughout the module, by engaging with a wider set of literature and exploring its connections to questions that you may be passionate about. Thus, devising your own essay question (always in consultation with me) is strongly encouraged. Nevertheless, a pool of possible questions to pick from will be circulated in due course.

At a minimum, your essay must do three things:

Display evidence of wide reading and research on the topic. Show a concise and well-defined question for the essay and its implications. Show critical engagement with the literature in social studies of science and/or

philosophy of science (continental or analytical).

Having only one assessment is ideal for being able to explore your own interests and concerns freely and with enough time. That said, you are encouraged to start preparing your essay slowly and from the very start of the term. In addition, you are required to check with me that the question you have defined is appropriate, and you are welcome and encouraged to send me an outline and/or draft of your essay for informal feedback well in advance of the official submission deadline.

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hpscga59 syllabus 2015-2016

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