STS.004 Intersections: Science, Technology, and the World
Fall 2019
HASS-H Units: 3-0-9
Prof. Deborah Fitzgerald
Introduction to the history and anthropology of science and technology. Introduces key concepts and approaches: how do scientists choose problems? can technology be ”political”? what is scientific objectivity? Topics drawn from historical and contemporary controversies. Unit one looks at key concepts and themes in STS. Unit two looks at the role of MIT in shaping the technoscientific world. Unit three uses a broader topic — food, infrastructure, computation, to name a few possibilities — to explore how these concepts operate. Unit four zeroes in on the individual final projects.
Here is the Fall 2018 syllabus, which will undergo some modifications for Fall 2019.