“I went to college hoping to learn how to think. Instead I was taught what to think.” Putting the politics of the quote aside, the how to think / what to think dichotomy is, in my opinion, applicable to contemporary STEM education and central to the objectives of this course on Science & Authority.
In a good class there may be high quality exposition of scientific knowledge. A bad class is little more than information download. Either way, in science classes you are taught what to think. Through lectures and textbook reading, the college student receives statements about the contemporary scientific consensus on molecular biology, chemistry, neuroscience, or whatever. Your task is to soak up these scientific certitudes.
It is the rare STEM student (or professor, for that matter) that has opportunity to learn how to think about science & society and the meaning of science.
Who still believes today that a knowledge of astronomy or biology or physics or chemistry could teach us anything at all about the meaning of the world?
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
Perhaps the emphasis on the positive (statements about what is) and unease with the normative (statements about what ought to be) in science education is a natural consequence of the fact that science does not answer questions of meaning, not even the meaning of science (see quote above). “What should we do? How should we live? The fact that science does not give us the answer to these questions is completely undeniable.” (Max Weber)
If science does not give answers to questions of what ought to be, where can those answers be found? Through study of the humanities and our participation in high culture? Through our prior political and religious commitments? What resources do we have, as students and scientists, to help us think about science?
Max Weber suggests that the scientific frame of mind – whatever that means – might be of use in answering questions of meaning, provided we pose the questions properly – whatever that means. On theme of this course will be the question of whether the way that professional scientists think is somehow different from learning how to think in the manner of a professional sociologist or philosopher. If so, perhaps learning how to think about science and society in the distinctive manner of a scientist will help your generation find answers to the vexing science & society questions of the day, such as alternative facts, science denial, propaganda, surveillance, and ecological collapse.
One criterion for being enrolled in this course is you are a student of the natural world and quantitative reasoning. Whether or not you consider yourself a scientist in training, you are majoring in what William & Mary’s COLL curriculum describes as an NQR discipline. Your professors have organized themself, for better or for worse, into three broad academic categories (knowledge domains, ways of knowing):
- Natural World and Quantitative Reasoning (NQR)
- Culture, Society, and the Individual (CSI)
- Arts, Letter, and Values (ALV)
In my personal experience scientists, engineers, and mathematicians (NQR-types) tend to be naive with respect to sociology (CSI) and philosophy (ALV) of science when compared, say, to professors of the humanities or a well-read citizen scholar. This is one reason why we will begin our study of Science & Authority by reading a contemporary philosopher (Robert P. Crease, who is interested in science denial) and a prominent, recently deceased sociologist and ethnographer (Richard Sennett, who wrote an important book about the experience of authority). Crease is academic type ALV and Sennett is academic type CSI.
Your task, should you choose to accept it, is listen to these academics from the “other side” of campus (in the sense of C.P. Snow‘s The Two Cultures), beginning with Richard Sennett. The details are described in the Preparation section of the blog page for the next class, titled What is Authority? That’s the way we will roll.
The Workshop and the World by Robert P. Crease (a required text) is available at the W&M bookstore. The reading from Authority by Richard Sennett will be a PDF handout (no need to buy the book).
APSC 453 Science & Authority 