Introduction to Science and Technology Studies

Waseda University, SILS,

Science, Technology and Society (LE202)
 The basic concepts

Let’s take some very simplistic definitions of what we will be

studying in this class.
Science: Investigations of the physical world, including us and
the stuff we make
Technology: Making stuff, including stuff used by society, and in
the production and dissemination of science
Society: The sum total of our interactions as humans,
including the interactions that we engage in to figure
things out and to make things
It should be clear that all of these are deeply interconnected. As
this class proceeds, we will begin to develop a better picture of the
fundamental nature of this interconnection.
 The field of Science and Technology Studies

In this class we will explore the interaction of science, technology

and society, especially in the recent past (20th & 21st centuries).
• Science and Technology Studies (STS) is a relatively recent
discipline, originating in the 60s and 70s, following Kuhn’s
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). STS was the
result of a “sociological turn” in science studies.
• STS makes the assumption that science and technology are
essentially intertwined and that they are each profoundly
social and profoundly political.
• We will spend some time trying to define science and
technology in the next two weeks.
• Today, I will try to make the case that science and technology
are both social and political.
 Being critical
In this class, we will try to develop a critical stance towards science
and technology. This does not mean that we are going to cast
them in a negative light, or that we need to develop a dislike for
them. Many of us, myself included, have a high regard for science
and technology.
Definition (Critical Stance)
A critical stance is the deliberate creation of distance between us
and the object we study.
In order to be critical we must step back and ask broad questions.
• Science claims to produce knowledge about the world. What
is the nature of this knowledge? Is it absolutely certain? Are
there other kinds of knowledge? And so on...
• Technology claims to improve our lives. Who is us? What
does it mean to have a better life? What’s to be gained and
what’s to be lost. And so on...
 Internal and external perspectives
When we study science and technology we can take an internal or
an external perspective.
• An internal perspective starts with the principles and
assumptions that scientists and engineers themselves work
with and then uses these to try to explain their activities.
• The development of an internal perspective requires mastering
the details of the science in question, takes years of hard work
to acquire and involves nonverbal assumptions and practices
picked up in this process.
• We usually rely on experts for an internal perspective.

• An external perspective uses a different set of assumptions

and attempts to analyze the context in which experts live and
work, as well as what they say.
• We may be interested in their behaviors, goals, rhetoric, etc.
• We try to analyze the activities of technical experts, without
any appeal to the special status of their expertise.
 A “classical” view of science and technology

A typical, naive view of science might be as follows:

• Science is a formal activity that creates knowledge by direct
interaction with nature.
• Science has some kind of special method that allows different
scientists to produce the same kind of knowledge whatever
their social and political context might be.
• Scientists perform the same experiments in the same way, and
agree upon and reject the same hypotheses.
• Scientists come to consensus on the truths of the natural
world.
• We have a sort of black box:

Nature .
Science Truth
 The demise of the “classical” view

The classical view began to fall apart in the process of 20th century
investigations of scientific activity.

• Philosophers were unable to formalize the “black box.” There

appears to be no single “scientific method.”
• When historians began to explore past scientific activities
more closely, they found there was no such thing as “pure
science,” removed from social and political interactions and
assumptions.
• When sociologists began to open the black box of
contemporary scientific activity, they found that the inside was
thoroughly social and political.
Then, why do most people still hold the naive view?
 “Scientism”

• Scientism goes back at least as far as the Scientific Revolution

(c. 1550–1700) and originates in the claim that there is a
sharp divide between “facts” and “values.”
• According to this view, when we do science, we set aside
values and study only facts.
• The authority of science rests on its claim to be “value free”
and hence “objective.”
• Scientism promotes the idea that all of society’s problems can
be solved by experts who are specially trained to unearth the
facts of the matter.
• Scientism, and the scientistic movement, make the claim that
science is for the benefit of all of humanity.
 “Technological progressivism”

• Technological progressivism has its roots in the European

Enlightenment (c. 1700–1800), when progress became a
synonym for good and technology came to be seen as a
fundamental tool in progressive projects.

Good = Progress
Progress = Technology

• Technological progressivism assumes that technological

change is inherently good and sees it as self-propagating,
moving by the internal constraints of technology itself.
• For example, we view new technologies as progressive and
older ones as old fashioned and use this as a reason for
changing technologies.
• We advocate the adoption of new technologies with little
reflection on their social impact or the broader question of
whether or not we want those impacts.
 “Technoscience”

• In the classical view of the relationship between science and

technology, science leads the way by creating knowledge from
nature and technology follows by applying this knowledge to
the creation of new things.
• In this class, we will investigate the complex interaction
between science and technology and the social environments
in which they are produced, and which they, in turn, produce.
• We can call the sum total of scientific and technological
activities technoscience.

Definition (Technoscience)
Technoscience is the combined total of scientific and technological
ideas and activities in their social, political and economic realities.
 Modern society is thoroughly technoscientific

• Nobody has any doubt that modern society is technoscientific.

• Modern nation-states and the global economy, itself, could

not function if they were not based on technoscience.
• Every aspect of our lives are permeated by the products of
technoscience.
• It is impossible to understand modern society, without
studying the effects of technoscience.
Figure : R&D funding as a % of GDP plotted against technoscientists
per million people
Figure : Government report on technoscience funding, Neitherlands
(NLD), 2011
 What makes something social?
• Society is the result of people, and institutions, interacting
with one another. It is a sort of epiphenomena of these
individuals.
• Society in turn shapes the people and institutions that form it.
• Most people experience society as though it were an external
force acting upon them.
• The “effects” of society operate through the vague mechanism
of social norms. Norms “tell” us what we should and should
not do, what we should and should not think. But they are
not rational – or rather, their rationality is not universal.
• Norms produce the values that we use in interacting with
others. They produce many of our core ideas – such as ideas
of the place of class, the role gender, the meaning of race, the
function of justice, the importance of objectivity, the criterion
of truth, the significance of evidence, etc.
 Technoscience is social
In the simplest sense, technoscience is the product of people, and
people are social.
But it is possible to claim something much stronger than this:
• The social norms of technoscientists affects where they will
look, what they will see and what they will say about it.
(Their worldview.)
• Technocientists’ norms are shaped by their discipline. (Basic
scientific concepts mean different things in different fields.)
• Professional norms affect the value that technoscientists place
on judgments.
• We find disagreement about what counts as science across
time and from place to place.
• The development of technology is highly social, and depends
on the manipulation of social norms.
 What makes something political?

• Politics is about control. It is the result of the distribution and

utilization of power in our societies.
• Political activity functions by employing various structures,
resources and discourses in order to consolidate and wield
power.
• Political structures are formal and informal “rules of play.”
Formal rules are things like laws and procedures, informal rules
are things like social norms.
• There are many kinds of political resources: natural resources,
money, military force, knowledge, access, charm, etc.
• Politics uses discourses to control what is sayable and what is
not, to control the way in which something is said and the
framework of what is discussed. Dominant discourses lend a
kind of cultural authority.

There is, obviously, no clear boundary between the social and the
political.
 Technoscience is political

• There are formal and informal rules that dictate who can make
decisions about how to proceed with technoscientific work.
• Different political structures create different opportunities, at
the national level, the level of institutions, and the level of
individuals.
• Individual knowledge workers (technoscientists), various
institutions, and different professional groups all use economic
and cultural resources to advance their aims.
• Discourses can be developed by appeal to both social and
scientific norms. These discourses can then be used as
resources to advance technoscientific work.
• This is often referred to as the production of social capital.
 Final remarks

• We all know that our modern societies are technoscientific.

• I have argued that we should also consider the claim that
technoscience is profoundly social and political.
• As this class progresses, we will see many examples of the
complex interactions between science, technology and society.