(Prometheus: If you need to ask who or why Prometheus, click here.)

Semester 1: History of ideas in relation to history of science and technology with emphasis on epistemology, sociology of knowledge and philosophy of science

The first semester will open with a survey of the crucial turning points in the history of science and technology in relation to the economic, social, political, cultural and philosophical trends of the times. It will look at the transition from the medieval to the modern world in terms of epistemological tensions between communal faith v individual reason and then between rationalism v empiricism. It will move on to the enlightenment as well as romanticist reaction against the enlightenment. It will continue into the 19th century and trace the impact of evolutionary ideas. It will weigh the claims of the various philosophies of science to emerge into the 20th century: positivism / neo-positivism / post-positivism // pragmatism / radical empiricism / process philosophy // historicism / dialectical materialism / marxism // methodological anarchism / postmodernism.

It will probe the socio-historical roots of ideas and examine the relevance of sociology of knowledge to science. It will incite students to examine the foundations of the various world views of our time and to come to their own conclusions about criteria for adjudicating between contending claims to knowledge.
 

Semester 2: Contemporary discoveries, dilemmas and debates with emphasis on controversial scientific issues, media representations of science and technology and the relations of science and technology to structures of power

The second semester will focus on contemporary issues in science and technology: ranging from particular debates about genetic engineering, virtual reality and hormone therapies to theoretical and practical problems concerning science and structures of power, science and gender, science and media, science and religion, science and pseudoscience, including conflicting interpretations of physics and cosmology.  It will also examine the place of science and technology in Irish culture.

LECTURES

There will be a lecture every Tuesday at 10am. Alert attendance is essential.

WWW WORKSHOPS

There will be web workshops every Monday at 9am.

WORLD WIDE WEB / STS WEB SITE

This website is an integral part of the course. Students should spent some time every week exploring this website (including the many links to related websites). Eventually they will be involved in developing it further. Student course diaries will be published on the web.

Students should keep up to date with the events guide and multimedia resources pages on the website which will announce public lectures, television programmes, etc, which are relevant to the course. Some video material will be integrated into the lectures.

Although there is much reading to be done in following the links on the website itself, there remain more traditional sources: books, journals, magazines, newspapers. An elaborate bibliography is provided on this website. There are live links to many sources as well as abstracts from other sources. There are also books in libraries (lest we forget). There is a special STS collection deposited in the DCU library.

Students will keep course diaries which will be an ongoing account of and reflection on the various elements of the course: lectures, discussions, reading, web surfing, media watching, etc. The submitted version each term will be worth 30%, ie, 60% of the overall mark for the course.

Collective projects will take the form of web pages dealing with the subject matter of the course, including extracts from course diaries, links, images, whatever.

There will be seminars each week organised around discussion of lecture topics, videos, course diaries and project planning.

The end of year examination will be comprehensive. It will include short factual questions covering all the material of the course as well as longer essay questions testing deeper understanding of the issues involved. It will be worth 30% of the mark. Last year's examination will be liked to this site.

Final marks will be compiled as follows: 60% diaries, 10% overall participation, 30% examination.

School of Communication DCU

Home Page of Helena Sheehan

E-mail: sheehanh@ccmail.dcu.ie   helena.sheehan@dcu.ie