HPSC3022 - Science and Society

Semester 1
Lecturer: Dr Dean Rickles

Prerequisites: It is strongly advised that students only take this course if they have satisfactorily completed HPSC2100 and HPSC2101. However, the course is self-contained and the main prerequisite is simply a desire to understand science, technology and scientists and the role they play in shaping society.
6 credit points
2 x 1-hour lectures, plus 2 x 1-hour tutorials per week
(see timetable)
Assessment: essays, presentation, tutorial participation
* This course is compulsory for HPS majors


Science is a fundamental component of Western society. It is impossible to imagine our lives today without taking the achievements of science and technology into account. In our culture, science occupies a special position, a position of authority: somehow, it is felt, scientific knowledge transcends political and social conditions and provides us with insight into ‘the way things really are’. In this course, we will use tools from the history, sociology, and philosophy of science to investigate these cherished ideas and examine many of the ways in which science, technology and society are interrelated. The key idea in this course is that science is a social activity that can be studied like other forms of social phenomena and behaviour. We will base our investigations on real-life examples, new and old, including: atomic energy, rDNA, cold fusion, the human genome project, genetically modified food, and health scares.

In This Course We Will Discuss:

• We begin the course by reviewing some elementary, background material from philosophy, sociology, and history
• We then examine the idea of a scientific community, looking at Robert K Merton’s account of the norms of scientific activity and their problems
• Next we turn our attention to controversies in science and examine the way they are constructed and settled (including how they are played out in the media)
• We then look at the way numbers, tables, graphs and so on, are used in science as rhetorical devices.
• We then examine ethical issues coming from science and technology
• We finish by looking at the way in which science and scientists are portrayed in the media (in the news media, popular press, and films)