| Arguments in Science and Technology (SPCH 712) |
2003 Spring
|
| University of South Carolina
|
South Carolina
|
NanoScience and Technology Studies
|
| This course combines materials from courses previously taught in the Honors College and experimental courses. We are flooded with communication about science and technology and the implications they may have on the world around us. Arguments about science and technology are crafted. This course reviews: how scientific orthodoxy and politics influence messages; how messages about unnatural sciences are marketed; how scientific methodologies are modified and corrupted to make persuasive appeals; and how arguments about science and technology are mediated. The course then covers three case studies: Nazi racial science, robotics and artificial life, and nanotechnology. The last stage of the course examines two contemporary paradigms: transhumanism and posthumanism, and uses them to criticize the arguments made by futurists and technological prognosticators. The course ends with a serious examination of the can-should (just because we can do something does not mean we should) conundrum in argumentative discourse between science and citizen consumers and ends with a review of some responses.
|
| Course Syllabus Website
|
Offered as part of a MAJOR in
Nano Science and Technology Studies
|
|
|
