Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Science and technology studies'
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Antalffy, Nikó. "Antimonies of science studies towards a critical theory of science and technology /." Phd thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/27367.
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Antalffy, Nikó. "Antimonies of science studies: towards a critical theory of science and technology." Australia : Macquarie University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/27367.
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Thesis (PhD) -- Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, Dept. of Sociology, 2008.Bibliography: p. 233-248.
Academic vessels: STS and HPS -- SSK : scientism as empirical relativism -- Latour and actor-network-theory -- Tensions and dilemmas in science studies -- Kuhn - paradigm of an uncritical turn -- Critical theory of technology: Andrew Feenberg -- Critical theory and science studies: Jürgen Habermas -- Concluding remarks: normativity and synthesis.
Science Studies is an interdisciplinary area of scholarship comprising two different traditions, the philosophical History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) and the sociological Science and Technology Studies (STS). The elementary tension between the two is based on their differing scholarly values, one based on philosophy, the other on sociology. This tension has been both animating the field of Science Studies and complicating its internal self-understanding. --This thesis sets out to reconstruct the main episodes in the history of Science Studies that have come to formulate competing constructions of the cultural value and meaning of science and technology. It tells a story of various failed efforts to resolve existing antimonies and suggests that the best way to grapple with the complexity of the issues at stake is to work towards establishing a common ground and dialogue between the rival disciplinary formations: HPS and STS. --First I examine two recent theories in Science Studies, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Both of them are found to be inadequate as they share a distorted view of the HPS-STS divide and both try to colonise the sociology of science with the tools of HPS. The genesis of this colonizing impulse is then traced back to the Science Wars which again is underpinned by a lack of clarity about the HPS-STS relationship. This finding further highlights the responsibility of currently fashionable theories such as ANT that have contributed to this deficit of understanding and dialogue.
This same trend is then traced to the work of Thomas Kuhn. He is credited with moderate achievements but recent re-evaluations of his work point to his culpability in closing the field to critical possibilities, stifling the sociological side and giving rise to a distorted view of the HPS-STS relationship as seen in SSK and ANT. Now that the origins of the confused and politically divided state of Science Studies is understood, there is the urgent task of re-establishing a balance and dialogue between the HPS and the STS sides. --I use two important theoretical threads in critical theory of science and technology to bring clarity to the study of these interrelated yet culturally distinct practices. Firstly I look at the solid line of research established by Andrew Feenberg in the critical theory of technology that uses social constructivism to subvert the embedded values in the technical code and hence democratize technology. --Secondly I look at the work of Jürgen Habermas's formidable Critical Theory of science that sheds light on the basic human interests inside science and technology and establishes both the limits and extent to which social constructivism can be used to study them. --Together Feenberg and Habermas show the way forward for Science Studies, a way to establish a common ground that enables close scholarly dialogue between HPS and STS yet understands and maintains the critical difference between the philosophical and the sociological approaches that prevents them from being collapsed into one indistinguishable entity. Together they can restore the HPS-STS balance and through their shared emancipatory vision for society facilitate the bringing of science and technology into a democratic societal oversight, correcting the deficits and shortcomings of recent theories in the field of Science Studies.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
vii, 248 p
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Herman, Jennifer Linda. "Effecting Science in Affective Places: The Rhetoric of Science in American Science and Technology Centers." The Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1396961008.
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Stokes, Nina C. "Technology Integration For Preservice Science Teacher Educators." Scholar Commons, 2010. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/1782.
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The current state of technology integration in science teacher education programs is examined with a view to providing science teacher educators with practical information and diverse examples of technologies they can model in their own courses. Motivators and barriers to technology integration and use are discussed, and recommendations for choosing and evaluating science technologies made. A brief history of how computers, related communication technologies, and science teacher education reform "fit" together is provided. Multiple interpretations of what is meant by "technology" and associated terms (distance learning, online courses, Web-enhanced courses, simulations, authentic data sets etc.) are included to set the context.
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Ienna, Gerardo <1989>. "Science and Technology Studies. Socio-epistemologia storica delle negoziazioni disciplinari." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2019. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/8824/5/Ienna_Gerardo_tesi.pdf.
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L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è (ri)costruire il processo di emergenza del campo di ricerca dei “Science and Technology Studies” (STS) come risultato di una complessa opera di negoziazioni disciplinari. In funzione di questo obiettivo, abbiamo elaborato una metodologia che abbiamo battezzato come “Socio-epistemologia storica”. Dal punto di vista storico, questa tesi di dottorato propone una dettagliata ricostruzione del processo di emergenza del campo interdisciplinare degli STS fra gli anni ’60 e la metà degli anni ’80 (grazie anche a ricerche d’archivio e storia orale). In primo luogo, ci siamo occupati di tracciare alcune traiettorie intellettuali, accademiche e socio-politiche in funzione di una disamina delle condizioni di possibilità dell’emergere di tale campo (fra gli anni ’30 e gli anni ’60). Nel capitolo seguente abbiamo invece proposto una cartografia dei principali centri di ricerca e programmi pedagogici nei principali casi nazionali come: U.K., U.S., Francia, Repubblica democratica tedesca, Repubblica federale tedesca, Austria, e Paesi Bassi. Infine, un ulteriore capitolo è invece dedicato alla ricostruzione della nascita delle prime reti di ricerca internazionali (società e associazioni professionali) in ambito STS. I risultati di questa ricerca storica sono stati interpretati e organizzati tramite il framework della “sociologia dei campi accademici” e della “sociologia della conoscenza”. A completare la nostra disamina, l’approccio filosofico ha reso possibile un’analisi epistemologica basata sui concreti processi storici e sociali di negoziazione disciplinare che hanno reso possibile il programma di ricerca interdisciplinare degli STS. In questo senso, abbiamo sostenuto che le frontiere disciplinari nelle scienze sociali siano al contempo elaborate socialmente, tramite un lungo processo di negoziazione storica, e sulla base di rivendicazioni epistemiche.The aim of this work is to (re)construct the emergence process of the “Science and Technology Studies” (STS) field, as a result of broad disciplinary negotiations (especially between history of science, sociology of science and philosophy of science). In order to achieve this, I proposed an integrated methodology that I labelled “Socio-Historical Epistemology”. From the historical point of view, my Ph.D thesis provides a detailed survey of the academic emergence of the “STS” interdisciplinary field, from the 60s to the mid 80s (made also through archive research and oral history). First of all, I traced some intellectual, academical and socio-political trajectories, in order to explain the conditions of the emergence of this field (from the 30s to the 60s). In the following chapter I proposed a cartography of the major research units and pedagogical programs in U.K., U.S., France, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Austria and Netherlands. Finally, another chapter is dedicated to the professional and international societies in STS. The results of this historical inquiry have been interpreted and organised through the framework of the “sociology of scientific fields” and the “sociology of knowledge”. Furthermore, the philosophical approach has made possible an epistemological analysis of both the historical and the sociological genesis and development of the interdisciplinary context of research of the “STS”. In this sense I argued that disciplinary boundaries in social sciences are, at the same time, diachronically constructed and reconstructed, through a collective process of controversies and negotiations and due to epistemological claims.
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Rodman, Richard. "Connected knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3705635.
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This study investigated the learning preferences of female students enrolled in pre-requisite math classes that are gateway to chemistry, engineering, and physics majors at a 4-year public university in southern California. A gender gap exists in certain Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines; this gap may be exacerbated by pedagogies that favor males and make learning more difficult for females. STEM-related jobs were forecast to increase 22% from 2004 to 2014. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, only 18.8% of industrial engineers are female. From 2006 - 2011, at the institution where this study took place, the percentage of females who graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering was 16.63%. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2010 there were 1.569 million “Engineering Occupations” in the U.S., of which only 200,000 (12.7%) were held by females. STEM professions are highly paid and prestigious; those members of society who hold these positions enjoy a secure financial and societal place.
This study uses the Women’s Ways of Knowing, Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing theoretical framework. A modified version of the Attitudes Toward Thinking and Learning Survey was used to assess student’s pedagogical preference. Approximately 700 math students were surveyed; there were 486 respondents. The majority of the respondents (n=366; 75.3%) were STEM students. This study did not find a statistically significant relationship between gender and student success; however, there was a statistically significant difference between the learning preferences of females and males. Additionally, there was a statistically significant result between the predictor variables gender and pedagogy on the dependent variable student self-reported grade. If Connected Knowledge pedagogies can be demonstrated to provide a significant increase in student learning, and if the current U.S. educational system is unable to produce sufficient graduates in these majors, then it seems reasonable that STEM teachers would be willing to consider best practices to enhance learning for females so long as male students’ learning is not devalued or diminished.
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Verlager, Alicia. "Decloaking disability : images of disability and technology in science fiction media." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39143.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.
This work examines how images of disability are used to frame cultural narratives regarding technology. As advances in biotechnology ensure that more people will be living with technological prosthetics against and beneath their skin, there is an increasing importance in examining how such bodies challenge traditional cultural attitudes regarding identity and non-normative bodies. This work uses a cultural studies approach to explore the intersections between disability and technology. Additionally, memoir is often included to illustrate some of the complexities regarding how experiences with disability and technological prosthetics can influence aspects of identity. Like disability, technology is often framed in gothic terms of lack or excess, and thus a discussion of the "techno-gothic" also features in this work. Furthermore, such a discussion is also relevant to seemingly unrelated modes of characterizing the other, such as the archetype of the cyborg, the queer body, or the formation of non-traditional social groups, even to images of the city as urban ruin.
(cont.) This work demonstrates that, while images of disability rarely inform us about the everyday experience of disability, they can inform us about how technology frames non-normative bodies as either "less than" or "more than" human, and how the tropes and language associated with disability is often used to characterize technology itself.
by Alicia "Kestrell" Verlager.
S.M.
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Pereira, Maria Teresa Castelao. "Gaston Bachelard's scientific philosophy: an approach to science and technology studies." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/41622.
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The contributions of Gaston Bachelard to the history and philosophy of science are not very well known in the United States. This thesis traces the particular characteristics of Bachelard's epistemology within the context of early twentieth century French culture and science. Bachelard began his career in philosophy comparatively late in life and although his background in mathematics and physics was reflected in his philosophical approach to science, he belonged more to the French intellectual avant-garde than to the traditional philosophies of positivism and pragmatism defended by the Third Republic. Bachelard's writings represent an important contribution to a new vocabulary in epistemology, and they influenced scholars such as Georges Canguilhen, Alexandre Koyré, Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. His works definitely deserve wider exposure, as they easily connect with problems that American scholars pursue today in Science Studies.Master of Science
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Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun. "Standardization healthcare practices; experimental interventions in medicine and science and technology studies." [S.l.] : Rotterdam : [The Author] ; Erasmus University [Host], 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1765/10605.
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Dyehouse, Jeremiah. "Science Fiction : Rhetoric, Authenticity, Textuality and the Museum of Jurassic Technology." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1509374752516486.
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Hooft, Mark A. van't. "The effect of handheld technology use in pre-service social studies education on the attitudes of future teachers toward technology integration in social studies." Connect to resource online, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=kent1120662308.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2005.Advisors: Alicia R. Crowe, Shawn Fitzgerald. Keywords: teacher education; mobile computing; handheld computing; social studies education; attitudes. Includes survey instrument. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-128). Also available via the World Wide Web.
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Cohen, Benjamin Robert. "Uniquely Structured: Debating Concepts of Science, from the Two Cultures to the Science Wars." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/32736.
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The purpose of this thesis is to compare the science wars of the 1990s with the two-culture debate of the 1960s. It is a work in the history of intellectual debates, focusing on contested concepts of science. Over the past decade, there have been numerous references made in science wars literature that evoke comparisons to the two-culture controversy. I intend to show that while these comparisons have merit for their popular cultural reference, they are not valid when we consider the structures and contexts of the two debates. Thus, I will compare those structures, summarizing the main points of argument between the relevant actors in each instance, to illustrate the differences. The thesis advanced by C.P. Snow in 1959, and responded to most pointedly by F.R. Leavis in 1962, was predicated on the existence of foundational differences between science and humanities. The broader issues then were what validity a distinction between forms of knowledge had and which domain had the more reliable claim to knowledge. Just as the two-culture controversy called into question the credibility of literary knowledge, the credibility of science studies scholarship was ultimately at stake in the science wars, and is of central concern in this thesis. My contention is that recognizing the differences between the two-culture debate and the science wars can help guide the future of science studies, since those differences demonstrate the importance and validity of STS scholarship. When scholars ignore those differences, and presume that the two debates are comparable, they unintentionally give credibility to those who defend science against perceived assaults by STS scholars.Master of Science
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Chang, Su-Hsin 1973. "Science and technology policies, competitiveness, and economic development : a case study of Taiwan." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30020.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-131).
The economic growth in Taiwan for the last few decades has been credited as stellar performance. However, what accounts for the growth? Institutions, political regime, geographical locations, or legal origins? This thesis attempts to explain the economic growth in terms of science and technology (S&T) based on the neoclassical and new growth theories, and comes at a finding that S&T development is significant along with the economic growth. In the process, the author also finds that the government is the major player in Taiwan's S&T development. Based on these findings, the author concludes that from Taiwan's lessons, the S&T is a direction and an area for those developing countries that strive to gain economic growth to make their endeavors on. And, for those latecomer countries, state-led S&T development will be a sufficient condition for economic development, for the government is the major role that is most likely to initiate the development through appropriate policy implementation and is most likely to provide a momentum to the stagnating economic deadlock.
by Su-Hsin Chang.
S.M.
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Belichesky, Jennifer. "Living Learning Communities| An Intervention in Keeping Women Strong in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." Thesis, Loyola Marymount University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3595015.
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The purpose of this study was to expand on the current research pertaining to women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, better understand the experiences of undergraduate women in the sciences, identify barriers to female persistence in their intended STEM majors, and understand the impact of the STEM co-educational Living Learning Community (LLC) model on female persistence. This study employed a mixed-methods approach that was grounded in standpoint methodology. The qualitative data were collected through focus groups and one-on-one interviews with the female participants and was analyzed through a critical feminist lens utilizing standpoint methodology and coded utilizing inductive analysis. The quantitative data were collected and analyzed utilizing a simple statistical analysis of key academic variables indicative of student success: cumulative high school GPAs, SAT scores, first year cumulative GPAs, freshman persistence patterns in the intended major, and freshman retention patterns at the university. The findings of this study illustrated that the co-educational LLC model created an inclusive academic and social environment that positively impacted the female participants' experiences and persistence in STEM. The findings also found the inclusion of men in the community aided in the demystification of male superiority in the sciences for the female participants. This study also highlighted the significance of social identity in the decision making process to join a science LLC.
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Evar, Benjamin. "Epistemologies of uncertainty : governing CO2 capture and storage science and technology." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9977.
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This thesis progresses from a ‘science and technology studies’ (STS) perspective to consider the ways that expert stakeholders perceive and communicate uncertainties and risks attached to carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) research and development, and how this compares with policy framings and regulatory requirements. The work largely falls within the constructivist tradition in sociology, but also draws on literature from the philosophy of science and policy-‐oriented literature on risk and uncertainty. CCS describes a greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation technology system that involves the capture, pressurisation, transportation, geological injection and long-‐term storage of CO2 as an alternative to atmospheric emissions. Only few and relatively small applications exist at the moment and research efforts are on going in many countries. The case for developing CCS towards large-‐scale, commercial deployment has largely been presented as follows since the mid-‐ 1990s: climate change mitigation is the developed world’s historical responsibility and must be addressed urgently; chief amongst GHGs is CO2, which makes up more than three quarters of emissions; the vast majority of CO2 is emitted from the combustion and gasification of hydrocarbons – oil, gas and coal – for energy generation; transitioning away from these high-‐CO2 primary energy sources will likely take several decades at the least; therefore, CO2 capture systems should be designed for power and industrial emissions in developed countries, as well as emerging economies where energy suppliers will continue to construct relatively cheap and well understood high-‐CO2 generation plants. The development of large-‐scale CO2 capture has thus arisen from a concern with engineering a technological system to address a CO2 legacy in the developed world, and a high-‐CO2 trajectory in developing/emerging countries, rather than on the back of purely scientific curiosity. And the potential for large-‐scale development has been presented on the back of a variety of scientific and technical evidence, as well as the urgency of the policy objective and related aims. Research activities, often concentrated around technology demonstration projects, are the primary focus of the first part of this thesis. In the second part I consider the extent to which research has shaped policy developments, and how regulations have subsequently informed a more detailed research agenda. I follow a ‘grounded theory’ methodology as developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and take additional guidance from Glaser’s (1992) response to Strauss’ later writings as well as Charmaz (2006) and Rennie (2000), and use a mix of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods to assess my data. These include information from 60 semi-‐structured interviews with geoscientists and policy stakeholders; close readings of scientific publications, newspaper articles, policies and regulatory documents; statistical evidence from a small survey; quantitative analysis of newspaper articles; and social network analysis (SNA) of scientific co-‐authorship networks. Theory is drawn from STS literature that has been appropriate to address case study materials across each of the 7 substantive chapters. The first section of the thesis considers expert claims, with a focus on geoscience research, and draws on literature from the closely related ‘social shaping of technology’ (SCOT) and ‘sociology of scientific knowledge’ (SSK) programmes, as well as Nancy Cartwright’s philosophy of science. The second half of the thesis draws on the ‘co-‐production’ framework and Wynne’s (1992) terminology of risk and uncertainty, to assess relations between risk assessment and risk management practices for CCS. I likewise draw on literature from the ‘incrementalist’ tradition in STS to ask whether and how understandings of technology risk, governance and deployment could be improved. Each chapter presents new empirical material analysed with distinct reference to theories covered in the introduction. Chapter 2 provides a general overview of the history, technology, economics and key regulatory issues associated with CCS, which will be useful to assess the theoretically driven arguments in subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 draws on the concept of ‘interpretive flexibility’ (Pinch and Bijker 1984) to assess a range of expert perceptions about uncertainties in science, technology and policy, and I develop a substantive explanation, ‘conditional inevitability’, to account for an epistemic tension between expressions of certitude and the simultaneous acknowledgement of several uncertainties. Chapter 4 continues the enquiry into stakeholder perceptions and draws on Haas’ notion of ‘epistemic communities’ (Haas 1992) to assess geoscientists’ work practices. I complement this framing with a close look at how uncertainty is treated in simulation modelling and how conclusions about storage safety are formulated, by drawing on Nancy Cartwright’s philosophy of science (Cartwright 1999) and Paul Edwards’ account of complex system modelling for climate change (Edwards 2010). The chapter shows how shared understandings of adequate evidence and common analytical tools have been leveraged to present relatively bounded and simple conclusions about storage safety, while geoscientists nevertheless recognise a high degree of uncertainty and contingency in analyses and results. Chapter 5 continues the focus on knowledge production in the geosciences and is supported by SNA data of workflow patterns in the Sleipner demonstration project. The analysis shows how a few actors have had a pivotal role in developing insights related to storage safety particularly on the back of seismic monitoring and other data acquired through industry partnerships. I therefore continue the chapter with a deconstruction of how seismic data has been used to make a case for the safety of CO2 storage, again drawing on Cartwright and others (Glymour 1983) to explain how individual findings are ‘bootstrapped’ when conclusions are formulated. I show how a general case about storage safety has emerged on the back of seismic data from Sleipner as well as a shared understanding among geoscientists of how to account for uncertainties and arrive at probable explanations. Chapter 6 considers to what extent scientific research has given shape to, and in turn been shaped by, CCS policy and regulations in the EU, drawing on Wynne’s (1992) terminology of risk and uncertainty as well as legal scholarship (Heyvaert 2011). I conclude that a ‘rational-‐instrumental’ interpretation of uncertainty and precaution has furnished a compartmentalised understanding of risk assessment and risk management practices. Chapter 7 continues to look at the ways that risk assessment methodologies influence risk management practices through a case study of the Mongstad CCS demonstration project in Norway. I draw on ‘incrementalist’ literature (Lindblom 1979; Woodhouse and Collingridge 1993) to consider alternative conceptualisations of technology development and risk management when expectations clash with scientific uncertainties and criticism. Chapter 8 draws on insights from across STS (Downs 1972; Collingridge and Reeve 1986; Wynne 1992) to create a novel conceptual model that accounts for recent years’ developments in CCS governance. Here I conclude that setbacks and criticisms should be expected when analyses have largely presented CCS as a technical problem rather than a socially contingent system. Following Stirling (2010) I conclude that scientists and policymakers should instead strive to present complexity in their analyses and to engage with wider publics (Yearley 2006) when technical analysis is inseparable from socially mediated indeterminacies (Wynne 1992), to increase the chance of more successful engagement practices (Wynne 2006). The conclusions at the end of the thesis seek to draw out interpretive and instrumental lessons learned throughout.
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Harnden, Roger. "Technology for enabling : the implications for management science of a hermeneutics of distinction." Thesis, Aston University, 1989. http://publications.aston.ac.uk/10850/.
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One way of describing this thesis, is to state that it attempts to explicate the context within which an application of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) makes cybernetic sense. The thesis will attempt to explain how such a context is presently not clearly ennunciated, and why such a lack hinders communications of the model together with its consequent effective take-up by the student or practitioner. The epistemological grounding of the VSM will be described as concerning the ontology of the individuals who apply it and give witness to its application. In describing a particular grounding for the Viable System Model, I am instantiating a methodology which I call a `hermeneutics of distinction'. The final two chapters explicate such a methodology, and consider the implications for the design of a computer system. This thesis is grounded in contemporary insights into the nervous system, and research into the biology of language and cognition. Its conclusions emerge from a synthesis of the twin discourses of Stafford Beer and Humberto Maturana.
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Kim, Gouk Tae. "Scientizing Science Policy: Implications for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy and R&D Evaluation." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/39012.
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In this dissertation research, I try to deepen the understanding of the logic and history behind science of science policy approaches and to substitute for this scientific evidence-based science policy model an evidence-critical and -informed model in which scientific and democratic claims are promoted simultaneously.
Science of science policy, or what I call the scientizing science policy (SSP) discourse, is a strategic response of science policy community members to the following two socio-political developments: the government performance management reform movement and a new social contract of science. These two developments have motivated the science policy community to construct new science R&D management strategies that make science R&D investment more effective and economically beneficial than before. Former Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger played an important role in articulating an SSP approach at the federal level that opened up a political space for the larger SSP discourse to emerge and take hold. Other heterogeneous science policy community actors, including science agency managers and academic researchers, have also engaged and played major roles in shaping the premises, strategies, and directions that make up the SSP discourse by articulating their own approaches to SSP.
The SSP discourse constitutes a series of strategies such as economizing and quantifying R&D investment decisions. In particular, to implement the ideas of performance reform and a new social contract of science in the field of science policy and management, the SSP community members have prioritized the development of data, models, and evidence related to federal R&D investment by funding studies on new scientific data, tools, and quantitative methods through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program. Interagency collaboration organized and supported by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is another key feature promoted by the SSP community.
Through this research of the rise and development of the SSP discourse, I emphasize the following aspects that are relevant to both science policy practice and research community members. First, the SSP discourse demonstrates the influence of the performance reform movement on science, technology, and innovation policy and R&D management. Second, the SSP discourse has the strong potential to shift science policy makersâ focus from planning and implementing to evaluating federal R&D programs. Third, the SSP discourse not only reflects, but also promotes the tendency of public policy makers, politicians, and the public to rely on scientific claims and evidence when they are engaged in discussions or policy decision making processes related to science and technology. Fourth, the SSP discourse alters the balance of authority and influence among science policy actors, including science agency managers, scientists, and executive branch offices in the decision making process on federal R&D priority and investment. Fifth, even though there are conflicts and disagreements among science policy community members on the visions and future of the NSF SciSIP program, the SSP discourse is valuable as a space in which heterogeneous science policy research and practice community members can interact, learn from each other, and collaborate to develop U.S. science, technology, and innovation policy.
I conclude by proposing an evidence-critical and -informed science policy in which the SSP discourse contributes to promoting democratic values in the science policy decision process. In particular, the evidence-critical and -informed model focuses on not only using scientific data and evidence when making federal R&D decisions, but also on promoting the democratic and deliberative process in monitoring R&D activitiesâ performance and social outcomes. In this model, I view the public as a legitimate stakeholder for evaluating federal R&D investment. This evidence-informed model can be implemented under the SSP discourse if the new R&D data, models, and tools developed by the NSF SciSIP-funded research are coupled with a new government performance website in which the public can access information about federal R&D activities as well as provide feedback about R&D investments to science policy makers.Ph. D.
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Talwar, Sonia. "Spatializing science and technology studies : exploring the role of GIS and interactive social research." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/755.
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This thesis is an interdisciplinary study based on the interplay between science, technology and society in order to inform the design of knowledge exploration systems. It provides a rationale for the integration of science knowledge, geographic information, with digital libraries to build knowledge and awareness about sustainability. A theoretical reconceptualization of knowledge building is provided that favours interactive engagement with information and argues against a traditional model of science production and communication that is linear and unidirectional. The elements of contextualization, classification and communication form the core of the reconceptualization. Since many information systems entrench the traditional model of science production, the three elements are considered in light of library and information science and geographic information science. The use of geographic information systems is examined to identify how they can be used as part of a social learning model for scientific, social, cultural, and environmental issues to further assist people in connecting to place and sustainability. Empirical data was collected from four case studies. One case study centred on the design and development of a web-based digital library called the Georgia Basin Digital Library, another two case studies focused on the use of part of this digital library with youth, senior and environmental groups in south-western British Columbia. The remaining case study observed a community deliberation to consider how knowledge exploration systems might support deliberation in future processes. The case study research confirms that collaborative research with communities is a fruitful way to engage with sustainability issues. Such collaborations require consideration of institutional arrangements, information collections, relationship building, technology transfer and capacity building.
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Collier, James H. "The Structure of Meta-Scientific Claims: Toward a Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/29322.
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This dissertation examines the structure of epistemological claims made about science within the
field of science and technology studies (STS). The social constructivist invocation to put science in
"context" necessarily implies a logic of justification. Made explicit, this logic of justification
provides a basis on which to adjudicate meta-scientific claims. The appeal to context blurs
internal and external references, offers an ontological starting point for STS accounts of science,
serves as the basis for methodological debate, and refers to values which anchor a notion of
scientific objectivity. Hence: Contexts are assumed to exist. Contexts can be accessed and
demarcated from other contexts in which they may be embedded; as a result, contexts are not
paradigm-bound. Since contexts exist, the elements composing them are taken to exist in some
logical and ontological relation to one another. Contexts are taken to affect scientific practice.
Since contexts affect scientific practice some logical and ontological relation exists among the
elements of the context, a given scientific practice, and the world that practice describes. Contexts
are taken as temporally stable; infinite regress is not an immediate consequence of a local
explanation of scientific practice. Since contexts exist in a stable, ontological relationship to the
scientific practice they interpret or explain, criteria for justifying one context-based perspective
over another are necessarily implied. Contexts necessarily imply justificatory criteria and imply a
means for adjudicating among contexts and context-based statements. Since contexts imply a
logic of justification independent of the scientific practice being examined meta-scientific
evidence consists of observation statements. Context-based observation statements can, initially,
be adjudicated a priori. A form of meta-scientific realism exists. If a form of meta-scientific realism
exists, we can determine which contexts explain scientific practice and which do not. As a result
we have epistemological claims about science which can be adjudicated on realist grounds which
are not just the product of designated contexts. The future of STS turns on articulating a meta-scientific
realism in relation to scientific practice and truths about the world. Finally, I advocate a
contingent foundationalism on which STS can be made relevant to an understanding of science
and technology.Ph. D.
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Waters, Bonney Elizabeth. "Integrating reading, language arts, science, and social studies curriculum with the use of technology." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2135.
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The purpose of the project was to develop three thematic units for fifth grade that intergrate California State Standards in Reading, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies with the use of technology. The benefits of doing so allows instructional time to be spent on more in depth study of the disciplines, Students make connections across curriculum which allows them to develop a deeper understanding of what is being taught. Also, integrating curriculum with technology engages students and allows them to have more control over their learning environment. When students are actively involved in what is being taught, they will internalize the information for better understanding.
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Lehr, Jane L. ""Doing" Theory and Practice: Steps Toward a More Productive Relationship Between Science and Technology Studies and Nontraditional Science Education Practices." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42767.
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Explores the relationship between nontraditional science education practices, structured by campaigns such as Public Understanding of Science (PUS) and Scientific Literacy (SL), and the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), using ethnographic work with the Choices and Challenges Project at Virginia Tech as a â point of entryâ (Smith 1987) for a broader discussion. It points to the difficulty of â doingâ theory and practice at the same time. While affirming that there is no easy solution to the hard work of situating local, nontraditional science education practices within a critical theoretical tradition such as STS, this project also provides recommendations for a new framework to conceptualize a more productive interaction between the practice of nontraditional science education and the theory of STS.
In a postscript, I conclude by urging all researchers within the field of STS to begin to recognize that maintaining the false split between our academic research, undergraduate teaching, university outreach, and community involvement is a failed project. As STS researchers, I believe it is, in fact, our obligation to our local and global communities to adopt an interventionist strategy and to use our work â without apology â for directly political ends. Challenging the technoscientific-political context in which we live always involves a level of real risk â but it is also our only opportunity to achieve real success. Our participation in this challenge is a responsibility to ourselves and to our communities that we must recognize and accept. This participation should not be shunned, but rather applauded.
Master of Science
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Lavorata, PhD Dr Reagan Lorraine. "Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) Classes and Females' Career Choices." ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3353.
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Females have been discouraged from taking science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes during high school and college, resulting in limited access to high-paying STEM careers. Therefore, these females could miss opportunities for these high-paying careers. The rationale of this research was to quantify the relationship between the number of STEM classes the sampled females took, the number of female role models they had during high school and college, their career choices, and salaries. The theoretical construct was based on Erikson's social developmental theory, which postulates a relationship between earlier life events and later life events, and Acker's masculinity theory, which postulates that females in traditionally male fields may be uneasy performing functions opposite to what they naturally perform. Key questions examined the relationships between STEM classes, role models, career choices, and salaries. The sample was a stratified random sample (n = 48) of female alumnae of 4 universities, born after 1980. Data were collected from a designed online instrument, validated by a pilot. The data were analyzed with a multiple regression and an analysis of variance. The findings revealed a significant relationship between the number of STEM classes, career choices and salary. However, there was no significance found between the numbers of role models, career choices and salary The implication for social change is that by making scholars in the fields of education and management aware about the relationship between the number of STEM classes taken, career choices, and salaries, females can be more encouraged to become interested in STEM courses earlier in life, making it more likely they will choose STEM careers This can be accomplished through scholarly journals, which hopefully will improve perceptions of the STEM abilities of females.
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Leydesdorff, Loet. "The Challenge of Scientometrics: The Development, Measurement, and Self-Organization of Scientific Communications, pp. 1-25." Universal Publishers, Parkland, Florida, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105095.
Full textAbstract:
The quantitative study of scientific communication challenges science and technology studies by demonstrating that organized knowledge production and control is amenable to measurement.
First, the various dimensions of the empirical study of the sciences are clarified in a methodological analysis of theoretical traditions, including the sociology of scientific knowledge and neo-conventionalism in the philosophy of science. Second, the author argues why the mathematical theory of communication enables us to address crucial problems in science and technology studies, both on the qualitative side (e.g., the significance of a reconstruction) and on the quantitative side (e.g., the prediction of indicators).
A comprehensive set of probabilistic entropy measures for studying complex developments in networks is elaborated. In the third part of the study, applications to S&T policy questions (e.g., the emergence of a European R&D system), to problems of (Bayesian) knowledge representations, and to the study of the sciences in terms of 'self-organizing' paradigms of scientific communication are provided. A discussion of directions for further research concludes the study.
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Hammarin, Gabriella. "STS on STS : A Perspective of Science and Technology Studies on the STS Field Itself." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-158088.
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STS, today the abbreviation for Science and Technology Studies (formerly Science, Technology and Society), is an elusive field characterized by widely varying applications and intents, highly dependent on individual people and facets, yet sharing some common aims and practices. STS has risen since the 1960s and this empirical study presents a view on STS today and a discussion on how it has developed by the analysis of five different representatives from different locations in the field of STS.
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Davis, William J. III. "Philosophy of Technology 'Un-Disciplined'." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/70457.
Full textAbstract:
Philosophy of technology (PoT) analyzes the nature of technology, its significance and consequences, and its mediation of human experiences of the world. Classical philosophers of technology describe mechanization as alienating: Technology causes humans to lose their connection with the natural world. Tehno-rationality replaces critical engagement and creativity. Failing to comprehend the essence/nature of Technology, and its consequences, portends disastrous social, political, and economic consequences. Such perspectives, however, neglect individual experiences of technologies. Filling that lacuna, contemporary philosophers of technology challenge the sweeping determinism of their intellectual forerunners and investigate how specific technologies mediate particular human experiences. Their descriptive prowess, however, lacks the normative engagement of classical PoT, and they emphasize micro effects of technologies to the detriment of macro implications. This dissertation describes an 'un-disciplined' philosophy of technology (UPoT) that unites the macro and micro perspectives by providing narratives of human-technology symbiosis and co-development. Un-disciplined philosophers of technology present posthuman and transhuman perspectives that emphasize the symbiotic relationships between humans and technology. Thus, they deny disciplined philosophy's first critical maneuver: define and demarcate.
UPoT enables conversations and debate regarding the ontological and moral consequences of imagining humans and technologies as hybrid, co-dependent things. UPoT builds upon environmental and animal rights movements, and postphenomenology, to emphasize pluralist accounts that emphasize the dynamism of human-technology relations. UPoT argues we should imagine technologies as extensions/parts of living things: they do the shaping and are shaped in turn. I argue that such thinking reinforces the habit, already proposed by contemporary PoT, that emerging human-technology relations demand active interpretation and engagement because the relationships constantly change. Thus, we need to imagine a moral theory that best matches the hybrid/connected condition of the present century. Increasing automation in agriculture and surgery, for instance, exemplify technologies mediating human experiences of food and health, thus affecting how we understand and define these categories.Ph. D.
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Hedlund, Anders, and Jakob Gudmundsson. "Financing High-Technology Firms : A longitudinal study of life science companies and their pursuit of capital in Sweden." Thesis, Uppsala University, Department of Business Studies, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-130127.
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Mengistu, Dawit Bezu. "Social Science Studies and Experiments with Web Applications." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för datavetenskap och medieteknik (DM), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-78122.
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This thesis explores a web-based method to do studies in cultural evolution. Cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is defined as social learning that allows for the accumulation of changes over time where successful modifications are maintained until additional change is introduced. In the past few decades, many interdisciplinary studies were conducted on cultural evolution. However, until recently most of those studies were limited to lab experiments. This thesis aims to address the limitations of the experimental methods by replicating a lab-based experiment online. A web-based application was developed and used for replicating an experiment on conformity by Solomon Asch [1951]. The developed application engages participants in an optical illusion test within different groups of social influence. The major finding of the study reveals that conformity increases on trials with higher social influence. In addition, it was also found that when the task becomes more difficult, the subject's conformity increases. These findings were also reported in the original experiment. The results of the study showed that lab-based experiments in cultural evolution studies can be replicated over the web with quantitatively similar results.
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Zamanzad, Ghavidel Alireza. "Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Development and Research: An infrastructural study." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för informatik (IK), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-45871.
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CALLERI, CRISTINA. "Design for quiet living. A Science and Technology Studies perspective on architecture and noise mitigation policies." Doctoral thesis, Politecnico di Torino, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11583/2843982.
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Zorzi, Virginia. "The Communication of Science and Technology in Online Newspapers: a Multidimensional Perspective." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Padova, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11577/3425246.
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Communicating science and technology, both at specialised and non specialised levels, is an important component in the production and circulation of technoscientific knowledge and practices. Newspapers – both in their printed and online versions – are regarded as an important and generally reliable source of scientific and technological information for the general public. The study investigates the communication of science and technology in UK and US online newspapers, focusing on the language of articles published in newspaper sections dealing with science and technology and contextualising it within the newspaper genre as a whole. Different methods of analysis – involving both quantitative and qualitative aspects – were combined and applied on a corpus of articles published in four UK and US newspapers between 2014 and 2016. The Multidimensional Analysis (MDA), originally proposed by Biber to analyse genre and register variation in English, was taken as the main methodological reference for the present study. Thus, specific software tools were created and combined with existing ones to perform a new version of the MDA on the news corpus, partly adapting it to the present research needs. Based on the analysis of a set of linguistic features spanning different levels of language – namely, grammar, syntax, and lexis – this method enabled a statistically-based description of the corpus and its internal linguistic variation, with a focus on articles reporting on science and technology. The aim was to find out whether any linguistic elements distinguished the communication of science and technology from news published in other newspaper sections. A qualitative analysis on a set of texts from the corpus contributed to the interpretation of the statistical results, and was useful in relating the linguistic patterns identified as relevant to their possible underlying communicative functions. As a result, four main patterns of variation, referred to as ‘dimensions’, emerged. They concern the extent of informational purposes, the use of speech attribution and reporting structures, the presence of explanation and argumentation, and the type of time reference of a text. Thus, each text of the corpus could be described as a particular combination of these four different dimensions (hence the term Multidimensional Analysis). Subsequently, a lexical content analysis was performed on the corpus, and in particular on articles about science and technology, with the aim of identifying the main themes characterising these texts, as well as the semantic relations connecting different themes. The lexical analysis thus provided some useful insights into the public representation of science and technology in the analysed newspapers. Overall, the results revealed that some communicative features slightly but significantly distinguish science and technology news from groups of articles published in different newspaper sections. At the same time, articles reporting on science and technology share some communicative features with most news from other sections, thus pointing to a degree of homogeneity within the news genre. The findings from the linguistic analysis were further commented on and connected to sociological theories on the social construction and public communication of science and technology, thus laying the basis for further research on the role and construction of technoscientific knowledge in the mass media.
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Rahayu, Endang Sri Rusmiyati, and Zainal A. Hasibuan. "Identification of technology trend on Indonesian patent documents and research reports on chemistry and metallurgy fields." School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/106198.
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The aims of this study are: to identify technology trends by identifying core topics, prominence topics, and emerging topics; and to assess the overlap between research and development and patents on chemistry and metallurgy fields in Indonesia during 1993-1997. The technology trends are determined by measuring subject and keyword development on those fields. Co-words analysis is employed to measure the technology categories. The objects of this study are granted patents section C according to International Patent Classification (IPC) and research report documents which was collected from CD ROM of research reports on chemistry and metallurgy fields published by PDII-LIPI. Subjects analysis of patent document are measured based on the number of subclass in chemistry and metallurgy fields using IPC code of patent documents. Subjects analysis of research reports are measured based on the number of subclass in chemistry and metallurgy section using DDC21 system of research report documents. Co-words analysis is measured based on the co-occurrence frequencies of the keywords ap-peared in the research documents. The results showed that overlapping subject and keyword of patent documents and research report documents on chemistry and metallurgy fields in Indonesia during five years (1993 to 1997) was on the organic chemistry, especially on dyes and extraction. Another important subject in patent documents was human necessity, especially on pesticides, drugs, and detergents. The largest subject on research activities period was on food technology, especially on coconut oils, palm oils, and storage. Technology categories on research report documents show that there were no core top-ics of research activities in Indonesia during five years (1993 to 1997). The prominence topics were only on 1993 and 1996 namely fermentation process, storage processes, and drying apparatus. There were core topics, prominence topics and emerging topics on patent documents.
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Worth, Gavin Darlene A. "Early career retention among undergraduate degree holders in science and technology: A five-year follow-up of a national Canadian sample." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/9973.
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Both government and private industry are concerned as to why young Canadians, particularly young women, hesitate to choose careers in the growing labour markets of science and technology (S&T). Aggregate data suggest that women not only enter into S&T-related endeavours in disproportionately lower numbers than men, but also exit from S&T careers at higher rates than do their male counterparts. This investigation's primary objective was to establish comparative rates of "loss" (non-retention) of highly trained young women and young men from the fields of S&T in Canada. Its secondary objective was to conduct a preliminary investigation into some potential social and psychological correlates of retention (and non-retention) in S&T careers. A national sample ($N=3158$) of Natural Science, Engineering, Life Science/Health Professions, and Mathematics/Computer Science (NELM) bachelor's degree holders participated. Statistics Canada surveyed 1212 women and 1946 men in NELM fields from the university graduating classes of 1986, two- and five-years after graduation (i.e., in 1988 and 1991). A set of four complementary hypotheses were tested in order to investigate the fundamental postulation that early career retention among undergraduate degree holders in S&T would be proportionately lower for young women than for young men. Findings at both the two- and five-year follow-ups showed highly similar retention-rates for women and men. Women had only slightly high non-retention rates than men ($\sim$5%) among Natural Science and Mathematics graduates; rates were approximately equal among Engineering and Life Science graduates. In direct and sequential logistic regression analyses conducted to predict the probability of retention (vs. non-retention) in S&T at post-graduation year-5, the main predictor variable of interest--sex--consistently failed to reliably predict retention (vs. non-retention) in S&T, even after controlling for the effects of the following antecedent variables: level of mother's and father's education; respondents' age; marital status at 2-years; number of dependent children at 2-years; intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for originally having enrolled in an N, E, L, or M program of study, further education at 2-years; income at 2-years; job satisfaction at 2-years; and, salary satisfaction at 2-years. Findings had two main policy implications, first with regard to the relative insignificance of sex in the prediction of persistence in S&T, and second with regard to the importance of further education and training in predicting this outcome. These are discussed in light of the inter-related issues of lessening the shortage of highly qualified S&T personnel in Canada and of eliminating the underrepresentation of women in Canada's S&T community.
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Bergman, Christine Joy 1960. "Soft wheat pasta supplemented with cowpea: Nutritional, sensory and cooking quality studies." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291602.
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Pasta was produced from soft wheat supplemented with cowpea. Acid detergent fiber values increased from 0.4% in the soft wheat pasta (SWP) to 1.1% in the 30% cowpea pasta (CP). Cowpea supplementation provided an increase in total and available lysine from 42 to 113% and 39 to 117%, respectively. Chemical scores for preschool children increased from 56 in the SWP to 89 in the 30% CP. For school children the 20% CP provided a score of 102. The in vitro protein digestibility (IVPD) of cowpea was lower than that of soft wheat; as a result cowpea reduced the IVPD of SWP from 84% to a value of 78% for the 30% CP. The protein content of SWP was 10.9% while the CP ranged from 11.3 to 14.2%. Considering IVPD values, SWP contained 9.2% digestible protein and CP from 9.2 to 11.1%. After cooking, only the 30% CP displayed trypsin inhibitor activity. Upon visual examination, cowpea improved the color of SP making it comparable to the durum semolina control (DSC) but lacking its translucency. A sensory panel reported no difference in acceptability among treatments. Cooked weights were similar to the SWP, except with 30% replacement when a decrease was observed. CP, after 10 minutes of cooking demonstrated reduced loss as supplementation was increased. After 20 minutes all treatments had similar cooking loss compared to the SP. All treatments displayed cooking quality results significantly different from the DSC.
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Logan, G. L. "Analytical studies of non-volatile N-nitrosamines in cured meats." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.254598.
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Jackson, Sarah Marie. "Assessment of Implicit Attitudes Toward Women Faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1324269233.
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Lamb, Christopher J. "Use of double-loop learning to combat advanced persistent threat| Multiple case studies." Thesis, Capella University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3607034.
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The Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) presents an ever present and more growing threat to organizations across the globe. Traditional Information Technology (IT) incident response falls short in effectively addressing this threat. This researcher investigated the use of single-loop and double-loop learning in two organizations with internal incident response processes designed to combat the APT. Two cases were examined within organizations employing an internal incident response team. The third case was examined from an organization providing incident response as a service in addressing APT compromises. The study developed four themes: the inefficacy of single-loop learning in addressing APT, the need for better visibility within corporate infrastructure, the need for continuous improvement and bi-directional knowledge flow, and the need for effective knowledge management. Based on these themes, a conceptual model was developed modifying the traditional incident response process. Three implications were derived from the research. First, perimeter defense falls short when addressing the APT. Second, the preparation phase of incident response requires modification along with the addition of a new baseline loop phase running contiguously with the entire process. Finally, opportunistic learning needs to be encouraged in addressing the APT.
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Fredericks, Azeza. "Putting indigenous knowledge on the science policy agenda in South Africa, 1994-2002." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/16605.
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Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study focuses on tracking the developments accompanying the rise of indigenous knowledge (IK) and its positioning on the science policy and national research agenda in South Africa (SA). The historical occasion, the variety of policy developments in a diverse ‘new’ SA and how IK evolved, presented the impetus and context of the study. The objectives of the study were to consider more closely the roles and actions of the participants in the overall process, how they interacted and to identify broad patterns that occurred. Other areas included positioning IK as strategic science and how it was refracted through the national research system. To achieve these objectives, a significant part of the methodology involved a historical reconstruction of developments in IK. The data obtained from this reconstruction provided the basis for further analysis and closer scrutiny of the issues. Reconstructing the history assisted with providing some answers regarding the sources of concern and motivation which led to formulating policy on IK, the processes that advanced IK to its position in 2002, looking at how the various players in the research system were mobilized and how the prelegislative stage of activity determined the outcome of the IK legislative process. In addition to these questions, there was an opportunity to consider Wally’s Serote’s role as ‘moral entrepreneur and to try to understand both his personal trajectory and the role he played in the system. The historical reconstruction provided a periodization comprising three chronological phases, namely • Genesis (1994 – 1996) • Awareness Creation (1997 – 1998) • Programmes and Implementation (1999 – 2002) New policy directions in SA provided a context for positioning IK within strategic science. The leadership and passion displayed by Serote also required an understanding of his personal trajectory and the role he played in the system. IK as strategic science is positioned within framework of the moral entrepreneur’s cycle in a changing system. The historical reconstruction raised the issue of how easy or difficult it is to embed processes and how these processes co-evolve in the system. It also showed how IK was refracted through the national research system. The broad ‘success’ of the IK initiative is discussed with respect to its legislative and policy journey in SA and its current position in the research system. The ‘lesser successful’ side is also discussed in terms of the intended objectives and the eventual outcomes. Protecting IK, a central issue throughout the process, led to struggles and tensions that required rethinking both the policy and epistemic aspects of both western science and IK.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie fokus daarop om dié ontwikkelinge te volg wat deel was van die opkoms van inheemse kennis (IK) en die posisionering daarvan op die agenda vir wetenskapsbeleid en nasionale navorsing in Suid-Afrika (SA). Die historiese gebeurlikhede, die verskeidenheid in beleidsontwikkelinge in 'n diverse "nuwe" SA en die manier waarop IK ontwikkel het, het die stukrag en die konteks vir hierdie studie verskaf. Die doelwitte van die studie was as volg: om die rolle en die aksies van die deelnemers aan die proses as geheel in meer detail te oorweeg; om hulle interaksie waar te neem en om die breë aksiepatrone te identifiseer. Ander ondersoekareas was om IK as strategiese wetenskap te posisioneer en om vas te stel hoe dit deur middel van die nasionale navorsingstelsel gerefrakteer is. Om hierdie doelwitte te kan bereik, het 'n belangrike deel van die metodologie die historiese rekonstruksie van ontwikkelinge in IK behels. Die data wat deur middel van hierdie rekonstruksie verkry is, het die basis voorsien vir die verdere analise en nadere beskouing van die relevante kwessies. Deur die geskiedenis te rekonstrueer kon sommige van die vrae oor die volgende beantwoord word: die oorsprong van sake wat kommer gewek het en die motivering wat gelei het tot die formulering van beleid oor IK; die prosesse wat IK tot die posisie daarvan in 2002 bevorder het deur te kyk hoe die onderskeie rolspelers in die navorsingstelsel gemobiliseer is; en hoe die pre-wetgewende fase van aktiwiteite die uitkoms van die IK-wetgewende proses bepaal het. Bo en behalwe die beantwoording van hierdie vrae, kon Serote se rol as morele entrepreneur ook ondersoek word om sodoende beide sy persoonlike trajektorie en die rol wat hy in die stelsel gespeel het te probeer verstaan. Die historiese rekonstruksie het 'n periodisering, bestaande uit drie chronologiese fases, verskaf, naamlik ������� Genesis (1994 – 1996) ������� Skepping van 'n Bewussyn (1997 – 1998) ������� Programme en Implementering (1999 – 2002) Nuwe beleidsrigtings in Suid-Afrika het 'n konteks verskaf vir die posisionering van IK binne die strategiese wetenskap. Die leierskap en passie wat Serote geopenbaar het, het ook begrip vir sy persoonlike trajektorie en die rol wat hy in die stelsel gespeel het, gevra. IK as 'n strategiese wetenskap is geposisioneer binne-in die raamwerk van die morele entrepreneur se siklus in 'n veranderende stelsel. Die historiese rekonstruksie het die kwessie geopper van hoe maklik of hoe moeilik dit is om prosesse in te bed, en hoe hierdie prosesse saam in die stelsel ontwikkel. Dit het ook gewys hoe IK deur middel van die nasionale navorsingstelsel gerefrakteer is. Die breë "sukses" van die IK-inisiatief word bespreek met betrekking tot die pad wat dit geloop het in die wetgewende en die beleidsvormende proses in Suid-Afrika en die huidige posisie daarvan in die navorsingstelsel. Die "minder suksesvolle" kant word ook bespreek met betrekking tot die vooropgestelde doelwitte en die uiteindelike uitkomste. Die beskerming van IK, 'n sentrale kwessie regdeur die proses, het gelei tot worstelinge en spanninge wat vereis het dat die beleids- én die epistemiese aspekte van beide die westerse wetenskap en IK herbedink moes word.
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Stamm, Emma. "Hallucinating Facts: Psychedelic Science and the Epistemic Power of Data." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97368.
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This dissertation is a theoretical study of the relationship between digitality, knowledge, and power in the age of Big Data. My argument is that human medical research on psychedelic substances supports a critique of what I call "the data episteme." I use "episteme" in the sense developed by philosopher Michel Foucault, where the term describes an apparatus for determining the properties associated with the epistemic condition of scientificity. I write that the data episteme suppresses bodies of knowledge which do not bear the epistemic virtues associated with digital data. These include but are not limited to the capacities for positivistic representation and translation into discrete digital media. Drawing from scientific reports, I demonstrate that certain forms of knowledge regarding the therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics cannot withstand positivistic representation and digitization. Henceforth, psychedelic research demands frameworks for epistemic legitimation which differ from those predicated on the criteria associated with the data episteme. I additionally claim that psychedelic inebriation promotes a form of thinking which has been called, by various theorists, "negative," "abstract," or "idiosyncratic" thought. Whereas the data episteme denies the existence of negative thought, psychedelic research suggests that this mental function is essential to the successful deposition of psychedelic substances as adjuncts to psychotherapy. For the reasons listed above, psychedelic science provides a uniquely salient lens on the normative operations of the data episteme.
In the course of suppressing non-digitizable knowledge, the data episteme implements what Foucault conceptualizes "knowledge-power," a term which affirms the fact that there is no meaningful difference between knowledge and power. Here, "power" may be defined as the power to promote but also to retract conditions on which phenomena may exist across all sites of social, intellectual, and political construction. I write that the data episteme seeks to both nullify the preconditions for negative thought and to naturalize the possibility of an infinite expansion of human mental activity, which in turn figures mentality as an inexhaustible resource for the commodity of digital data. The data episteme therefore reifies the logic of ceaseless economic proliferation, and as such, abets technologized capitalism. In the event that the data episteme fulfills its teleological goal to become total, virtually all that is thinkable would yield to economic subordination. I present psychedelic science as a site where knowledge which challenges the data episteme is empirically necessary, and which, by extension, attests to the existence of that which cannot be economically subsumed.Doctor of Philosophy
In the age of Big Data, scientists draw upon the ever-expanding quantities of data which are produced, circulated, and analyzed by digital devices every day. As data grow in number, digital tools gain in their ability to yield precise and faithful information about the objects they represent. It would appear that all forms of knowledge may one day be perfectly replicated in the form of digital data. This dissertation claims that certain forms of knowledge cannot be digitized, and that the existence of non-digitizable knowledge has important implications for both science and politics. I begin by considering the fact that digital tools can only produce knowledge about phenomena which permit digitization. I claim that this limitation necessarily restricts the sorts of information which digital devices are capable of generating. I also observe that the digital turn has inaugurated a novel mode of capitalist economic production based on the commodity of digital information. Thus, the increasing dependence of scientific authority on digital methods is also a concern for political economy. I argue that the reliance of scientific authority on digital data restricts the scope of scientific inquiry and makes ceaseless economic expansion appear both necessary and inevitable. It is therefore critical to indicate sites of research and practice where non-digitizable knowledge plays an essential role in informing scientific processes. Such an indication is not only pertinent to scientific research, but points up the ways in which data facilitate unregulated economic growth. Psychedelic drug research serves as my lens on digitality and political economy. Specifically, I explore the ways in which quantitative and computational methodologies have been used and critiqued by scientists who study the psychiatric benefit of psychedelics on human consciousness. Taking a historical approach, I demonstrate that psychedelic scientists have always faced the paradoxical task of translating the unusual and ineffable effects of psychedelics into discrete, measurable variables. This quandary has become more pronounced in the age of digital tool use, as such tools rest on the logic of metrical and discrete analysis. I suggest that the therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics can only be fully revealed by methodological techniques which explicitly address the epistemic limitations of digital data. Noting that the ascendance of Big Data is contemporaneous with a rise of interest in psychedelics as adjuncts to psychotherapy, I assert that psychedelic science provides abundant materials for a critique of the ostensive epistemic authority of digital data, which operates as an alibi for technologized capitalism.
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Larsen, Katarina. "Innovation Processes and Environmental Planning : Science and Technology Policies in a Regional Context." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm : Royal Institute of Technology, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-416.
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Gold, Anna Keller. "At the Margins of Modern Science: Leviathan and the Air-Pump as a Case Study for Meta-analysis of Contemporary Science and Technology Studies." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/33209.
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In this thesis I will offer an extended discussion and critique of an important social constructivist book, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985), focusing on its reception and its standing in science and technology studies in the fifteen years since its publication. This work claims to be an "origins" story for the modern form of life that we now call the scientific community, and this claim has not itself been contested strongly by other scholars. Central to Shapin and Schaffer's argument for the socially constructed nature of scientific knowledge, is the contrast they find between the community orientation of Robert Boyle and the anti-community stance of Thomas Hobbes. In the course of this thesis, I question the validity not only of this contrast, but of the origins story itself. I suggest that while experimental, communally-practiced science and modernity did emerge together around the end of the seventeenth-century, the qualities of science that Shapin and Schaffer suggest are distinctive of modern science might more accurately be represented as distinctive of modern science. In other words, I suggest that the story of Leviathan and the Air-Pump is not so much an origins story for science as it is emblematic of the early influence of widespread European modernist culture on scientific practices. Leviathan and the Air-Pump is an important case to study in order to unravel the strands of science and modernity because it occupies simultaneously both the early and late margins of the modern period: first, by taking the contested but emergent modernism represented by Robert Boyle as its subject and, second, as a work of scholarship that sits on the far margins of the modern period. My method is to treat Shapin and Schaffer's work as a central primary source for understanding how contemporary science and technology studies scholarship deals with early modern science. A side product of this analysis is to suggest strongly that Shapin and Schaffer's account of the social construction of scientific knowledge is itself socially constructed: that is, it is highly selective in its presentation and interpretation of historical evidence. I also consider what the implications may be for separating modernity from science, and for thinking about how science might be practiced in the age that will follow -- perhaps is already following -- the modern period.Master of Science
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Leydesdorff, Loet, and Janelle Ward. "Science shops: A kaleidoscope of science-society collaborations in Europe. Public Understanding of Science , 14 (2005), 353-372." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105305.
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The science-shop model was initiated in the Netherlands in the 1970s. During the 1980s, the model spread throughout Europe, but without much coordination. The crucial idea behind the science shops involves a working relationship between knowledge-producing institutions like universities and citizen groups that need answers to relevant questions. More recently, the European Commission has funded a number of projects for taking stock of the results of science shops. Twenty-one in-depth case studies by seven science shops across Europe enable us to draw some conclusions about the variety of experiences in terms of differences among disciplines, nations, and formats of the historical institutionalization. The functions of science shops in the mediation of normative concerns with analytical perspectives can further be specified.
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Goldstone, Robert L., and Loet Leydesdorff. "The Import and Export of Cognitive Science. Cognitive Science 30(6), 2006 (forthcoming)." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105986.
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Cognitive Science 30(6), 2006From its inception, a large part of the motivation for Cognitive Science has been the need for an interdisciplinary journal for the study of minds and intelligent systems. In the inaugural editorial for the journal, Allan Collins (1977) wrote â Current journals are fragmented along old disciplinary lines, so there is no common place for workers who approach these problems from different disciplines to talk to each otherâ (p. 1). The interdisciplinarity of the journal has served a valuable cross-fertilization function for those who read the journal to discover articles written for and by practitioners across a wide range of fields. The challenges of building and understanding intelligent systems are sufficiently large that they will most likely require the skills of psychologists, computer scientists, philosophers, educators, neuroscientists, and linguists collaborating and coordinating their efforts. One threat to the interdisciplinarity of Cognitive Science, both the field and journal, is that it may become, or already be, too dominated by psychologists (Schunn, Crowley, & Okada, 1998; Von Eckardt, 2001). One piece of evidence supporting this contention is that many of the manuscripts submitted to Cognitive Science are given â psychologyâ as field keyword by their authors. In 2005, psychology was a keyword for 51% of submissions, followed distantly by linguistics (17%), artificial intelligence (13%), neuroscience (10%), computer science (9%), and philosophy (8%) (these percentages sum to more than 100% because authors are not restricted to designating only a single field). Another quantitative way to assess the interdisciplinarity of Cognitive Science as well as its general intellectual niche is to analyze aggregated journal-journal citations. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) gathers data not only on how individual articles cite one another, but also on macroscopic citation patterns among journals. Journals or sets of journals can be considered as proxies for fields. As fields become established, they often create journals (Leydesdorff, Cozzens, & Van den Besselaar, 1994). As Collins (1977) wrote when launching Cognitive Science, â In starting the journal we are just adding another trapping in the formation of a new disciplineâ (p. 1). By studying the patterns of citations among journals that cite and are cited by Cognitive Science, we can better: 1) appreciate the scholarly ecology surrounding the journal and the journalâ s role within this ecology, 2) establish competitor and alternate journals, and 3) determine the natural clustering of fields related to cognitive science (Leydesdorff, 2006; forthcoming).
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Wouters, Paul, Jan Annerstedt, and Loet Leydesdorff. "The European Guide to Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies." 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105625.
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This is the first European guide to science, technology, and innovation (STI) studies. It aims to facilitate public access to these relatively young specialties of academic and strategic research. STI studies study the development of scientific knowledge, the process of technology creation, and the way these interact to innovate the economy and society as a whole. Because of this, the way they formulate the important questions about future social and economic developments, and the answers they have provisionally given, are relevant to a large number of people. Yet, many people who might profit from the knowledge developed in STI studies are unaware of these valuable sources. This is the main reason this guide has been written.
The results have also surprised the authors. This guide comprises more institutions than expected, and these are also more diverse than foreseen. Apparently, European society has become so complex that nobody has a clear overview. For example, academic institutions no longer have the monopoly on knowledge creation. The increasing specialization in science has moreover made it virtually impossible to know one's intellectual neighbours. On top of this, the guide ties together three different intellectual traditions: the sociology of science, the history of technology, and evolutionary economics. As a result, this guide brings together centres and institutions that never were on one podium before.
In general terms, the guide should be useful to anyone interested in knowledge creation, technology development, or innovation. The guide is especially meant for:
* students who wish to complement their education in one of the sciences, social sciences, or humanities with one or more courses in STI studies,
* journalists, public relations experts, or communication specialists who are confronted in their daily practice with the complex issues arising out of socio-technical innovation,
* teachers and lecturers in secondary and tertiary education who either wish to update their knowledge about science, technology, or innovation, or who wish to acquire new teaching skills in these areas,
* managers and decision makers in the private sector who need to develop knowledge based strategies, or face the task of managing technology development or innovation processes, and therefore wish to update their capabilities,
* policy makers in the public sector who are confronted by the complexities of policy development and risk management in European technological culture, and therefore wish to refresh their window on the world.
The guide consists of three chapters:
1. The first chapter gives a general introduction to the topics in STI studies. This should give the reader a quick overview and a bit of the flavour of the field. The second part of this chapter is divided in different sections meant for the different target audiences:
* students,
* communicators,
* teachers,
* managers,
* decision-makers.
2. The second chapter is the main body of the guide, and gives practical information about the institutions, arranged on a per country basis. The information is based on documentation provided by the institutions themselves. The first type of entries give the institutional address, phone numbers, and WWW and Email addresses; the second type of entries describe the general profile of the institution; and the third type of entries give detailed course information.
3. The third chapter gives a topical entry to the STI studies in this guide. To give the reader a feel of the different types of approach in the STI centres in Europe, the chapter provides a tentative overview of the most important topics, without pretending to be complete. In each topical section, one project is described in more detail. This should give the reader more in-depth information than would be possible by a listing of all projects relevant to the topic. Yet, it often means a rather arbitrary choice among many equally interesting projects. Therefore, each section is ended by a index of European STI centres which are actively engaged with the topic involved. Effectively, this third chapter is a topical index to practical information in the guide.
Taken together, the three chapters should facilitate searching through this guide to European STI centres both an a per country basis, and per topical interest. If one is mostly interested in studying in a certain region, chapter 2 can be used as the main entry into the guide. If on the contrary a certain topic is the perspective regardless of where the STI centres are located, chapter 3 is the best starting point.
As will be clear upon reading, the information about the different institutions is very diverse. This is not a coincidence, nor only a practical matter. To be sure, the fact that this guide is the first of its kind certainly contributes to a rather varying format of presentation. But more important is the nature of science, technology, and innovation studies. It is a quite heterogenous field of studies, coming from diverse academic and policy related traditions. The object of study is moreover itself heterogenous, due to the complex nature of present-day European society. We have chosen not to try to reduce this variety for the sake of a more coherent presentation. We think on the contrary that the variety in the way the institutions are represented may itself be an additional source of relevant and useful information.
Practical information such as telephone numbers and course data tend to have a high turnover rate. This is the reason this guide has been published both in printed form and as a World Wide Web document. The WWW-version contains recently updated information. This is the first time a guide like this on STI studies has been published. Although we have done our utmost best to collect as much information as possible, we are certain that some institutions may have been missed. This is, unfortunately, inevitable in a first-time experiment. (Size of guide: 246 pages approx.).
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Leydesdorff, Loet. "The Evaluation of Research and the Evolution of Science Indicators. Current Science, 89(9), 2005, 1510-1517." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105960.
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Research evaluation is based on a representation of the research. Improving the quality of the representations cannot prevent the indicators from being provided with meaning by a receiving discourse different from the research system(s) under study. Since policy decisions affect the systems under study, this configuration generates a tension that has been driving the further development of science indicators since World War II. The article discusses historically the emergence of science indicators and some of the methodological problems involved. More recent developments have been induced by the emergence of the European Union as a supra-national level of policy coordination and by the Internet as a global medium of communication. As science, technology, and innovation policies develop increasingly at various levels and with different objectives, the evaluative discourses can be expected to differentiate with reference to the discourses in which they are enrolled.
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SCIANNAMBLO, MARIACRISTINA. "Troubling binary codes. Studying information technology at the intersection of science and technology studies and feminist technoscience studies." Doctoral thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11573/926386.
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This dissertation provides a study of Information Technology (IT) as professional and technical culture by drawing together the theoretical lenses of Feminist Technoscience Studies (FTS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). This central topic has been investigated through an empirical research that focuses on two distinct issues: the gender gap and underrepresentation of women in IT educational and professional paths (computer science, computer engineering, computing); the role of digital artifacts and materiality in the process of organizing within an Italian telecommunication company.
With regard to the first field, I have carried out a historical analysis of the experience of the first female coders in early digital computing era and I have conducted a set of interviews with contemporary Italian female IT professionals and practitioners who form and participate to networks and campaigns that promote women’s presence and gender awareness in computing. Drawing on contributions from STS and feminist socio-constructivist approaches in science and technology, I shall argue that the analysis of gender divide in IT should go beyond the issues of female discrimination in order to call into question the gendered nature of computer artifacts and technical knowledge (Faulkner, 2001; Misa, 2010).
In the second field site, I have gone beyond the visible issues of gender asymmetries in organization in order to challenge the alleged neutral character of technical artifacts and materiality (Latour, 1992) by drawing on contributions from STS and Workplace Studies. Starting from this body of knowledge which calls into question the very boundaries between the social and the technical (Heath & Button, 2002), I have employed analytic sensibilities from FTS and the recent debate on new materialism in feminist theory (Barad, 2007; Alaimo & Hekman, 2008; Hekman, 2010; Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012) to trace out the agential role of materiality and technical objects in producing marginal and invisible positions (Haraway, 1988; Star, 1991; Star & Bowker, 2007). In this respect, I shall argue that technical knowledge and non-human actors take part in politics and practices of boundary-making, sustaining divisions and hierarchies (Hughes & Lury, 2013).
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Leydesdorff, Loet, and Caroline S. Wagner. "Is the United States losing ground in science? A global perspective on the world science system in 2005." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105853.
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Based on the Science Citation Index - Expanded web-version, the USA is still by far the strongest nation in terms of scientific performance. Its relative decline in percentage share of publications is largely due to the emergence of China and other Asian nations. In terms of citations, the competitive advantage of the American "domestic market" is diminished, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the US. However, the USA is still outperforming all other countries in terms of highly cited papers and citation/publication ratios, and it is more successful than the EU in coordinating its research efforts in strategic priority areas like nanotechnology. In this field, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has become second largest in 2005 in both numbers of papers published and citations behind the USA.
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Leydesdorff, Loet, Ping Zhou, Min-ho So, and Han Park. "Recognizing a Change in World Science System." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105383.
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The Journal of Yeungnam Regional Development 35(2) (2006), 69-86English Abstract: Kingâ s (2004) â The scientific impact of nationsâ published in the Nature has provided the data for the comparison among nation-states in terms of their research performance with reference to their previous stages. This paper makes an attempt to do a new evaluation of the data from another perspective, which leads to completely different and hitherto overlooked conclusions. This paper found that there were newly emerging nations. While their national science systems grow endogenously, their publications and citation rates keep pace with the growth pattern. The center of gravity of the world system of science may be changing accordingly. Its axis is moving from North America first to Europe, but then increasingly to Asia. At the global level the rise of China and South Korea are perhaps the main effect because of the volumes.
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Hannah, Dehlia. "Performative Experiments: Case Studies in the Philosophy of Art, Science and Technology." Thesis, 2013. https://doi.org/10.7916/D8X3535T.
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In this dissertation I argue that artworks that mimic scientific experiments can transform our philosophical understanding of scientific experiment itself. The collection of artworks that form the basis of my case studies includes imaginary scientific instruments, responsive sound environments, genetic portraits and live scientific demonstrations. Despite their heterogeneity, each of these artworks embodies a certain idea of experiment through its physical form. I read these artworks as material representations of the logics and practices described by philosophers and historians of scientific experimentation. Much as scientific models mediate between theories and the real world, artworks, in my analysis, mediate between the philosophical descriptions of science and its material instantiations. Like models, artworks are not merely illustrations of preconceived ideas but also have lives of their own. The very idea of using artworks to explore the nature of experiment has its roots in Kant's theory of exemplarity, developed in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Artworks are considered exemplary when they give sensuous embodiment to an idea that has not yet been fully formed in thought. To regard artworks as exemplary for the philosophy of science and technology is to regard them as generative of new ways of thinking about experimentation as a mode of material and conceptual practice that art and science share. My dissertation opens up a new archive for the philosophy of scientific experimentation in the form of what I call performative experiments--a term that I reserve for artworks that at once enact and query the logic of scientific experimentation. The dissertation is comprised of four chapters, each of which places one or more artworks into conversation with a set of philosophical questions that arise at the intersection of aesthetic theory, philosophy of science and philosophy of technology. Philosophers of technology have observed that tools, by their very nature, tend to recede into their context of use and in doing so become transparent and invisible to their users. My first chapter aims to recover the role of instruments in the epistemology of scientific experimentation through a close reading of Eve André Laramée's Apparatus for the Distillation of Vague Intuitions (1994-98), a glass sculpture installation that embeds within itself a virtual archeological record of continuity in instrumentation from alchemy to modern chemistry. The second chapter examines the methodology of so-called "natural experiments," in which investigators treat occurrent situations as if they were intentionally created for the purposes of controlled experimentation. Through my analyses of Natalie Jeremijenko's work Tree Logic (1999-present) and Stacey Levy's Seeing the Path of the Wind (1991), I argue that performative experiments dramatize how we export habits of seeing and patterns of inference from the carefully shielded conditions of the laboratory to the unruly world outside its walls. My third chapter investigates the use of molecular genetics as a new medium of portraiture and shows how the specific aesthetic possibilities and constraints of this medium transform the genre of portraiture so as to capture changing conceptions of personal identity, kinship and subjective temporality in the genetic age. Finally, the fourth chapter explores the ethical, political and institutional limits governing the transformation of experiences into the basis of experimental knowledge as these limits become sites of contest in IRB# G10-02-066-01 (2010), an artwork qua social psychology experiment for the artist Jennifer Gradecki failed to win approval from her university's ethics review board. Drawing, in part, on the primary data of my own repeated trials as a subject in this illicit experiment, titled "Social Interaction as a Function of Voluntary Engagement With a Shock Machine," I reflect on how the epistemic and social value of experiences are mediated by the institutional context in which research is regulated and legitimated. Throughout the dissertation, I demonstrate that artworks transform material and epistemological practices derived from the sciences into formal devices for directing perceptual attention and imaginative reflection. When practices of experiment are used to organize aesthetic responses in the context of the art museum or gallery, they draw attention to aesthetic and phenomenological dimensions of scientific practice that tend to escape notice in the context of science itself, and therefore to remain under-theorized within the history and philosophy of science. The emerging genre of performative experiments opens up a site of critical self-reflexivity within the methods and material of scientific practice itself, a site in which it is possible both to explore the cultural significance of scientific knowledge and to critique the empirical methods that are used to produce the scientific image of the world. Performative experiments are exemplary, in this respect, of a new form of critical literacy that arises at once within the sciences and the arts.
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El, Hajj Tracey M. "Tactical network sonification: a listening technique for science and technology studies." Thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/12540.
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Networks are an integral part of everyday life. Today, public concern with the extent to which they influence people’s routines, and how much they affect cultures and societies, has grown substantially. People are thus now engaging in conversations and movements to evaluate and address the biases and discriminatory behaviours to which networks contribute. The media play an important part in this conversation, often directing the discourse towards fears of technology. Although such concerns are very real, the stories that media circulate typically rely on the “magical” nature of networks and therefore accentuate their figurative power. But, for people to participate meaningfully in the conversation, and for them to approach technologies responsibly, they need access to the complexities and technical intricacies of networks, not just their surfaces or metaphors.
This dissertation argues that, by listening to networks, people can begin to apprehend, and even comprehend, the complex, ostensibly “magical” nature of their communications. One problem is that listening semantically to networks is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Networks are very noisy, and they do not, for instance, use alphabetic language for internal or external communication. Yet there are other ways to hear and interpret them. I argue that Michel Chion’s techniques of reduced and causal listening are two such ways, and that they afford a “sensible” and timely method for approaching networks. Of course, network communications must first be rendered audible to hear them. For this purpose, I propose “tactical network sonification” (TNS) as a methodology for Science and Technology Studies (STS). As this dissertation’s primary contribution to the field of STS, TNS focuses on making the materiality of networks sensibly accessible to the general public, especially people who are not technology experts. In so doing, TNS builds on the scholarship of not only Chion but also Beth Coleman, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Henri Lefebvre, Shannon Mattern, Shintaro Miyazaki, Pauline Oliveros, Rita Raley, and Jonathan Sterne in particular. This project finds that TNS results in crowded sound clips that represent the complexity of network infrastructure, through the many overlapping rhythms and layers of sound that each clip contains. It explains that sonifications may assist in creating multimodal network stories, making networks sensible and apprehendable. Finally, this dissertation proposes that using TNS can help understand potential discriminatory distribution of network infrastructure across communities.Graduate
2021-12-18
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Leydesdorff, Loet, and Bihui Jin. "Mapping the Chinese Science Citation Database in terms of aggregated journal-journal citation relations. Journal of the American Society of Information Science & Technology, 56(14) 1469-1479." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/106259.
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This is published in the Journal of the American Society of Information Science & Technology, 56(14) 1469-1479.
[The classification and mapping of journals is available at http://www.leydesdorff.net/china01.] Methods developed for mapping the journal structure contained in aggregated journal-journal citations in the Science Citation Index are applied to the Chinese Science Citation Database of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This database covered 991 journals in 2001, of which only 37 had originally English titles and only 31 were covered by the SCI. Using factor-analytical and graph-analytical techniques we show that the journal relations are dually structured. The main structure is the intellectual organization of the journals in journal groups (as in the international SCI), but the university-based journals provide an institutional layer that orients this structure towards practical ends (e.g., agriculture). This mechanism of integration is further distinguished from the role of â general science journals.â The Chinese Science Citation Database thus exhibits the characteristics of â Mode 2â in the production of scientific knowledge more than its western counterparts. The contexts of application lead to correlation among the components.