SCIENCE IN SOCIETY

Professors: Sue C. Fisher (Sociology), C. Stewart Gillmor (History), Jill Morawski (Psychology), Joseph T. Rouse (Chair)(Philosophy)

Assistant Professor: Jennifer Tucker (History and Women’s Studies

Departmental Advising Experts (2000-2001): Sue Fisher (Sociology), Jill Morawski (Psychology), Joseph Rouse (Philosophy), Stewart Gillmore (History), Jennifer Tucker (History)

The sciences and scientifically sophisticated medicine and technology are among the most important and far-reaching human achievements. Scientific work has affected people’s intellectual standards, cultural meanings, political possibilities, economic capacities, and physical surroundings. Scientific research has also acquired significance, direction, authority, and application within various cultural contexts. To understand the sciences as human achievements is, in significant part, to understand the world in which we live.

The Science in Society Program is an interdisciplinary major that encourages the study of the sciences and medicine as institutions, practices, intellectual achievements, and constituents of culture. Students in the program should gain a better understanding of the richness and complexity of scientific practice and of the cultural and political significance of science, technology, and medicine. The major program is well suited for students interested in a variety of professional and academic pursuits after graduation, since it encourages students to integrate technical scientific knowledge with a grasp of the historical and cultural setting within which it is understood and used.

Students may enroll in the program either as their only major or as a joint major with one of the science departments (astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, molecular biology and biochemistry, neuroscience and behavior, physics, or psychology). The core of the program consists of one course each in history of science, philosophy of science, and sociocultural studies of science, and at least two additional elective courses in related fields. The joint major consists of these five required courses in the program and a science major. Students for whom the program is their only major must complete the same five required courses in the program, plus a minimum of four courses in one of the science departments and a four-course area of concentration in either philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, or women’s studies. Further up-to-date information about Program requirements and policies, can be found on the Program Web page at http://www.wesleyan.edu/sisp/.

To be eligible for departmental honors, a student must meet two criteria. First, all work done in the core courses of the Science in Society Program including electives must be considered, on average, to be very good (equivalent to a B+ or better). Second, a senior thesis deemed excellent by its readers is necessary for honors, and a genuinely distinguished thesis is needed for high honors.