Read the notes, then try the practice. It adapts as you go.When you're ready.
Session Length
~17 min
Adaptive Checks
15 questions
Transfer Probes
8
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that examines how scientific knowledge and technological systems are produced, distributed, and received within social, political, and cultural contexts. Rather than treating science and technology as autonomous forces that develop according to their own internal logic, STS scholars investigate the human choices, institutional structures, power dynamics, and cultural values that shape what gets researched, which technologies are developed, and who benefits or is harmed by these developments. The field draws on history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, and communication studies to build a richer understanding of the relationship between knowledge-making and social order.
The intellectual roots of STS trace back to the mid-twentieth century, when historians and philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn challenged the idea that scientific progress is a simple, linear accumulation of objective facts. Kuhn's concept of paradigm shifts, along with the Edinburgh School's Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge, opened the door to studying science as a social activity. Concurrently, the environmental movement, nuclear anxieties, and debates over industrial regulation spurred public demand for greater scrutiny of how technologies are governed. These converging streams coalesced into STS as a recognized academic discipline by the 1970s and 1980s, with dedicated journals, professional societies, and university departments.
Today, STS is more relevant than ever as societies grapple with artificial intelligence, climate change, genetic engineering, digital surveillance, and pandemic response. STS scholars analyze risk assessment, public participation in science policy, the ethics of emerging technologies, and the unequal distribution of technological benefits and harms. The field equips students and policymakers with analytical tools to ask not only whether something can be built, but whether it should be built, for whom, and under what conditions. By foregrounding questions of justice, accountability, and democratic governance, STS provides a critical lens for navigating the complex entanglements of knowledge, innovation, and society.
One step at a time.
The theory that technology is the principal driver of social change and that the introduction of new technologies inevitably produces particular social outcomes, independent of human agency or cultural context.
Example: The claim that the invention of the printing press single-handedly caused the Protestant Reformation oversimplifies complex social, economic, and religious factors that also played decisive roles.
A framework arguing that technology does not develop along a predetermined path but is shaped by the interests, negotiations, and interpretations of relevant social groups who define what counts as a working or successful technology.
Example: The design of the modern bicycle evolved not from pure engineering logic but from competing visions of different user groups, including racers who wanted speed and ordinary riders who wanted safety and comfort.
Thomas Kuhn's concept describing a fundamental change in the basic assumptions and practices of a scientific discipline, where an established framework is replaced by a new one that better explains accumulated anomalies.
Example: The shift from Newtonian mechanics to Einstein's theory of relativity represented a paradigm shift that redefined how physicists understood space, time, and gravity.
A theoretical framework developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law that treats both human and non-human entities (such as instruments, texts, and organisms) as active participants in networks that produce scientific knowledge and technological systems.
Example: In studying how pasteurization was adopted in France, Latour showed that the microbe itself, laboratory equipment, farmers, and hygienists all functioned as actors in the network that transformed French public health.
Ulrich Beck's concept that modern industrial societies are increasingly organized around the production, distribution, and management of risks generated by technological development, such as nuclear hazards, chemical pollution, and climate change.
Example: The Chernobyl nuclear disaster illustrated how industrially produced risks cross national borders and class boundaries, forcing societies to confront dangers created by their own technological systems.
The rhetorical and institutional strategies by which scientists and other knowledge-makers draw distinctions between legitimate science and non-science, thereby defining the authority and credibility of scientific claims.
Example: When climate scientists publicly distinguish their peer-reviewed research from industry-funded contrarian studies, they are performing boundary work to defend the epistemic authority of climate science.
An analytical concept recognizing that technological artifacts and social structures are deeply intertwined, so that any functioning system involves both technical components and the human organizations, regulations, and practices that sustain them.
Example: An electrical power grid is a sociotechnical system because it depends not only on generators and transmission lines but also on utility companies, regulatory bodies, pricing structures, and consumer behavior.
Approaches and practices that involve non-expert citizens in discussions about scientific research and technology policy, moving beyond the one-way 'deficit model' of science communication toward genuine dialogue and co-production of knowledge.
Example: Citizens' juries on genetically modified organisms allow members of the public to hear expert testimony, deliberate, and issue recommendations that inform government policy.
More terms are available in the glossary.
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