Science, Technology, and Political Theory

This course aims to introduce student to normative, ethical, and philosophical debates around the place of science and technology in human societies. Political theory brings a specific set of questions, problems, approaches, and conceptual tools for thinking about power, authority, human nature, the human good, and justice, all of which bear on the centrality of science and technology in social life. Political theory also approaches these questions through a wide variety of forms and genres of thought: historical analysis, normative philosophy, critical approaches to power, and even literature. The range of topics that could be explored in a course about the political theory of science and technology are vast and more than could be covered in any one semester. But course topics include the following: the history of anxiety around the place of technology in human life; technological determinist theories of history such as Marxism; techno-utopian and techno-dystopian ideologies; theories of the proper political and legislative authority of scientists and other experts; visions of freedom from labor and drudgery through technology; science as the supreme authority in modern secularism; philosophical discussions of the boundary between human nature and technology; considerations of the ethical limits of technological process (weapons, artificial intelligence, and environmental harm); techno-authoritarian political ideologies; surveillance and politics; the place of big data in governing populations; the ethics of modifying human nature and transhumanist visions; the effect of digital technologies on democracy and the public sphere; and artificial intelligence and its discontents.