Fri, 18 Jul 2008
HSSC 550: The Information Sciences
Important note about my graduate seminar for the Fall 2008 semester:
Instead of teaching the HSSC 677 seminar on careers in science, technology, and medicine, I will be offering instead HSSC 550: The Information Sciences. This seminar will meet on Monday afternoon from 12:30-3:30 in Claudia Cohen (formerly Logan) Hall, room 362.
HSSC 550: The Information Sciences
This graduate seminar explores the emergence and widespread
adoption in the early Cold War-period of a set of interrelated
tools, techniques, and discourses organized around the concept
of ``information.'' These emerging information science
included not only new disciplines such as cybernetics,
information theory, operations research, and ecology, but also
some traditional physical sciences -- such as biology and
chemistry -- as well as a broad range of social sciences,
including economics, political science, sociology, and urban
planning. The focus of the course will be on tracing the
important structural changes in post-war science that
encouraged the adoption of the rhetoric of information (if not
its substance), as well as on extending the relevance of these
developments to a wide range of topics in the history of
science, medicine, and technology.
Download the HSSC 550 syllabus in PDF form
category: /teaching
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