SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE AND INTELLECTUALS (SO 223)
Academic Year 2007/8

Lecturer: Prof. Steve Fuller (s.w.fuller@warwick.ac.uk) W 10-10.50, S011
Tutor: Ms. Elisabeth Simbuerger (e.a.simbuerger@warwick.ac.uk) M 2-3, 4-5, Reinvention Centre, Westwood Campus.

This module will consider the role of authoritative knowledge in society: How do people decide what to believe and, more crucially, what is worth having beliefs about? How do these decisions interact with other concerns about how people allocate time and resources? These questions, while always important, have taken on an added significance as more specialised forms of knowledge, or ‘expertises’, have come to influence public policymaking in areas of health, security, welfare and education. In the classical sociological tradition, these issues have been associated mainly with religious and political ideologies, including the sorts of social divisions, and even conflicts, they generate and legitimate. More recent work has focused on organized inquiry, or ‘science’, and the ideally knowledgeable citizen, or ‘intellectual’. Existing between these two forms of knowledge is the ‘expert’, who often occupies a quasi-political or quasi-juridical role. All of these forms of knowledge are offshoots of the history of philosophy, which in the past few years has been itself subject to a major systematic sociological treatment. 

We shall examine all of the above matters from a comparative, historically informed, cross-cultural perspective from ancient times to the contemporary period.

Course readings:

There are two required books for the course:
•	Steve Fuller, The Intellectual (Icon Books, 2005).
•	Steve Fuller, The Knowledge Book: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Science and Culture (Acumen Press, 2007).
Both books are in paperback and available at the university bookshop.

In addition, there are some general books that you might find as useful supplements to your thinking/research in the module:
•	John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion (Cambridge U Press, 1990).
•	Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies (Harvard U Press, 1998).
•	Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Icon, 2003).

NB: There will also be weekly readings, usually linked to the web or distributed through the class listserv to which all students must subscribe. Essential module information will be primarily transmitted through the listserv, and it is your responsibility to regularly check your e-mail for announcements. 

General seminar information:

Note that both seminar sections will take place at the Reinvention Centre at the Westwood Campus. Be sure you can find it. The map with its location can be found by clicking the link on the upper right-hand of this page:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/cetl/westwood/

If you need to change your seminar times, that shouldn’t be a problem, unless the numbers between the two times become seriously unbalanced. Contact Elisabeth at e.a.simbuerger@warwick.ac.uk

The Use of Wikipedia in the Seminars

An innovative feature of the seminars is that students will be encouraged to forge an ‘intellectual’ identity in conjunction with work on Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopaedia that is consulted by 7% of the world’s 1.25 billion internet users each day. The nature of this project is discussed in (2) above. Unlike the usual assessed and non-assessed work you do at university, here is an opportunity to contribute to the collective storehouse of knowledge in what might be the most ambitious – and successful – intellectual project in history. I discuss the significance of Wikipedia in this syndicated newspaper column:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fuller5

Those of you unfamiliar with Wikipedia should start at the homepage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page .  Then you should move to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Contributing_to_Wikipedia , which explains how to contribute. To pick up the basics of editing on Wikipedia, start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

To anyone moderately computer-literate, the mechanics of the entire process is quite easy but remember that your contributions can easily be corrected by others (throughout the world) who contest what you say.

Of particular importance in the Tutorial is the tab that says ‘Registration’. Click that and you’ll see instructions for setting up a Username. You must set up a Username for this course and e-mail it to Elisabeth. The Username will enable us to see your work on Wikipedia. This will count as the ‘non-assessed’ formative work for this module. Remember you may use Wikipedia to draft assessed essays, which can be on any of the aspects of intellectual life discussed in the module. We will keep track of the entries you construct or contribute to, which will be reflected in the final list of assessed essay questions. 

Students will be circulated via the module listserv an article by Nicola Pratt, a politics lecturer at University of East Anglia, who used Wikipedia in one of her courses last year and reflects on its practice and outcomes.  

What follows is the module outline for the first term

Here are the lecture and seminar topics for the first term. The seminar topics are tied to the lecture of the preceding week. The seminars will pursue the lecture topics in more detail, in conjunction with the readings, and work on Wikipedia. Readings other than those listed for each week may be assigned, whenever possible through weblinks or attachments distributed on the module listserv.

WEEK	LECTURE	SEMINAR 	
1 (3 Oct)	Introduction: Is being an academic compatible with being an intellectual?	(8 Oct) Introduction to Wikipedia	
2 (10 Oct)	What exactly is the social role of the intellectual?	(15 Oct) Seminar	
3 (17 Oct)	Do public intellectuals constitute a profession in which one might be trained?	(22 Oct) Steve takes seminars: Wikipedia update	
4 (24 Oct)	The paranoid streak in intellectual life: The temptations of power and money.	(29 Oct) Seminar 	
5 (31 Oct)	Elisabeth takes lecture: Assessed essay questions and ‘Public Sociology’ lecture	(5 Nov) No seminar	
6 (7 Nov)	No lecture	(12 Nov) Seminar	
7 (14 Nov)	Are intellectuals just downmarket philosophers?  The problem of telling the truth in real time, Part I.	(19 Nov) Seminar	
8 (21 Nov)	Are intellectuals just downmarket philosophers?  The problem of telling the truth in real time, Part II	(26 Nov) Seminar	
9 (28 Nov)	Is rule by experts inevitable in liberal societies? The modern history of the problem.	(3 Dec)  Seminar	
10 (5 Dec)	Is rule by experts inevitable in liberal societies? A recent proposal for scientific citizenship that avoids undue reliance on expertise.	(10 Dec) No seminar: Term over!	

Note exceptions to the normal weekly schedule:
•	Lectures will take place in two instalments at the Reinvention Centre on 22nd October at the two designated times. Steve will be reviewing Wikipedia work prior to setting the assessed essay questions.
•	There are no lectures on 31st October. Elisabeth will be taking everyone as a group in seminar that day.  She will reveal the assessed essay questions for the first term.
•	Week 6 (i.e. beginning 5th November) is reading week. No lectures or seminars are scheduled.

WEEK 1:  Introduction: Is being an academic compatible with being an intellectual?
http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2019710

WEEK 2:  What exactly is the social role of the intellectual?  
The Intellectual, 7-17. Also the following pdf will be distributed: Steve Fuller, ‘The Public Intellectual as an Agent of Justice: In Search of a Regime’. Philosophy and Rhetoric (2006) 39: 147-56. Also have a look at the list of top public intellectuals in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2005_Global_Intellectuals_Poll

WEEK 3:  Do public intellectuals constitute a profession in which one might be trained?
The Intellectual, 109-18. I shall also circulate some webpages – now defunct! – of attempts to set up curricula for public intellectuals at Florida Atlantic University and Birkbeck College London, along with (mostly sceptical) responses to these proposals. 

WEEK 4: The paranoid streak in intellectual life: The temptations of power and money.
The Intellectual, 18-50, 122-36

WEEK 5: Elisabeth takes lecture: Assessed essay questions and ‘Public Sociology’ lecture. She will circulate a reading in advance.

WEEK 6: No Lecture

WEEK 7: Are intellectuals just downmarket philosophers?  The problem of telling the truth in real time, Part I.
The Intellectual, 51-108, 145-7.

WEEK 8:  Are intellectuals just downmarket philosophers? The problem of telling the truth in real time,  Part II.
The Intellectual, 51-108, 145-7.

WEEK 9:  Is rule by experts inevitable in liberal societies? The modern history of the problem.
The Knowledge Book, ‘Expertise’, ‘Mass Media’. Also the Lippmann-Dewey debate: http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~dschugurensky/assignment1/1922lippdew.html

WEEK 10: Is rule by experts inevitable in liberal societies? A recent proposal for scientific citizenship that avoids undue reliance on expertise.
The Intellectual, 136-45.
ESRC report: http://www.sci-soc.net/NR/rdonlyres/283186BD-5497-4A67-A8C7-A53CFBEA288A/193/ScientificConnoisseurshipReport.pdf