PB429      Half Unit
Science, Innovations and the Human Future

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The human future begins with the debate over new technologies and the society we want to live in. Think of search engines (Chat/GBT), artificial intelligence AI, vaccination, climate change, fracking, nuclear energy, CRISPr gene editing or genetically modified crops and foods. On all these frontiers of innovation, science is a cultural authority and historically an arbiter and a voice of reason; but through the progressive commercialisation of research, increasingly also a protagonist. No surprise therefore that these technologies are controversial. The human future needs this debate now and everywhere.

In this course we will raise the question: what is the role of public debate, science communication and public attitude formation for innovations?

Through debate and controversy, modern societies develop their inter-subjective common sense and mobilise imaginaries of their future (Weart, 1988; Jasanoff et al.). For a technocratic attitude these debates are but deviations into a path of irrationality. In this context, the ‘viral’ diffusion model of innovation (Rogers, 1962) remains influential: scientists discover, engineers innovate, and social scientists provide acceptance in the marketplace. This linear model of ‘acceptance research’ is however wishful thinking (Godin et al.); valid at most for innovations with little resistance and no public debate. We recognise this reality through actor-network theory [ANT, Latour et al.] of inter-objectivity. More commonly, techno-scientific innovations encounter resistance that refocuses attention, evaluates ‘innovations’ and urges strategic adaptation (Bauer, 1991, 1995, 2002, 2015, and 2017). In this light, we will critically analyse the recurrent ‘technocratic temptations’ and the formation and impacts of resistance in socio-technological developments. Our focus will be on controversies, mobilising civic participation and the formation of public attitudes, comparing across ecology, nuclear power, IT, and genetic engineering in recent mobilisations over gene editing, AI, autonomous driving and robotic automation.

Students' are expected to appreciate theory driven empirical research.

10 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

Each session will have its own particular readings, divided into essential texts and additional readings. These readings are revised on an annual basis. No one text covers the entire syllabus; students' will be expected to read widely in appropriate journals, and a list of references will be provided at the start of the course.

• Bauer MW and B Schiele (2024) (eds.) Artificial Intelligence and Common Sense – Ambitions and Frictions, London, Routledge Series Science, Technology and Society Vol 58
• Bauer MW and B Schiele (2023) (eds.) Science Communication – Taking a Step Back to Move Forward, Paris, CNRS Editions (484pp) ISBN: 978-2-271-14839-1  
• Bauer MW, P Pansegrau, and R Shukla (2019) (eds) The Cultural Authority of Science – comparing across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, , London, Routledge.
• Bauer, M.W. (2015). Atoms, Bytes & Genes: public resistance and techno-scientific responses. New York: Routledge. Bauer, M.W. (2013).
• Bauer MW and M Bucchi (2007) (eds) Journalism, Science and Society – science communication between news and public relations, NY, Routledge.
• Bauer, M.W. & Gaskell, G. (Eds) (2002). Biotechnology - the making of a global controversy. Cambridge, CUP.
• Bucchi M and B Trench (2022) (eds) Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, 3nd edition, London, Routledge.
• Brachman RJ and HJ Levesque (2022) Machines like us – towards AI with common sense, Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
• Cobb M (2022) The Genetic Age – our perilous quest to edit life, London, Profile books.
• Entradas M and MW Bauer (2022) (eds) Public Communication of Research Institutes: ‘Arms race’ for visibility or science substance? London, Routledge Studies of Science, Technology and Society, Vol 48.
• Godin B and D Vinck (2017) (eds) Critical Studies of Innovation. Alternative approaches to the pro-innovation bias, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. 
• Jasanoff J (2005) Designs on Nature – science and democracy in Europe and the United States, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
• B Latour, 'On inter-objectivity', Mind, Culture and Activity, 3, 228-245, 1996;
• Marteau, T. & Richards, M.P.M. (1996) (Eds), The troubled helix: Social and psychological implications of the new human genetics, CUP.
• Norman DA (1998) The invisible computer – why good products fail …. Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
• Rogers, E.M. (1996). Diffusion of innovation, 4th edition. New York: Free Press.
• Sammut G and MW Bauer (2021) The Psychology of Social Influence – Modes and Modalities of Shifting Common Sense, Cambridge, CUP
• Weart, S.R. (1988). Nuclear fear: A history of images, Harvard University Press.

Essay (100%, 3000 words)

Essay (100%, 3000 words) to include AI report, with randomised sample of interviews to follow