Science and Technology (STS-UY)

STS Level 2 Transfer

This course introduces contemporary topics in Science and Technology Studies, emphasizing the relations among science, technology and society from philosophical, historical, and sociological points of view. This course is required for STS majors and satisfies an HuSS General Education Elective for all other majors.

This course introduces important issues, historical and contemporary, related to science and technology from a variety of social, political and philosophical viewpoints. The multidisciplinary approach helps students to understand the interaction between science, technology and society and to discover the conditions that foster technological innovation. The scientific and technological way of thinking becomes clear through historical examples, helping students to consider important issues of science and technology policy, such as how science and technology can be used to benefit society and how one can foster innovation in a society or an organization. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course introduces important issues, historical and contemporary, related to science and technology from a variety of social, political and philosophical viewpoints. The multidisciplinary approach helps students to understand the interaction between science, technology and society and to discover the conditions that foster technological innovation. The scientific and technological way of thinking becomes clear through historical examples, helping students to consider important issues of science and technology policy, such as how science and technology can be used to benefit society and how one can foster innovation in a society or an organization. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Ethical expertise is integral to the careers and responsibilities of engineering and technology management professionals, from long-standing issues around professional responsibilities to society and more recent controversies such as “techlash” concerns about bias, equity, and surveillance. This survey course introduces undergraduate students to some of the most relevant ethical issues in engineering and the technology industry today. Students will begin by exploring basic ethical approaches from a variety of philosophical traditions and how these principles have historically been integrated into engineering professions. Then, students will study a variety of topics of high importance to engineers today, including ethics in computing, data, and automated systems; medical ethics, past and present; disability ethics and activism; ethical issues related to the environment and climate change; and ethical issues related to race and gender. | Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

This course is concerned with the many ethical issues that arise in the field of medicine, issues such as: patient autonomy, informed consent, experimentation on live subjects, confidentiality, truth telling, conflict of interest and the treatment of relatives. We will also study moral issues pertaining to new medical techniques such as online medicine and prenatal genetic screening. These issues will be approached via an understanding of important historical, legal and philosophical foundations of medical ethics. We will study ideas from the Hippocratic Oath and Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditions up to the codes of today's ethics review boards. Important legal issues explored involve the right to healthcare, the obligation of parents to seek proper medical care for their children and euthanasia. Some of the important ethical-philosophical notions studied will be: the law of double effect, the obligation of beneficence and non-malevolence, utilitarianism, and Kantian ethics. While this course is open to all majors, it's specific aim is to prepare the future medical practitioner to understand and deal with the various moral challenges of the profession. | Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course is concerned with the many ethical issues that arise in the field of medicine, issues such as: patient autonomy, informed consent, experimentation on live subjects, confidentiality, truth telling, conflict of interest and the treatment of relatives. We will also study moral issues pertaining to new medical techniques such as online medicine and prenatal genetic screening. These issues will be approached via an understanding of important historical, legal and philosophical foundations of medical ethics. We will study ideas from the Hippocratic Oath and Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditions up to the codes of today's ethics review boards. Important legal issues explored involve the right to healthcare, the obligation of parents to seek proper medical care for their children and euthanasia. Some of the important ethical-philosophical notions studied will be: the law of double effect, the obligation of beneficence and non-malevolence, utilitarianism, and Kantian ethics. While this course is open to all majors, it's specific aim is to prepare the future medical practitioner to understand and deal with the various moral challenges of the profession. | Prerequisite(s): Completion of first year writing requirements. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course explores and analyzes the constructions of sexuality in the biological, social and medical sciences, focusing on issues in evolutionary biology, endocrinology, neuroscience, psychiatry, comparative anatomy and genetics. Throughout the semester, students compare the various meanings given to sexuality across disciplinary frameworks, paying attention to the increasingly unstable relationships between the categories of fiction and science, reproduction and sexuality, nature and culture, male and female, animal and human and hetero- and homosexuality. The class also assesses how expert scientific discourses influence popular understandings of sexuality and vice versa. Specifically, students examine how these understandings contribute to the normalization and official regulation of certain kinds of behavior, how they satisfy a desire for stories about human origins, and how they fashion terms of attraction, repulsion, affection, antagonism, dominance and submission according to which sexuality is putatively expressed. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course looks at the metaphysical and epistemological origins of three systems of thought—the organic, the magical and the mechanical—and considers the extent to which modern science can be seen as arising from their synthesis. Topics include Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Hermetic Corpus, Ficino's naturalistic magic, Pico's supernatural magic, Paracelsus and the ontic theory of disease, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, the Cambridge Platonists and Newton. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective

This course discusses the development of the theory of evolution based on the amassed evidence from the geological and biological sciences over the past 200 years. Darwin’s idea that natural selection was the driving force behind evolution is considered in detail. Early rival theories to Darwin’s ideas are discussed as part of the process leading to the modern theory. The integration into the theory of genetics and molecular biology has led to a much deeper understanding of how organisms are related. The role of chance factors is also considered. Application of evolution theory to problems in economic biology and modern medicine and epidemiology I also be discussed. Finally, current controversies regarding Intelligent Design is addressed and put into a historical context. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course explores public-policy issues on critical and often controversial questions in science (cap-and-trade, global warming, LEDs as lighting sources, biofuels, spectrum allocation), medicine (embryonic stem-cell research, national health care, genetic therapy, workplace risks of nanotechnology), and technology (off-shore drilling, biotechnology, clean coal, nuclear energy, “smart” power). Students select areas for specialization and are required to submit a white paper on one of these major issues. The report is based on library research and face-to-face interviews with experts in the field. As students draft sections of their white papers, they submit them for class discussion and meet periodically with the instructor to review their progress. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

What is the nature of space? Is it an independently existing substance, or does it merely consist of the relations between physical objects? Can motion be described simply in terms of the relational properties of objects, or must people always define motion with respect to an absolute motionless substratum? Does the existence of left-handed gloves entail the existence of absolute space? This course considers these and other questions about the nature of space and time as they appear in the writings of philosophers and scientists, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Berkeley, Kant, Poincaré and Einstein. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

This course will introduce feminist theory as a foundational methodology for critically investigating of the fields of STEM. Feminist theory is not a political ideology nor an analytic framework limited to “women’s issues,” but an important way of asking questions about how hierarchies of power including gender, race, class, and disability, relate to the funding, research directions, and accessibility of science, technology, and engineering. While thinking through how STEM conforms to and creates social systems of difference, students in this course will learn how to apply feminist theory to contemporary case studies, examining issues of practice, ethics, social justice, and inequality in STEM. | Prerequisite: EXPOS-UA 1

Quantum mechanics is today the best-confirmed theory of particle dynamics. The theory is not only the basis for all digital technologies, but also the theoretical foundation for the best-confirmed theories of matter (quantum field theories). However, since its inception, quantum mechanics has been beset with conceptual problems. No consensus exists on how to interpret it: What would the world be like if it were true? This course develops the mathematical formalism of the theory and explores several proposals about how to interpret it. Other topics include conceptual issues of quantum teleportation, quantum computing and quantum cryptography. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

From looking at a watch and noting the change from day to night and counting the days, months and years, people seem time as so mundane that they take it for granted and usually think little more about it. But what is time and why is it measured so obsessively and with such precision? This course concerns itself with all aspects of time, from the evolution of calendars (including our own) to precision timepieces and our own internal clocks. And finally, the nature of time itself and its relationship to space and other aspects of our universe are discussed. This course draws on knowledge from history, anthropology, psychology, technology, astronomy and physics to gain an understanding of this very basic “dimension.” | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course traces the history of science as it shapes race into a divisive standard for regulating and altering the shape of the population. Topics include the Enlightenment and the emergence of race as a science, eugenics and its lasting effects (actuarial science, mortgage policies, sentencing and paroling), and the fractured relationship between race and medicine. | Prerequisite: EXPOS-UA 1

In little more than 100 years, aviation has passed from a ground-hugging flight of less than a minute to high-altitude, supersonic flights that cross continents and oceans. This course surveys the history of aviation and the technological innovations that led to this crucial modern technology. This course also discusses the physics of flight, how increased understanding of aerodynamic principles led to successive aircraft improvements, and the development of new materials and control systems. Although military research drove many technological innovations, this course focuses on the economics and development of commercial aviation, which has changed the world. The course also looks at ultramodern trends in aircraft design and control, including unmanned cruise missiles and aircraft, and new commercial-aircraft designs and production techniques. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

Ships, the largest human-made moving objects, have played a pivotal role in trade and warfare throughout history. This course covers the history, development and technology of ships from ancient times to the present. The course discusses aspects of the atmosphere and seas as they relate to ship design and use. Technological advances in hull design, materials, sails and power also will be discussed. The use of ships in trade, human transportation, warfare, fishing, piracy and global exploration are covered, along with the satellite industries of shipbuilding and port support. The course also looks at the manning of ships, the social and military organization, ¬the life of mariners, the development of navigation and its technologies in an historical context, and submarine evolution and technologies. | Prerequisites: EXPOOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

Using a case study approach, this course explores the issues of professional and technological ethics especially as it pertains to networked computers in a global setting. The course will begin with the appropriate ethical codes of the professional societies, including the code of ethics for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) but also codes in other areas such as finance and medicine. The mandates and expectations of the codes will be interpreted from varying perspectives and will be applied concretely to the specifics of the cases under consideration. Ethical issues will be approached in a manner similar to that of engineering problems and students will be expected to show a step-by-step process for the resolution of actual and potential ethical conflict. The technique of "line drawing" will be used to exhibit the alternatives and to help justify the ultimate decision made. In addition to video lectures Power Point charts, and notes the course teaching techniques will employ social media ("Google +") to create a class community, "NYU Classes" to present texts and case studies, built-in assessment tools to permit student dialogue and debate on assigned topics. These online tools do not demand excessive bandwidth and can be used in both synchronous and asynchronous settings.

This course examines the social, legal, economic, and policy contexts surrounding worldwide computing. Issues to be addressed include the economic impacts of computer and software development in the global context; the impacts of computers on family and social structure, work, education, and leisure; the digital divide in the US and internationally; questions of privacy and safety; the changing landscape of international and national laws surrounding computing; and others. Course readings, online discussions and a research project are required. | Pre-requisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4

This survey of popular pseudoscientific claims emphasizes issues in the philosophy of science, including demarcation, evidential warrant, scientific progress, science and public policy, and fallacies of reasoning. Topics include UFO sightings and alien abductions, the Nemesis theory of dinosaur extinctions, astrology, creationism, psychic phenomena, theories of intelligence, alternative medicines, global warming and cold fusion. The course emphasizes student input to determine the topics covered. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

This course examines issues relating to engineering practice and applied technology. We will study foundations for moral decision making such as professional codes and ethical theories such as Kantianism and utilitarianism. These ethical tools will be applied to a range of case studies. We will also seek a deeper understanding of important issues and challenges stemming from technology with an eye to how globalization and its attendant cultural and moral pluralism affect them. Topics include: business in a globalized world, information technology, military technology, food production, the environment, bioethics, energy, and emerging technologies. Satisfies a HuSS elective. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements.

This class investigates aspects of human behavior in terms of the Internet. The Internet is a technological phenomenon that allows people separated by huge distances to interact with each other in relatively seamless fashion. Does the Internet allow people to connect in ways never possible before? Or are these new connections variations of previous human interactions, only on a computer screen. For all of its positive attributes, the Internet has a negative side: People become increasingly dependent on interacting only through the Internet. Is this dysfunctional? What characterizes addictive behavior? Can addictive behavior be attributed to a physical action as opposed to a biological substance? | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

This course explores the nature of the creative act. What does it take to be creative? What are some of the cognitive and personality variables that aid and hinder creativity? What are the characteristics of great innovators? Is innovation purely individual? Or are innovators a product of their time? The course also surveys literature on teaching creativity and innovation. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

Large fossil bones have fascinated people since ancient times, and after 1842 some of these fossils were described as belonging to the taxum Dinosauria. Since then, new discoveries and scientific techniques have led to a series of changes in both the views of scientists and the public as to what dinosaurs were, what groups they were related to, and how they behaved and interacted with their environments. This course looks at the views of fossils in ancient Greece and Rome, and also in some modern tribal societies. Most emphasis is on the changing views of paleontology, geology, biology and evolution from the Enlightenment period to the present. All major dinosaur groups are discussed, as well as their physiology, relationships to other animals, behavior and ecology, as scientific ideas evolve and new discoveries are made. Finally, how scientists reconstruct dinosaurs through images, sculpture and mountings for the public and popular culture’s fascination with dinosaurs is to be discussed. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Special Topics in Ethics is a variable topics course that will allow TCS faculty to offer courses that deal with specific areas of ethical reasoning and/or specific contexts of ethics relevant to engineering students. This course will fulfill the TCS ethics requirement for undergraduate students. Topics could include Medicine, Ethics, and COVID-19; Ethics and the Nuremberg Trials; Ethics and Digital Media; or Ethics and City Infrastructure. This course will fulfill the TCS ethics requirement for undergraduate students. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1

This course considers the current state of the field of Science and Technology Studies. Students are exposed to the range and methods of STS as well as their own place within the field. The course is designed specifically to bring students with different academic backgrounds into contact with each other in a classroom setting. | Prerequisites: One Level 2 STS Cluster HuSS Elective. Corequisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course considers the current state of the field of Science and Technology Studies. Students are exposed to the range and methods of STS as well as their own place within the field. The course is designed specifically to bring students with different academic backgrounds into contact with each other in a classroom setting. Satisfies an HuSS elective. | Prerequisite: One Level 2 STS Cluster HuSS Elective

Directed study under supervision of faculty advisor in Humanities & Social Sciences. Students are exposed to foundational research techniques under the guidance of a faculty advisor. Library research, written and oral reports required. Does not satisfy an HuSS Elective. | Prerequisite: STS-UY 3003, and permission of STS faculty advisor.

This course critically examines the various frameworks through which science operates to construct difference in living populations. It analyzes the logistics of classification as they pertain to modern empirical science and situates classificatory practices in their historical and cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to the interplay between scientific research and historical episodes of cultural anxiety concerning the nature and significance of human differences based on race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course critically examines the various frameworks through which science operates to construct difference in living populations. It analyzes the logistics of classification as they pertain to modern empirical science and situates classificatory practices in their historical and cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to the interplay between scientific research and historical episodes of cultural anxiety concerning the nature and significance of human differences based on race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

This course will introduce students to feminist perspectives from the field of Science & Technology Studies (STS). Scholars from anthropology, sociology, history, and philosophy of science are studied to gain insight on how gender and race affect the practice of science and how we come to think about facts, progress, modernity, and our technological and scientific worlds. Students are expected to become familiar with the basic theories, concepts, and questions of STS and will learn to apply critical feminist theory to analyze the day-to-day practice of science. | Prerequisite(s): One Level 2 STS Cluster TCS Elective

This course introduces students to the intersection of feminist STS and queer studies, to examine how cultural norms around bodies, identity, selfhood, gender, and sexuality shape the production of knowledge and expertise. We will engage with foundational theories and concepts, including heteronormativity, the social construction of technology, the production of space and place, and the relationship between power, knowledge, and subjectivity. We will explore these themes through case studies and topics such as cyborgs, monsters, and other nonhumans, queer time and space, digital media, public health, trans studies, embodiment, queer futurity, and more. The course is based around reading, writing, and discussion. | Prerequisite: EXPOS-1, and one 1000-level or 2000-level course in the Science, Technology and Society cluster.

The philosophy of science is divided into two subfields: The first studies the nature and methodology of science. The second examines the conceptual and philosophical foundations of particular scientific fields. This course considers topics in the first subfield, including philosophical attempts to describe scientific explanations, laws of nature and the process by which evidence confirms theories in science. The course also considers the nature of scientific theories: what they are, how they change and how they can and should be interpreted. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements. | Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

This course investigates the conceptual foundations of contemporary notions of information and computation from the point of view of physics. The course is divided into four parts: Part I considers the relation between entropy and global concepts of information; Part 2 considers the relation between spacetime structure and physical concepts of computation; Part 3 considers the relation between quantum and classical information; and Part 4 considers attempts to reconceive physics entirely in information-theoretic terms. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

This course is an introduction to the physics and philosophy of special and general relativity. In the first part of the course, we will develop the physics underlying special relativity and consider conceptual questions including the following: Does Special Relativity prohibit faster-than-light travel? Does it allow a traveling astronaut to age less and return home in the distant future? What is the significance of Einstein’s famous equation "E = mc2"? In the second part, we will develop the physics underlying general relativity and consider conceptual issues surrounding such current applications as time machines, wormholes and "warp-drive" spacetimes. | Prerequisites: EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 4. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

INDEPENDENT STUDY IN STS

This course explores human relations in the virtual world. Do real-world interactions maintain themselves in an online community, or do the rules of social interaction change significantly in a virtual environment? When people perceive themselves as being anonymous, do they feel the same responsibility for their own behavior, or do they interact with others differently as they would in the real world? This course examines the psychology of online, virtual relationships with a view to compare and contrast them with real-world relationships. | Prerequisites: One Level 2 PS Elective. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS elective.

Variable credit special topic in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements and One Level 2 STS Cluster HuSS Elective and instructor’s permission. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Variable credit special topic in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor. | Prerequisites: Completion of first year writing requirements and One Level 2 STS Cluster HuSS Elective and instructor’s permission. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Variable credit independent study in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor. | Prerequisites: One Level 2 HuSS Elective from the STS Cluster and instructor’s permission. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Variable credit independent study in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor. | Prerequisites: One Level 2 HuSS Elective from the STS Cluster and instructor’s permission. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Variable credit independent study in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor. | Prerequisites: One Level 2 HuSS Elective from the STS Cluster and instructor’s permission. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

Variable credit independent study in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor. | Prerequisites: One Level 2 HuSS Elective from the STS Cluster and instructor’s permission. Co-requisites: None. Notes: Satisfies a HuSS Elective.

The capstone project I is an opportunity for STS majors to complete an independent, integrative, piece of scholarship on an important issue involving science, technology, and society. The capstone experience is intended to bring together students' past learning in previous courses, and to extend and deepen it by focusing on a specific, cumulative project. The capstone includes a substantial research paper and an oral presentation.

Students may undertake an internship for academic credit with an appropriate private, public, or non-profit agency or firm. The internship is an opportunity to extend learning outside of the classroom into a real world setting, and to explore career options tied to the major. Students complete 140 hours at the internship site and attend occasional class meetings. The course involves completing a learning contract, regular reflections, assignments, and a final presentation. | Prerequisite: IDM/SUE/STS majors only. Permission of instructor required.

The second half of a 2 course sequence, in which STS majors complete an independent, integrative piece of scholarship on a current issue involving science, technology, and society. This course centers on analysis and writing; students will draw upon modes of STS analysis and use critical thinking skills to transform their project proposal from Capstone I into a formal research paper. Students will bring the depth and breadth of their STS knowledge to this culminating senior project, which will also include a research prospectus, literature review, and visual presentation/oral defense. | Prerequisites: A grade of B- or better in STS-UY 4002 and senior standing.

Independent study in Science and Technology Studies. Topic to be decided by instructor.

The Advanced Seminar is a writing- and research-intensive course that will explore in-depth a topic in Technology, Culture, and Society, requiring practice of both writing and research skills. Topics vary by section; see Albert for detailed topic descriptions. | Prerequisite: (EXPOS-UA 1, EXPOS-UA 4, EXPOS-UA 5, EXPOS-UA 9, ASPP-UT 2, WREX-UF 101 or WRCI-UF 102) and one TCS elective course and Junior/Senior standing.