Editing Science and technology studies (section)

=== Important key points ===

{{more citations needed|section|date=January 2024}}
*[[History of technology]], that examines technology in its social and historical context. Starting in the 1960s, some historians questioned [[technological determinism]], a doctrine that can induce public passivity to technologic and scientific "natural" development. At the same time, some historians began to develop similarly contextual approaches to the [[history of medicine]].
* [[History and philosophy of science]] (1960s). After the publication of [[Thomas Kuhn]]'s well-known ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'' (1962), which attributed changes in scientific theories to changes in underlying intellectual [[paradigm]]s, programs were founded at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] and elsewhere that brought [[historians of science]] and philosophers together in unified programs.
*[[Technology and society|Science, technology, and society]]. In the mid-to-late-1960s, student and faculty social movements in the U.S., UK, and European universities helped to launch a range of new interdisciplinary fields (such as [[women's studies]]) that were seen to address relevant topics that the traditional curriculum ignored. One such development was the rise of "science, technology, and society" programs, which are also—confusingly—known by the STS acronym. Drawn from a variety of disciplines, including [[anthropology]], [[history]], [[political science]], and [[sociology]], scholars in these programs created undergraduate curricula devoted to exploring the issues raised by [[science]] and [[technology]]. Feminist scholars in this and other emerging STS areas addressed themselves to the exclusion of [[Women in science|women]] from science and engineering, focusing instead on critiquing gendered power dynamics in prior STS research.<ref name=":3b">{{cite journal |last1=Wajcman |first1=Judy |title=Feminist Theories of Technology |journal=Handbook of Science and Technology Studies |publisher=SAGE Publications Inc |date=1995 |pages=189–204 |doi=10.4135/9781412990127.n9|isbn=9780761924982 }}</ref>
*Science, engineering, and public [[policy studies]] emerged in the 1970s from the same concerns that motivated the founders of the science, technology, and society movement: A sense that science and technology were developing in ways that were increasingly at odds with the public's best interests.{{According to whom|date=November 2013}} The science, technology, and society movement tried to humanize those who would make tomorrow's science and technology, but this discipline took a different approach: It would train students with the professional skills needed to become players in science and technology policy. Some programs came to emphasize quantitative methodologies, and most of these were eventually absorbed into [[systems engineering]]. Others emphasized sociological and qualitative approaches, and found that their closest kin could be found among scholars in science, technology, and society departments.{{Citation needed|date=September 2010}}

During the 1970s and 1980s, universities in the US, UK, and Europe began drawing these various components together in new, interdisciplinary programs. For example, in the 1970s, [[Cornell University]] developed a new program that united [[science studies]] and policy-oriented scholars with historians and philosophers of science and technology. Each of these programs developed unique identities due to variations in the components that were drawn together, as well as their location within the various universities. For example, the University of Virginia's STS program united scholars drawn from a variety of fields (with particular strength in the history of technology); however, the program's teaching responsibilities—it is located within an engineering school and teaches ethics to undergraduate engineering students—means that all of its faculty share a strong interest in [[engineering ethics]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Gorman|first1=Michael|last2=Hertz|first2=Michael|last3=Louis|first3=Garrick|last4=Magpili|first4=Luna|last5=Mauss|first5=Mark|last6=Mehalik|first6=Matthew|last7=Tuttle|first7=J.B.|date=October 2000|title=Integrating Ethics & Engineering: A Graduate Option in Systems Engineering, Ethics, and Technology Studies|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2000.tb00552.x|journal=Journal of Engineering Education|language=en|volume=89|issue=4|pages=461–469|doi=10.1002/j.2168-9830.2000.tb00552.x|s2cid=109724698 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>