Knowledge and power
H Redner
12 points * 2 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton
A course in what might colloquially be called academic politics - that is, the polity of science. The course will examine the institutional structures and their systems of authority under which scientific knowledge has historically been produced in Europe and America. Academic politics in this sense, at all its stages, will be referred back to state politics or the governmental authority structure. The university as a system of school authority will be the point of departure and subsequent focus of attention. However, the subject opens by considering the impact of the scientific revolution and its novel authority form - the academy of science. This `revolution', it will be claimed, constituted the most radical force for change in the history of mankind. Following the scientific revolution, the locus of the production of knowledge shifted from the scientific academy first to the German university in the nineteenth century and then to the American university in the twentieth century.
Assessment
Written (6000 words): 50% * Examinations (3 hours): 50%
Prescribed texts
Ben-David J The scientist's role in society Prentice-Hall
Clark T N Prophets and patrons: The French university and the emergence of the social sciences Harvard UP
Kerr C The uses of the university Harper and Row
Mumford L The pentagon of power Secker and Warburg