The InSECT Program, on Science Education, Citizenship, and Truth

Harry Collins (Cardiff / UCL Institute of Education)

A proposed new interdisciplinary teaching program in which science and engineering students learn alongside arts and humanities students, so that science teaching also becomes an education in democratic knowledge making instead of a purely technical exercise. Over the past half-century, historians, sociologists and philosophers have shown how scientific truth is constructed. From this many have concluded that science should be levelled down and brought into line with social values. We argue the opposite: science is an institution committed to correspondence truth about the observable world and to the moral duty of scientists to report their findings honestly. This makes science a model for democratic decision making and a bulwark against populists and autocrats, who are trying to erode truth in order to redefine ‘the will of the people’ however they please.

This is a virtual event as our speaker is joining us from the UK; please register in advance by emailing stsadmin@yorku.ca to receive meeting link.