Reading Marathon

As I am waiting for KTH to respond I thought I pass the time with some meaningful activity, by preparing myself for reserach in STS reading classical works wthin the field. My first trip to the library yielded the following books:

Foucault, Michael (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, although they only had the Swedish translation available for a longer period of time

Collins, Harry and Pinch, Trevor (1993) The Golem: What Everyone Should Know About Science

Shapin, Stephen and Schaffer, Simon (1989) Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

and last but not least

Hägerstrand, Torsten (1967) Innovation diffusion as a spatial process translated by A. Pred

Than yesterday I had a meeting with my former supervisor of my master thesis. We discussed the possibilities of writing an article about the effects of Sweden’s second computer (SMIL) upon the work of Torsten Hägerstrand (hence the loan of his doctoral thesis).
Upon learning that I started to read classical works in STS he suggested several more works that I could read, which he subsequently lend to me. Works like:

Bijker, Wiebe E. and Law, John (ed.) (1992) Shaping Technology / Building Society

MacKenzie, Donald (1993) Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance

Golinski, Jan (1998) Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science, with a new Preface

Edwards, Paul N. (1997) The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America

Bijker, Wiebe E. and Hughes, Thomas P. and Pinch, Trevor (1989) The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology

So I think I won’t have any problem finding reading material until Christmas. I first started with Discipline and Punish, since it represents a book that I wanted to read for a long time. I haven’t quite finished the book yet, but I am impressed so far (but not surprised) of its quality. A negative side is obviously the use of (French) language, even though it is a translation, making not an easy book to read and recommend. Because if you have sentences that stretch over 9 rows, which include 9 commas and 3 semicolons, this makes for some tough reading. However now by page 200 plus I seem to have adjusted for this type of writing and no longer take notice of it.

One of the most interesting trains of thoughts I come across so far in the book (besides the main point of the development of the juridical system) is a remark made by Foucault on page 224 – 228. There he ponders on the notion that the genealogy of the natural sciences is somewhat well understood. In that Mathematics derived from the Greeks measurements (his example), astronomy from astrology and chemistry from the alchemists’ quest to transmute gold. However even the social sciences have a similar heritage, because the humanities presuppose a theory of how man is, constituting a study of man’s traits. This judgment or evaluation of a man’s personal traits comes from ecclesiastical trials, the inquisition and subsequently the penal system which all necessitate some form of theory of how man is. When I read this it struck me as almost self-evident, of cause it has to be this way but it never crossed my mind before. I love these moments of learning!