Department of History and Sociology of Science

The Department of History and Sociology of Science has forty-plus years history of accomplishment at the University of Pennsylvania. Our faculty uses the tools of the humanities and social sciences to study science, technology, medicine, and the environment.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 899
  • Publication
    Minimal Animal: Surveillance, Simulation, and Stochasticity in Wildlife Biology
    (2014-01-01) Benson, Etienne S
    This article discusses the problematics and potentialities proposed by the "minimal animal" an animal that is nothing but a stochastic pattern across a blank page. The minimal animal was not an invention of the 1960s, but the tracking systems and digital computers that first became available during that period both broadened its reach and changed its character in significant ways.
  • Publication
    The Urban Upwelling
    (2015-11-01) Benson, Etienne S
    In late September 2015 a video began circulating on social media under the hashtag #pizzarat. As of early October, it had garnered more than seven million views on YouTube—sufficient evidence of cultural relevance to make not only meme-happy sites such as BuzzFeed and Gawker take note, but also mainstream media such as the New York Times, CNN, and NPR. The 14-second video, shot by comedian Matt Little, showed a rat dragging a slice of pizza down the steps of a Manhattan subway station. Responses to the video varied. Some interpreted it as evidence of poor sanitation, while others admired the little rodent's pluck and perseverance, seeing him or her as "a symbol of the ultimate New Yorker."1
  • Publication
    Sputnik, Cold War Nostalgia, and 9/11: The Lessons of Sputnik post-9/11
    (2007-10-04) Lindee, Susan M
    It is not an anniversary we usually celebrate and it was not any fun for the United States at the time. Fifty years ago today, on the night of October 4, 1957, a 22-inch aluminum ball, primitive by today's standards, sent the American public, and the policy and scientific elite, into high crisis.[1]
  • Publication
    Movement Ecology and the Minimal Animal
    (2016-01-01) Benson, Etienne S
    Among ecologists, movement is on the move. Over the past decade or so, a growing number of researchers have begun to focus their attention on how and why individual animals move across landscapes through time. Research programs come and go, and there is no way of knowing how long this new filed of movement ecology will retain its promise or what new forms it might take. Nonetheless the emergence of this approach to studying animals and landscapes can tell us something about the way scientific practices and conceptions of the animal are changing in an era of Big Data and of growing concerns about the impact of humanity on global ecological processes.1
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  • Publication
    Recent Dissertations
    (1991)
  • Publication
    New Journals
    (1990)