scholarly journals Masters (MSc) in Science Communication. Dublin City University

2009 ◽  
Vol 08 (01) ◽  
pp. C05 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Trench

The Masters (MSc) in Science Communication at Dublin City University (Ireland)
draws on expertise from several disciplines in human and physical sciences.
The programme takes a broad view of communication that includes the various
kinds of interaction between institutions of science and of society, as well
as the diverse means of exchanging information and ideas. Nearly 200 students
from a wide variety of backgrounds have completed the programme since its
start in 1996, and they work in many different types of employment, from
information and outreach services, to science centres, to publishing and
journalism. Through the programme, and in the dissertation in particular,
students are encouraged to reflect critically on the place and performance
of science in society, and on relations between the cultures of natural sciences
and of humanities and social sciences.

Author(s):  
Andrew Pickering

This article revolves around the discovery of matter. The first section concerns science studies. It emphasizes the importance of a focus on practice and performance as a way of undoing the ‘linguistic turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. The key concept here is that of a dance of agency. The second section reviews a variety of examples of this dance in fields beyond the natural sciences — civil engineering, pig farming, and convivial relations with dogs, architecture, technologies of the self, biological computing, brainwave music, and certain hylozoist and Eastern spirituality. This article focuses on contrasting forms that dances of agency and their products can take, depending on the presence or absence of an organizing telos of self-extinction. The third and final section reflects on the significance of this contrast for a politics of theory. This article traces the discovery of matter followed by the concepts of method, time, and agency.


Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Powell ◽  
Walter Gershon

Often referred to as sonic ethnography, sound ethnography is the methodological, theoretical, epistemological, and ontological study of the sonic and its relationship to society, culture, and ecology. Sounds have, in fact, always been part of ethnographies, as sensations, understandings, artistic nonartistic expressions, recordings, and film/video and multimedia as technologies developed alongside ethnography and other methodologies. However, despite many ethnographic forms that attend to constructions of sound, such as ethnomusicology, sonic ethnography is a relatively new and still emerging methodology. The study of sound is multidisciplinary, informed by anthropology; sociology; ethnomusicology; acoustics; history; philosophy; sociology; medical studies; architecture; cultural geography; natural and physical sciences; performance and media studies; cultural studies; visual, performing, and mixed-media arts; and education research. Due to such interdisciplinarity, sound ethnography varies widely in terms of methods, theories, and practices. Sound ethnographies also differ in the purposes and conceptualizations of sound and study. They need not focus on organized sounds such as talk and music. They might also focus on emergent or sonic phenomena such as echoes and reverberations; ambient, found, or naturally occurring sounds in builtscapes or landscapes; music; sonic technologies; or even silence. Regardless of focus, sound ethnographers tend to examine the sonic in relation to social and/or environmental structures and patterns—not just how sound reflects such phenomena but, importantly, how it produces them. While ethnography has principally been a literary genre in the humanities and a qualitative research genre in the social sciences, a sound ethnography might be both conducted and presented in multiple ways, including writing, recording, composition, film, mixed media, art installation, and performance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Fernandez-Beanato

Abstract The problem of demarcating science from nonscience remains unsolved. This article executes an analytical process of elimination of different demarcation proposals put forward since the professionalization of the philosophy of science, explaining why each of those proposals is unsatisfactory or incomplete. Then, it elaborates on how to execute an alternative multicriterial scientific demarcation project put forward by Mahner (2007, 521–522; 2013, 29–43). This project allows for the demarcation not only of science from non-science and from pseudoscience, but also of different types of sciences and of scientific fields (e.g., formal sciences, natural sciences, social sciences) from each other. This article also offers arguments in favor of accepting two types of scientific demarcations, namely epistemic-warrant scientific demarcations and territorial scientific demarcations, and argues in favor of accepting a territorially broad scientific demarcation.


1968 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 1017-1020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Pohl ◽  
Lawrence A. Pervin

In a study of the relation between cognitive style and academic performance in 4 departments (Engineering, Natural Science, Social Science, Humanities) 150 Princeton upperclassmen completed the Schroder Paragraph Completion Test which was used to measure cognitive style. Scores on the PCT, together with scores on verbal and mathematical aptitude tests, were related to performance in each of the four departments. A relationship was found between the cognitively concrete style and good performance in Engineering, and the cognitively abstract style and performance in the Social Sciences and Humanities. There was no significant relationship between cognitive style and performance in the Natural Sciences. The data support the view that performance can best be understood as the result of an interaction between personality (cognitive style) and environment (task requirements).


2010 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Grace ◽  
Elizabeth J. Korinek ◽  
Zung V. Tran

ABSTRACT This study compares key characteristics and performance of physicians referred to a clinical competence assessment and education program by state medical boards (boards) and hospitals. Physicians referred by boards (400) and by hospitals (102) completed a CPEP clinical competence assessment between July 2002 and June 2010. Key characteristics, self-reported specialty, and average performance rating for each group are reported and compared. Results show that, compared with hospital-referred physicians, board-referred physicians were more likely to be male (75.5% versus 88.3%), older (average age 54.1 versus 50.3 years), and less likely to be currently specialty board certified (80.4% versus 61.8%). On a scale of 1 (best) to 4 (worst), average performance was 2.62 for board referrals and 2.36 for hospital referrals. There were no significant differences between board and hospital referrals in the percentage of physicians who graduated from U.S. and Canadian medical schools. The most common specialties referred differed for boards and hospitals. Conclusion: Characteristics of physicians referred to a clinical competence program by boards and hospitals differ in important respects. The authors consider the potential reasons for these differences and whether boards and hospitals are dealing with different subsets of physicians with different types of performance problems. Further study is warranted.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adib Rifqi Setiawan

This work argues that fundamental differences of opinion as to the nature of science affect whether the “S” in STEM can really apply to all the natural sciences, which will affect how we structure and implement improvements in STEM education. The first part of the argument deals with often-taught definitions of words like “law” and “theory” that don’t really apply to much of physics. In the second part, we notes that mathematics remains inseparable from education in the physical sciences, but this is not the case in biology. Moreover, an appreciation for the worth of mathematical or theoretical models, even disjoint from experiments, is not generally a part of biological education. The third part is “the tyranny of hypotheses.” One of the “cultural” shocks I’ve had moving into biological fields is constantly hearing people talk about “hypotheses” and seeing a steady stream of bar graphs with asterisks and p-values. In physics, one almost never discusses hypotheses; rather, one test relationships between parameters, either analyzing them within some mechanistic framework, or empirically determining what the underlying functional relationship is.


Author(s):  
Arianne F. Conty

Though responses to the Anthropocene have largely come from the natural and social sciences, religious responses to the Anthropocene have also been gaining momentum and many scholars have been calling for a religious response to complement scientific responses to climate change. Yet because Genesis 1:28 does indeed tell human beings to ‘subdue the earth’ monotheistic religions have often been understood as complicit in the human exceptionalism that is thought to have created the conditions for the Anthropocene. In distinction to such Biblical traditions, indigenous animistic cultures have typically respected all forms of life as ‘persons’ and such traditions have thus become a source of inspiration for ecological movements. After discussing contemporary Christian efforts to integrate the natural sciences and the environment into their responses to the Anthropocene, this article will turn to animism and seek to evaluate the risks and benefits that could ensue from a postmodern form of animism that could provide a necessary postsecular response to the Anthropocene.


2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.H. Hahn

Traditionally in Germany environmental engineering education took place within the context of a civil engineering programme. There were reasons for this: the beginning of much of what we understand today to be environmental works fell within the parameters of city engineering. There were and are advantages mostly in view of the necessary planning, construction and operation of environmental infrastructure. There are also disadvantages which become more and more pronounced as the field of environmental protection expands: the civil engineer frequently lacks basic training in disciplines such as biology and chemistry and carries a large and sometimes burdensome knowledge of other less relevant subjects. Thus, educators begin to look for alternatives. This paper deals with an alternative that was developed some ten years ago and therefore has proven viable and successful: at the University of Karlsruhe students may choose to major in environmental engineering within the context or on the basis of an economics and business administration curriculum. The basic question here is as to what extent the student masters the field of environmental engineering if he or she has predominantly a solid background in social sciences and very little in natural sciences. The paper will describe the curriculum in structure and intensity and evaluate the accumulated knowledge and suitability of these students in terms of actual environmental problems. This will be done in terms of examination performance parallel and/or relative to traditionally trained civil environmental engineers as well as in terms of topics successfully treated in Masters' theses. In conclusion, it is argued that such combination of curricula should not be confined to economic sciences and environmental engineering but also be planned for legal sciences and environmental engineering.


Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.


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