Andrew Pickering
Contact Information
- Office: 326 Lincoln Hall
- Phone: (217)333-8067
- Email: pickerin@uiuc.edu
Field of Study
Sociology of Science & Technology, Social Theory
PhD
Edinburgh University, London University
About
Andrew Pickering's research has ranged over fields as diverse as the recent history of particle physics; 19th-century mathematics, organic chemistry and the dye industry; and relationships between science, technology, warfare and production in and since World War II. He has been one of the leaders in the turn towards studying practice in science & technology studies, and in developing the theoretical implications of this approach in the social sciences more generally. He is currently working on a book on the postwar history of cybernetics as a singular interdisciplinary formation extending into science, technology, management, politics, philosophy, the arts and religion. Amongst various honours, Pickering has been an Exxon Fellow in the STS Program at MIT, a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a Shelby Cullom Davis Fellow in the History Department, Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Senior Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, MIT, and is a regular visitor at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin.Recent Publications
'Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask,' to appear in Social Studies of Science, and in French translation in D. Pestre and A. Dahan (eds), La Science des Années 1950 (Paris: Presses de l'EHESS).
'Tortoises Against Modernity: Cybernetics as Science and Technology, Art and Entertainment.' To appear in a volume edited by H. Schmidgen and H-J Rheinberger.
'In the Thick of Things,' keynote address, conference on 'Taking Nature Seriously: Citizens, Science, and Environment,' University of Oregon, Eugene, 25-27 Feb 2001.
'Decentring Sociology: Synthetic Dyes and Social Theory
.'- Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle
Physics, Chicago and Edinburgh: University of Chicago
Press/Edinburgh University Press,(1984) - The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, University
of Chicago Press, 1995
- Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science,
Past and Present, Vol. 8, with L. Hargens and R.A. Jones, JAI
Press, 1989 - Science as Practice and Culture, University of Chicago Press,
1992.
Andy teaches the following courses:
- SOC 150 - The Construction of Science
- SOC 218 - Technology and Society
- SOC 306 - Scientific Thought II
- SOC 366 - The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
- SOC 367 - Seminar on the Sociology of Technology
- SOC 396 - Special Topics in Science Studies
- SOC 400 - Classical Sociological Theory
- SOC 410 - Core Seminar in Science, Technology, Information
Studies - SOC 482API - Seminar in the Sociology of Technology
- CHP 295 - Science, Techology and the Human Condition