GCH104-0007, Fall 2012
Syllabus: GCH104—"Communications and Science in a Century of Limits"
Department of Communication Studies, 108 Davis Hall
Phone: 401-874-2970; Fax: 401-874-4722 | Email: mayfly@uri.edu
Course description: The science, public policy, and communications of peak oil, climate change, and planetary limits to human population growth illustrate a critical disconnection between awareness within the sciences and action by the public. The language and culture of natural sciences effectively communicate observations and reasoning within closed intellectual discourse communities, allowing scientists to cope successfully with uncertainty and complexity. The same language and culture, however, fail to create appropriate public awareness; the public social regulatory mechanisms of politics, the economy, and education fail to persuade more rational collective human behavior capable of addressing the 21st Century predicament of human demands conflicting with world ecological and resource limits. This course investigates the causes and consequences of the underlying problem of humanity's greatest failure to communicate, in an effort to use communications—specifically an analysis of the credibility, importance, and rhetorical effectiveness of scientific claims—to persuade rational social movements.
Grand Challenge Course: Freshman Grand Challenge courses examine problems of global significance. This course focuses on the failure of the natural sciences to communicate effectively to world governments, a disconnection between critical awareness and essential public policy and social action.
General Education Core Knowledge Area: This course is a general education course in the Social Sciences knowledge area, "related to the study of human development and behavior and varying social, economic, cultural, and political solutions to societal and global problems." Human society in the 21st century is facing severe limits of resources, space, the natural environment, and planetary climate. Science, as it is recognized among scientists, is misunderstood or systematically distorted in human politics, economics, and society. Science is aware of immense implications of 21st century planetary limits but has thus far failed to change collective human behavior. Asking why? and What can we do about this? is the focus of our semester.
General Education Integrated Skills:
- Write effectively: Short essays focused on lectures and readings will be edited by Dr. Logan for style and readability and for organization and content; those needing further work will be returned for additional refinements by the student. Dr. Logan teaches scientific and technical writing to undergraduates and graduate students.
- Read complex texts: Weekly lectures, supplementary materials, and weekly discussion questions help you participate in class discussions and to fulfill required assignments. You learn to reflect on and develop insight into the materials you read, and to think critically through discussions.
- Use quantitative data: We will read and interpret quantitative data from several sources, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, primary and secondary scientific literature, and governmental reports. Quantitative skills include analysis and rhetorical use of statistical probabilities for computer-generated climatic and future resource models; Specific assignments will include analysis of timelines for future global production and demand for oil, natural gas, and coal; projection of world population size and age structure from simple life-table demographic data; and calculation of per capita food and water availability under simple simulations of future energy supplies available for agricultural production, food processing, and transportation.
Prerequisites: Freshmen class standing or approved transfer student.
Learning Outcomes: Students will be better able to:
- discuss challenges from climate change, peak oil, resource shortages, etc.,
- explain how scientists engage the public to create critical awareness,
- analyze why science by itself fails to motivate needed social movements on a planetary scale, and
- diagnose and counter pseudo-scientific contrarianism or systematic distortion of science.
Text: "Communicating the Science of Global Limits" (online lectures, see below).
- Additional readings: links from lecture notes and weekly schedule.
Format: Lecture and discussion.
Grading: (see Assignments & Grading).
Special Needs: Any student with a documented disability is welcome to contact me as early in the semester as possible so that we may arrange reasonable accommodations. See also, Disability Services, Office of Student Life, 330 Memorial Union. Phone: 401-874-2098 (for TT access call R.I. Relay at 1-800-745-5555); email dss@etal.uri.edu.