Hi all, I have read the rules of the subreddit and the FAQ, but I am still unsure if this is the right place to ask this, so feel free to direct me elsewhere. I also apologise if this lacks focus.
I have a BA in Philosophy and I am currently exploring options for a postgraduate degree. My personal focus has been on political philosophy and the history and philosophy of science, and so one thing I am looking at is the history of ideas; tracing over time the development of concepts such as nationality, rationality, modernity, etc. I am aware that masters’ degrees in this field are possible in certain History departments, but I am keen to garner any insight into surprises I may encounter coming from a philosophy background; I have not studied history since high school. Will I find a history course much more focused on primary research gathering than philosophy? Is it possible to study the development of ideas ‘vertically’ through time (so to speak) or are history courses generally more concerned with a broader focus within a specific period?
I am also interested in a specific and tangentially related field - that of the history of technology and its impact on society, intentional and otherwise. I greatly enjoyed Neil Postman’s (greatly simplified) descriptions in Amusing Ourselves to Death and Informing Ourselves to Death about these ideas. He talks about the development of clocks by monks who sought to regulate prayer times and the unintended effects of standardised time on the workplace, about the development of the printing press and how it contributed towards a move away from communality and towards individuality, and about the impact of our current technology, particularly the sheer volume of information we face, and how it may be shaping our society today.
Do the ideas mentioned above fit into a specific field of study related to history? Do any history courses encompass conjecture about contemporary society and how it may be impacted by technology, or is this more the remit of sociology? I know Postman used the term ‘Media Ecology’ to refer to his field, and today you can find courses in things such as ‘Digital Anthropology’ but I am more interested in the position of these ideas in more ‘mainstream’ academic thinking.
I would be very grateful for any recommendations of books related to the history of ideas or of technology, and any advice people may have about narrowing down a field of study, or choosing an institution (preferably USA/UK) that is well known in this field. In short, any advice is welcome.
I took a lot of courses in Indiana University's History and Philosophy of Science department while a graduate student in a different (multidisciplinary) department, a little more than 10 years ago. Nobody's experience in any department will be universal, but SOME data is more useful for you than none, right?
I loved this department, both the courses offered and the faculty who taught them. I've attended both public universities and the private colleges of the Five Colleges system in western Mass, and several of the best professors I've encountered taught in IU's HPSc department.
Some courses are more historical in their approach. The school had acquired a manuscript by Isaac Newton, for instance, and in a course on the transition from alchemy to chemistry, we learned the handwriting, shorthand, and other relevant things to help us contribute to the transcription of that manuscript. That's pretty hands-on compared to what a philosophy student is used to. Other classes were grounded more in philosophy - the Philosophy of Biology covered the history of some arguments within evolutionary biology, for instance, but in the same way that many other philosophy courses provide some historical background. You can usually tell from the course descriptions what you're in for, but even when you can't, the faculty is sparse enough that there's always someone in your class who has taken a class with whatever professor it is you're curious about.
To speak to your history of technology example, while I can't think of a specific faculty member at IU doing similar work - which isn't necessarily relevant because I don't know what the turnover's been since the early 2000s - it's certainly the kind of thing that people were talking about.
Sorry if this is too tangential, but Bruno Latour is teaching an online course on Scientific Humanities in a week and a half, which might be something you're interested in.
The bad news: outside of the History and Philosophy of Science department and experiences with a couple other faculty members, I was deeply unhappy being a graduate student at IU. It's an enormous school, which has obvious benefits - how many other universities can have such a specialized department, or offer so many foreign languages? - but an extraordinary number of courses were taught by grad students, including required courses in my program (one of which was taught by one of my classmates in the program, which felt weird and inappropriate). Granted, I was particularly rubbed the wrong way by this because at 30 I was an older-than-average grad student - and furthermore this kind of thing is more widespread at other schools now.
But the majority of the "graduate courses" that were offered to me were simply cross-listed sections of undergraduate courses in which all the input (lectures, discussions, etc) was identical, and only the output (the number of papers we were expected to write, and their length) was different. Most of the members of my program assumed this was how grad school always works; it was my second graduate degree, so I was spoiled by previous experiences. I still think it's a horrible practice - a lecture for two hundred students followed by a harder-than-average paper, even if there's a separate discussion section for grad students (which was not always the case), just does not provide the same education as a 10-person seminar of grad students.
I want to stress that none of the HSPc courses were structured that way. But there are program requirements that take you outside the department, and not just for the foreign language requirement.
Sorry this is long-winded. Hopefully some part of this is helpful to you or other people have help to offer.
(Edited for formatting.)