Welcome

The Division of Philosophy of Science and Technology at Renmin University of China is a lively interdisciplinary community of scholars and students who are interested in making philosophical, historical, sociological sense of the natural sciences and technologies, broadly understood. Our faculty and students employ philosophical, metaphysical, historical, textual, ethnographic, and social scientific methods to ask big questions about science and technology. We are interested in exploring how the various sciences and technologies work in practice, the basis of their epistemological and practical authority, how ethical and political decisions are made about their regulation and application, how they relate to larger intellectual, cultural, social, and political trends and changes, how sciences and technologies in China operate and develop, and much more.

The department was established in 1956. Now the faculty includes 6 professors, 2 associate professors and 1 assistant professor. The present department chair is Jianbo Ma. The academic leader, Professor Dachun Liu, is one of the most influential philosophers in philosophy of science and technology in China. Two of the Ph.D dissertations he supervised won nationally recognized awards, of which less than 100, among 50,000+ dissertations, are selected annually. The faculty includes Carl Mitcham, a distinguished professor from the United States who works on philosophy and ethics of science, technology, and engineering, STS. The faculty's research has garnered many important awards and prizes including the Chinese National Book Award, the Humanities and Social Sciences Excellent Achievements Award of the National Ministry of Education, and the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award.

The department offers programs of study for graduates pursing their Ph.D and MA in philosophy of science and technology. Over the past 50 years, our department has been among the pioneers of philosophy of science and technology, and boasts one of the oldest graduate programs of its kind in China. It aims to train students broadly and flexibly for today's competitive academic market. All students gain expertise in a range of key approaches and areas in the field before specializing in a particular issue. Their courses relate widely to philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of nature, history of science, history of technology, STS (science, technology and society), SSK (sociology of science knowledge), and STPP (science, technology and public policy). In the course of their training, many of our students, in keeping with the interdisciplinary spirit of our department, study with faculty in other departments and other schools.