Editing as a Vocation

Abstract

I wandered unwittingly into what would become the field of STS in fall 1969, the first semester of my freshman year at Colgate University. Intending to be a science major, I was allowed to replace the laboratory science distribution requirement with a course about “science as a human activity,” taught by Professor Frederick Weyter (1969) of the biology department. The course was inspired by Professor Weyter’s recent sabbatical experience at Harvard University, where he encountered the nascent “science, technology, and society” program founded there by Gerald Holton, Emmanuel Mesthene, and others. The STS Program’s newsletter, edited by Vivien Shelanski, is one of the tributaries that became Science, Technology, & Human Values (ST&HV).