Program overview
The History of Science and Technology is an interdisciplinary graduate program. It doesn't teach you how to build rockets or write code, but instead takes you deep into understanding how science and technology have evolved step by step into what they are today. You'll learn the development trajectory from the ancient Four Great Inventions to modern artificial intelligence, analyzing the social, cultural, and economic factors behind major scientific discoveries. Core courses include History of Scientific Thought, History of Technology, Sociology of Science, and Science and Technology Policy and Ethics. Chinese universities have unique advantages in this field—for example, the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University all have deep expertise, offering access to a wealth of primary documents and case studies in Chinese history of science and technology. This program is ideal for students who are curious about history, enjoy interdisciplinary thinking, and are not satisfied with just doing experiments or coding. If you have a bit of science knowledge and also enjoy humanities thinking, this major will suit you well.