Download or read book A Nice Derangement of Epistemes written by John H. Zammito and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-02-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1950s, many philosophers of science have attacked positivism—the theory that scientific knowledge is grounded in objective reality. Reconstructing the history of these critiques, John H. Zammito argues that while so-called postpositivist theories of science are very often invoked, they actually provide little support for fashionable postmodern approaches to science studies. Zammito shows how problems that Quine and Kuhn saw in the philosophy of the natural sciences inspired a turn to the philosophy of language for resolution. This linguistic turn led to claims that science needs to be situated in both historical and social contexts, but the claims of recent "science studies" only deepened the philosophical quandary. In essence, Zammito argues that none of the problems with positivism provides the slightest justification for denigrating empirical inquiry and scientific practice, delivering quite a blow to the "discipline" postmodern science studies. Filling a gap in scholarship to date, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes will appeal to historians, philosophers, philosophers of science, and the broader scientific community.
Download or read book A Nice Derangement of Epistemes written by John H. Zammito and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-02-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1950s, many philosophers of science have attacked positivism—the theory that scientific knowledge is grounded in objective reality. Reconstructing the history of these critiques, John H. Zammito argues that while so-called postpositivist theories of science are very often invoked, they actually provide little support for fashionable postmodern approaches to science studies. Zammito shows how problems that Quine and Kuhn saw in the philosophy of the natural sciences inspired a turn to the philosophy of language for resolution. This linguistic turn led to claims that science needs to be situated in both historical and social contexts, but the claims of recent "science studies" only deepened the philosophical quandary. In essence, Zammito argues that none of the problems with positivism provides the slightest justification for denigrating empirical inquiry and scientific practice, delivering quite a blow to the "discipline" postmodern science studies. Filling a gap in scholarship to date, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes will appeal to historians, philosophers, philosophers of science, and the broader scientific community.
Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Download or read book Historical Judgement written by Jonathan Gorman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. Indeed, most historians are averse to historical theory. In "Historical Judgement" Jonathan Gorman's response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons who successfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman begins by showing what it is to model a discipline by using recent philosophy of law and philosophy of science. There are different models at work, whose rivalry and resolution are to be historically understood. With this approach in place he is able to develop the history of historiography and explore the character of historiography as presented by historians. He reveals that historians conform to various norms - that historians now and in the past have agreed and disagreed about the same set of interrelated matters: truth-telling, moral judgement and the synthesis of facts - and it is this internal understanding that we need to recover if we are to arrive at a correct characterization of the discipline of historiography. Demonstrating how the practice of historiography requires choices and therefore the exercise of judgement, Gorman is able to show that in their making of judgements historians enjoy the immense benefit of hindsight. He shows how, in reflecting on their own discipline, historians have typically failed to attend adequately to the history of historiography, neglecting to situate previous historians within their historical contexts, or to pay adequate attention to the fact that present historians, too, are within a context that will change. In addition, Gorman's approach, which emphasizes the power and necessity of choice, and which rests on the pragmatic holistic empiricism of Quine, shows postmodernism not to be the threat that some historians feel it to be, indeed, it is shown to be a radical form of empiricism. Gorman shows how the historical enterprise may be established in our factual and moral understanding in the light of our choices and commitments to a shared world. "Historical Judgement" is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of history. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do.
Download or read book What Philosophers Know written by Gary Gutting and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon the work of Quine, Rawls, Rorty and others, Gutting challenges the standard view about what philosophers have achieved.
Download or read book Practicing Art Science written by Philippe Sormani and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades, multiple initiatives of transdisciplinary collaboration across art, science, and technology have seen the light of day. Why, by whom, and under what circumstances are such initiatives promoted? What does their experimental character look like - and what can be learned, epistemologically and institutionally, from probing the multiple practices of "art/science" at work? In answer to the questions raised, Practicing Art/Science contrasts topical positions and insightful case studies, ranging from the detailed investigation of "art at the nanoscale" to the material analysis of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and its cracked smile. In so doing, this volume brings to bear the "practice turn" in science and technology studies on the empirical investigation of multifaceted experimentation across contemporary art, science, and technology in situ. Against the background of current discourse on "artistic research," the introduction not only explains the particular relevance of the "practice turn" in STS to tackle the interdisciplinary task at hand, but offers also a timely survey of varying strands of artistic experimentation. In bringing together ground-breaking studies from internationally renowned scholars and upcoming researchers in sociology, art theory and artistic practice, as well as history and philosophy of science, Practicing Art/Science will be essential reading for practitioners and professionals in said fields, as well as postgraduate students and representatives of higher education and research policy more broadly.
Download or read book Handbook of Cultural Sociology written by Laura Grindstaff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pt. 1. Sociological programs of cultural analysis -- pt. 2. Theories and methodologies in cultural analysis -- pt. 3. Aesthetics, ethics, and cultural legitimacy -- pt. 4. Individuals and groups, identities and performances -- pt. 5. Culture and stratification -- pt. 6. Making/using culture -- pt. 7. Cultures of work and professions -- pt. 8. Political cultures -- pt. 9. Global cultures, global processes -- pt. 10. Cultural processes and change.
Download or read book Scientific Controversies written by Dominique Raynaud and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Scientific Controversies, Dominque Raynaud shows how organized debates in the sciences help us establish or verify our knowledge of the world. If debates focus on form, scientific controversies are akin to public debates that can be understood within the framework of theories of conflict. If they focus on content, then such controversies have to do with a specific activity and address the nature of science itself. Understanding the major focus of a scientific controversy is a first step toward understanding these debates and assessing their merits. Controversies of unique socio-historic context, disciplines, and characteristics are examined: Pasteur’s germ theory and Pouchet’s theory of spontaneous generation; vitalism advocated at Montpellier versus experimental medicine in Paris; the science of optics about the propagation of visual rays; the origins of relativism (the Duhem-Quine problem). Touching on the work of Boudon, Popper, and others, Raynaud puts forward an incrementalist theory about the advancement of science through scientific controversies. The debates Raynaud has selected share in common their pivotal importance to the history of the sciences. By understanding the role of controversy, we better understand the functioning of science and the stakes of the contemporary scientific debates.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies written by Steve Fuller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) has become more established, it has increasingly hidden its philosophical roots. While the trend is typical of disciplines striving for maturity, Steve Fuller, a leading figure in the field, argues that STS has much to lose if it abandons philosophy. In his characteristically provocative style, he offers the first sustained treatment of the philosophical foundations of STS and suggests fruitful avenues for further research. With stimulating discussions of the Science Wars, the Intelligent Design Theory controversy, and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies is required reading for students and scholars in STS and the philosophy of science.
Download or read book Seeking Good Debate written by Michael S. Evans and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religion and science often appear to cause conflict in American public life. But why? This book reports the results from the first study to combine large-scale empirical analysis of multiple "religion and science" debates with in-depth research into what Americans actually want from public life. The surprising finding is that apparent conflicts involving religion and science reflect a more fundamental conflict between media elites and ordinary Americans over what good debate should be, raising profound questions about the future of the public sphere and American democracy"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Evolution Challenges written by Karl S. Rosengren and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A recent poll revealed that one in four Americans believe in both creationism and evolution, while another 41% believe that creationism is true and evolution is false. A minority (only 13%) believe only in evolution. Given the widespread resistance to the idea that humans and other animals have evolved and given the attention to the ongoing debate of what should be taught in public schools, issues related to the teaching and learning of evolution are quite timely. Evolution Challenges: Integrating Research and Practice in Teaching and Learning about Evolution goes beyond the science versus religion dispute to ask why evolution is so often rejected as a legitimate scientific fact, focusing on a wide range of cognitive, socio-cultural, and motivational factors that make concepts such as evolution difficult to grasp. The volume brings together researchers with diverse backgrounds in cognitive development and education to examine children's and adults' thinking, learning, and motivation, and how aspects of representational and symbolic knowledge influence learning about evolution. The book is organized around three main challenges inherent in teaching and learning evolutionary concepts: folk theories and conceptual biases, motivational and epistemological biases, and educational aspects in both formal and informal settings. Commentaries across the three main themes tie the book together thematically, and contributors provide ideas for future research and methods for improving the manner in which evolutionary concepts are conveyed in the classroom and in informal learning experiences. Evolution Challenges is a unique text that extends far beyond the traditional evolution debate and is an invaluable resource to researchers in cognitive development, science education and the philosophy of science, science teachers, and exhibit and curriculum developers.
Download or read book Leviathan and the Air Pump written by Steven Shapin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic experimentation in natural philosophy, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and owner of the newly invented air-pump. The issues at stake in their disputes ranged from the physical integrity of the air-pump to the intellectual integrity of the knowledge it might yield. Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild. The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer use the confrontation between Hobbes and Boyle as a way of understanding what was at stake in the early history of scientific experimentation. They describe the protagonists' divergent views of natural knowledge, and situate the Hobbes-Boyle disputes within contemporary debates over the role of intellectuals in public life and the problems of social order and assent in Restoration England. In a new introduction, the authors describe how science and its social context were understood when this book was first published, and how the study of the history of science has changed since then.
Download or read book Bioscience Governance and Politics written by J. Gillott and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through case studies, theoretical research and interviews with leading players in science and governance, this book introduces a new understanding of change in governance of bioscience research. In particular it examines change as it is shaped by approaches developed by Science and Technology Studies and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge theorists.
Download or read book Innovation Society Today written by Werner Rammert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book offers new theoretical perspectives on innovation, analyzes innovation processes in diverse innovation fields, and presents case studies that reflect the diversity of innovations fields. To what extent and in what sense does innovation characterize our societies today? Innovations are no longer limited to the economic sphere; we find them in almost all areas of society today. Diverse actors generate innovations in different, increasingly reflexive ways. New concepts, practices, and institutional forms such as open source, crowdfunding, or citizen panels expand the spectrum.
Download or read book Science and Technology in the Global Cold War written by Naomi Oreskes and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science. The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institutions and institutional arrangements that emerged globally constrained technoscientific inquiry or offered greater opportunities for it. The contributors find that whatever the particular science, and whatever the political system in which that science was operating, the knowledge that was produced bore some relation to the goals of the nation-state. These goals varied from nation to nation; weapons research was emphasized in the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, but in France and China scientific independence and self-reliance dominated. The contributors also consider to what extent the changes to science and technology practices in this era were produced by the specific politics, anxieties, and aspirations of the Cold War. Contributors Elena Aronova, Erik M. Conway, Angela N. H. Creager, David Kaiser, John Krige, Naomi Oreskes, George Reisch, Sigrid Schmalzer, Sonja D. Schmid, Matthew Shindell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Zuoyue Wang, Benjamin Wilson
Download or read book Expert Evidence and Scientific Proof in Criminal Trials written by Paul Roberts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forensic science evidence and expert witness testimony play an increasingly prominent role in modern criminal proceedings. Science produces powerful evidence of criminal offending, but has also courted controversy and sometimes contributed towards miscarriages of justice. The twenty-six articles and essays reproduced in this volume explore the theoretical foundations of modern scientific proof and critically consider the practical issues to which expert evidence gives rise in contemporary criminal trials. The essays are prefaced by a substantial new introduction which provides an overview and incisive commentary contextualising the key debates. The volume begins by placingforensic science in interdisciplinary focus, with contributions from historical, sociological, Science and Technology Studies (STS), philosophical and jurisprudential perspectives. This is followed by closer examination of the role of forensic science and other expert evidence in criminal proceedings, exposing enduring tensions and addressing recent controversies in the relationship between science and criminal law. A third set of contributions considers the practical challenges of interpreting and communicating forensic science evidence. This perennial battle continues to be fought at the intersection between the logic of scientific inference and the psychology of the fact-finder‘scommon sense reasoning. Finally, the volume‘s fourth group of essays evaluates the (limited) success of existing procedural reforms aimed at improving the reception of expert testimony in criminal adjudication, and considers future prospects for institutional renewal - with a keen eye to comparative law models and experiences, success stories and cautionary tales.
Download or read book The Problem of Disenchantment written by Egil Asprem and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges the conventional view of a disenchanted and secular modernity, and recovers the complex relation that exists between science, religion, and esotericism in the modern world. Max Weber famously characterized the ongoing process of intellectualization and rationalization that separates the natural world from the divine (by excluding magic and value from the realm of science, and reason and fact from the realm of religion) as the disenchantment of the world. Egil Asprem argues for a conceptual shift in how we view this key narrative of modernity. Instead of a sociohistorical process of disenchantment that produces increasingly rational minds, Asprem maintains that the continued presence of magic and enchantment in peoples everyday experience of the world created an intellectual problem for those few who were socialized to believe that nature should contain no such incalculable mysteries. Drawing on a wide range of early twentieth-century primary sources from theoretical physics, occultism, embryology, radioactivity, psychical research, and other fields, Asprem casts the intellectual life of high modernity as a synchronic struggle across conspicuously different fields that shared surprisingly similar intellectual problems about value, meaning, and the limits of knowledge. The Problem of Disenchantment is, in its entirety, extraordinarily well researched, argued, and writtenrepresenting at once the most complete and nuanced treatment of the notion of disenchantment within this network of scientific, religious, philosophical, and esoteric discourses and currents. Nova Religio
