Download or read book Social History of Knowledge written by Peter Burke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach toexamine the changes in the organization of knowledge in Europe fromthe invention of printing to the publication of the FrenchEncyclopédie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies ofknowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on todiscuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions(especially universities and academies) which encouraged ordiscouraged intellectual innovation. Then, in a series of separatechapters, Burke explores the geography, anthropology, politics andeconomics of knowledge, focusing on the role of cities, academies,states and markets in the process of gathering, classifying,spreading and sometimes concealing information. The final chaptersdeal with knowledge from the point of view of the individualreader, listener, viewer or consumer, including the problem of thereliability of knowledge discussed so vigorously in the seventeenthcentury. One of the most original features of this book is its discussionof knowledges in the plural. It centres on printed knowledge,especially academic knowledge, but it treats the history of theknowledge 'explosion' which followed the invention of printing andthe discovery of the world beyond Europe as a process of exchangeor negotiation between different knowledges, such as male andfemale, theoretical and practical, high-status and low-status, andEuropean and non-European. Although written primarily as a contribution to social orsocio-cultural history, this book will also be of interest tohistorians of science, sociologists, anthropologists, geographersand others in another age of information explosion.
Download or read book Toward a Social History of Knowledge written by Fritz Ringer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the foremost historians of intellectual life and education in Germany, Fritz Ringer has brought together in this volume several of his articles, most of which are not easily available are published here in English for the first time. They focus on a whole range of contemporary and historical debates about the relationship between ideas and their context, the role of education and middle-class consciousness, the social role of academics and intellectuals, and competing ideals of learning, science, and history.
Download or read book A History of the Modern Fact written by Mary Poovey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the fact become modernity's most favored unit of knowledge? How did description come to seem separable from theory in the precursors of economics and the social sciences? Mary Poovey explores these questions in A History of the Modern Fact, ranging across an astonishing array of texts and ideas from the publication of the first British manual on double-entry bookkeeping in 1588 to the institutionalization of statistics in the 1830s. She shows how the production of systematic knowledge from descriptions of observed particulars influenced government, how numerical representation became the privileged vehicle for generating useful facts, and how belief—whether figured as credit, credibility, or credulity—remained essential to the production of knowledge. Illuminating the epistemological conditions that have made modern social and economic knowledge possible, A History of the Modern Fact provides important contributions to the history of political thought, economics, science, and philosophy, as well as to literary and cultural criticism.
Download or read book A History of Knowledge written by Charles Van Doren and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1992-03-17 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one-voume reference to the history of ideas that is a compendium of everything that humankind has thought, invented, created, considered, and perfected from the beginning of civilization into the twenty-first century. Massive in its scope, and yet totally accessible, A HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE covers not only all the great theories and discoveries of the human race, but also explores the social conditions, political climates, and individual men and women of genius that brought ideas to fruition throughout history. "Crystal clear and concise...Explains how humankind got to know what it knows." Clifton Fadiman Selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club
Download or read book A Social History of Truth written by Steven Shapin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-11-18 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we come to trust our knowledge of the world? What are the means by which we distinguish true from false accounts? Why do we credit one observational statement over another? In A Social History of Truth, Shapin engages these universal questions through an elegant recreation of a crucial period in the history of early modern science: the social world of gentlemen-philosophers in seventeenth-century England. Steven Shapin paints a vivid picture of the relations between gentlemanly culture and scientific practice. He argues that problems of credibility in science were practically solved through the codes and conventions of genteel conduct: trust, civility, honor, and integrity. These codes formed, and arguably still form, an important basis for securing reliable knowledge about the natural world. Shapin uses detailed historical narrative to argue about the establishment of factual knowledge both in science and in everyday practice. Accounts of the mores and manners of gentlemen-philosophers are used to illustrate Shapin's broad claim that trust is imperative for constituting every kind of knowledge. Knowledge-making is always a collective enterprise: people have to know whom to trust in order to know something about the natural world.
Download or read book Knowledge and Social Imagery written by David Bloor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991-09-24 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this book profoundly challenged and divided students of philosophy, sociology, and the history of science when it was published in 1976. In this second edition, Bloor responds in a substantial new Afterword to the heated debates engendered by his book.
Download or read book What is the History of Knowledge written by Peter Burke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-29 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the history of knowledge? This engaging and accessible introduction explains what is distinctive about the new field of the history of knowledge (or, as some scholars say, ‘knowledges in the plural’) and how it differs from the history of science, intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge or from cultural history. Leading cultural historian, Peter Burke, draws upon examples of this new kind of history from different periods and from the history of India, East Asia and the Islamic world as well as from Europe and the Americas. He discusses some of the main concepts used by scholars working in the field, among them ‘order of knowledge’, ‘situated knowledge’ and ‘knowledge society’. This book tells the story of the transformation of relatively raw ‘information’ into knowledge via processes of classification, verification and so on, the dissemination of this knowledge and finally its employment for different purposes, by governments, corporations or private individuals. A concluding chapter identifies central problems in the history of knowledge, from triumphalism to relativism, together with attempts to solve them. The only book of its kind yet to be published, What is the History of Knowledge? will be essential reading for all students of history and the humanities in general, as well as the interested general reader.
Download or read book A Social History of Knowledge II written by Peter Burke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Burke follows up his magisterial Social History of Knowledge, picking up where the first volume left off around 1750 at the publication of the French Encyclopédie and following the story through to Wikipedia. Like the previous volume, it offers a social history (or a retrospective sociology of knowledge) in the sense that it focuses not on individuals but on groups, institutions, collective practices and general trends. The book is divided into 3 parts. The first argues that activities which appear to be timeless - gathering knowledge, analysing, disseminating and employing it - are in fact time-bound and take different forms in different periods and places. The second part tries to counter the tendency to write a triumphalist history of the 'growth' of knowledge by discussing losses of knowledge and the price of specialization. The third part offers geographical, sociological and chronological overviews, contrasting the experience of centres and peripheries and arguing that each of the main trends of the period - professionalization, secularization, nationalization, democratization, etc, coexisted and interacted with its opposite. As ever, Peter Burke presents a breath-taking range of scholarship in prose of exemplary clarity and accessibility. This highly anticipated second volume will be essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.
Download or read book The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo written by Jonathan Porter Berkey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In rich detail Jonathan Berkey interprets the social and cultural consequences of Islam's regard for knowledge, showing how education in the Middle Ages played a central part in the religious experience of nearly all Muslims. Focusing on Cairo, which under Mamluk rule (1250-1517) was a vital intellectual center with a complex social system, the author describes the transmission of religious knowledge there as a highly personal process, one dependent on the relationships between individual scholars and students. The great variety of institutional structures, he argues, supported educational efforts without ever becoming essential to them. By not being locked into formal channels, religious education was never exclusively for the elite but was open to all. Berkey explores the varying educational opportunities offered to the full run of the Muslim population--including Mamluks, women, and the "common people." Drawing on medieval chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and treatises on education, as well as the deeds of endowment that established many of Cairo's schools, he explains how education drew groups of outsiders into the cultural center and forged a common Muslim cultural identity. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book States of Knowledge written by Sheila Jasanoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-07-31 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notes on contributors Acknowledgements 1. The Idiom of Co-production Sheila Jasanoff 2. Ordering Knowledge, Ordering Society Sheila Jasanoff 3. Climate Science and the Making of a Global Political Order Clark A. Miller 4. Co-producing CITES and the African Elephant Charis Thompson 5. Knowledge and Political Order in the European Environment Agency Claire Waterton and Brian Wynne 6. Plants, Power and Development: Founding the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies, 1880-1914 William K. Storey 7. Mapping Systems and Moral Order: Constituting property in genome laboratories Stephen Hilgartner 8. Patients and Scientists in French Muscular Dystrophy Research Vololona Rabeharisoa and Michel Callon 9. Circumscribing Expertise: Membership categories in courtroom testimony Michael Lynch 10. The Science of Merit and the Merit of Science: Mental order and social order in early twentieth-century France and America John Carson 11. Mysteries of State, Mysteries of Nature: Authority, knowledge and expertise in the seventeenth century Peter Dear 12. Reconstructing Sociotechnical Order: Vannevar Bush and US science policy Michael Aaron Dennis 13. Science and the Political Imagination in Contemporary Democracies Yaron Ezrah 14. Afterword Sheila Jasanoff References Index
Download or read book The Evolution of Knowledge written by Jürgen Renn and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution. Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch shaped by humankind. Covering topics ranging from evolution of writing to the profound transformations wrought by modern science, The Evolution of Knowledge offers an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge and a bold, innovative approach to the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book An Economic History of Europe written by Karl Gunnar Persson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of a leading textbook on European economic history, updated throughout and with new coverage of post-financial crisis Europe.
Download or read book Knowledge in a Social World written by Alvin I. Goldman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-14 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowledge in a Social World offers a philosophy for the information age. Alvin Goldman explores new frontiers by creating a thoroughgoing social epistemology, moving beyond the traditional focus on solitary knowers. Social, cultural, and technological changes present new challenges to our ways of knowing and understanding, and philosophy must face these challenges. Against the tides of postmodernism and social constructionism Goldman defends the integrity of truth and shows how to promote it by well-designed forms of social interaction. He urges that social discourse promises more than the mere politics of consensus, and that suitably norm-governed debate and belief-revision can increase veridical knowledge. Goldman's aims are not just philosophical but practical. From science to education, from law to democracy, he shows why and how public institutions should seek knowledge-enhancing practices. He examines how cyberspace and other technologies expand the scope of communication, and warns of the need to safeguard content quality. He scrutinizes the free marketplace of ideas, the adversary system in the law, and media coverage of political campaigns. The result is a bold, timely, and systematic treatment of the philosophical foundations of an information society.
Download or read book Burning the Books written by Richard Ovenden and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wolfson History Prize Finalist A New Statesman Book of the Year A Sunday Times Book of the Year “Timely and authoritative...I enjoyed it immensely.” —Philip Pullman “If you care about books, and if you believe we must all stand up to the destruction of knowledge and cultural heritage, this is a brilliant read—both powerful and prescient.” —Elif Shafak Libraries have been attacked since ancient times but they have been especially threatened in the modern era, through war as well as willful neglect. Burning the Books describes the deliberate destruction of the knowledge safeguarded in libraries from Alexandria to Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets to the torching of the Library of Congress. The director of the world-famous Bodleian Libraries, Richard Ovenden, captures the political, religious, and cultural motivations behind these acts. He also shines a light on the librarians and archivists preserving history and memory, often risking their lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries support the rule of law and inspire and inform citizens. Ovenden reminds us of their social and political importance, challenging us to protect and support these essential institutions. “Wonderful...full of good stories and burning with passion.” —Sunday Times “The sound of a warning vibrates through this book.” —The Guardian “Essential reading for anyone concerned with libraries and what Ovenden outlines as their role in ‘the support of democracy, the rule of law and open society.’” —Wall Street Journal “Ovenden emphasizes that attacks on books, archives, and recorded information are the usual practice of authoritarian regimes.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post
Download or read book Ancient Knowledge Networks written by Eleanor Robson and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it.Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first millennium BC, Eleanor Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria in the north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia to the south of modern-day Baghdad. She investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to endure and adapt over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day. Above all, Ancient Knowledge Networks is an experiment in writing about ‘Mesopotamian science’, as it has often been known, using geographical and social approaches to bring new insights into the intellectual history of the world’s first empires.
Download or read book Social History of Knowledge written by Peter Burke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach to examine the changes in the organization of knowledge in Europe from the invention of printing to the publication of the French Encyclopédie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies of knowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on to discuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions (especially universities and academies) which encouraged or discouraged intellectual innovation. Then, in a series of separate chapters, Burke explores the geography, anthropology, politics and economics of knowledge, focusing on the role of cities, academies, states and markets in the process of gathering, classifying, spreading and sometimes concealing information. The final chapters deal with knowledge from the point of view of the individual reader, listener, viewer or consumer, including the problem of the reliability of knowledge discussed so vigorously in the seventeenth century. One of the most original features of this book is its discussion of knowledges in the plural. It centres on printed knowledge, especially academic knowledge, but it treats the history of the knowledge 'explosion' which followed the invention of printing and the discovery of the world beyond Europe as a process of exchange or negotiation between different knowledges, such as male and female, theoretical and practical, high-status and low-status, and European and non-European. Although written primarily as a contribution to social or socio-cultural history, this book will also be of interest to historians of science, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers and others in another age of information explosion.
Download or read book The Age of Knowledge written by James Dzisah and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Knowledge emphasizes that the ongoing transformations of knowledge, both within universities and for society more generally, must be understood as a reflection of the larger changes in the constitutive social structures within which they are invariably produced, translated and reproduced.
