Ever since Greek antiquity "disembodied knowledge" has often been taken as synonymous with "objective truth." Yet we also have very specific mental images of the kinds of bodies that house great minds-the ascetic philosopher versus the hearty surgeon, for example. Does truth have anything to do with the belly? What difference does it make to the pursuit of knowledge whether Einstein rode a bicycle, Russell was randy, or Darwin flatulent? Bringing body and knowledge into such intimate contact is occasionally seen as funny, sometimes as enraging, and more often just as pointless. Vividly...
Ever since Greek antiquity "disembodied knowledge" has often been taken as synonymous with "objective truth." Yet we also have very specific mental im...
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...
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 observat...
Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? They are experts indeed, highly respected experts authorized to describe and interpret the natural world and widely trusted to help transform knowledge into power and profit. But are they morally different from other people? "The Scientific Life" is historian Steven Shapin s story about who scientists are, who we think they are, and why our sensibilities about such things matter. Conventional wisdom has long held that scientists are neither better nor...
Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? They are exper...
Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? "The Scientific Life" is historian Steven Shapin s story about who scientists are, who we think they are, and why our sensibilities about such things matter. From the early twentieth-century origins of corporate research laboratories to the high-flying scientific entrepreneurship of the present, Shapin argues that the radical uncertainties of much contemporary science have made personal virtues" more" central to its practice than ever before, and he also...
Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? "The Scient...
"There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it". With this provocative and apparently paradoxical claim, Steven Shapin begins his bold, vibrant exploration of the origins of the modern scientific world view. "Shapin's treatise on the currents that engendered modern science is a combination of history and philosophy of science for the interested and educated layperson".--"Publishers Weekly". 30 photos.
"There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it". With this provocative and apparently paradoxical claim, Steven Sh...
