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...

"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.