Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars

Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars PDF Author: Martin Carrier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662081296
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences.

Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars

Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars PDF Author: Martin Carrier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662081296
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences.

Beyond the Science Wars

Beyond the Science Wars PDF Author: Ullica Christina Olofsdotter Segerstrale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791446171
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Contextualizes the "Science Wars" from interdisciplinary sociological, historical, scientific, political, and cultural perspectives.

Beyond the Science Wars

Beyond the Science Wars PDF Author: Ullica Christina Olofsdotter Segerstråle
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791446188
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Contextualizes the "Science Wars" from interdisciplinary sociological, historical, scientific, political, and cultural perspectives.

Beyond the Hoax

Beyond the Hoax PDF Author: Alan Sokal
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191623342
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 771

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Book Description
In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, wrote a paper for the cultural-studies journal Social Text, entitled 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity'. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Sokal immediately confessed that the whole article was a hoax - a cunningly worded paper designed to expose and parody the style of extreme postmodernist criticism of science. The story became front-page news around the world and triggered fierce and wide-ranging controversy. Sokal is one of the most powerful voices in the continuing debate about the status of evidence-based knowledge. In Beyond the Hoax he turns his attention to a new set of targets - pseudo-science, religion, and misinformation in public life. 'Whether my targets are the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, or the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes, the bottom line is that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century.' The book also includes a hugely illuminating annotated text of the Hoax itself, and a reflection on the furore it provoked.

Science Wars

Science Wars PDF Author: Steven L. Goldman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197518621
Category : Discoveries in science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
There is ample evidence that it is difficult for the general public to understand and internalize scientific facts. Disputes over such facts are often amplified amid political controversies. As we've seen with climate change and even COVID-19, politicians rely on the perceptions of their constituents when making decisions that impact public policy. So, how do we make sure that what the public understands is accurate? In this book, Steven L. Goldman traces the public's suspicion of scientific knowledge claims to a broad misunderstanding, reinforced by scientists themselves, of what it is that scientists know, how they know it, and how to act on the basis of it. In sixteen chapters, Goldman takes readers through the history of scientific knowledge from Plato and Aristotle, through the birth of modern science and its maturation, into a powerful force for social change to the present day. He explains how scientists have wrestled with their own understanding of what it is that they know, that theories evolve, and why the public misunderstands the reliability of scientific knowledge claims. With many examples drawn from the history of philosophy and science, the chapters illustrate an ongoing debate over how we know what we say we know and the relationship between knowledge and reality. Goldman covers a rich selection of ideas from the founders of modern science and John Locke's response to Newton's theories to Thomas Kuhn's re-interpretation of scientific knowledge and the Science Wars that followed it. Goldman relates these historical disputes to current issues, underlining the important role scientists play in explaining their own research to nonscientists and the effort nonscientists must make to incorporate science into public policies. A narrative exploration of scientific knowledge, Science Wars engages with the arguments of both sides by providing thoughtful scientific, philosophical, and historical discussions on every page.

After the Science Wars

After the Science Wars PDF Author: Keith Ashman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113461618X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
A collection of essays by leading philosophers and scientists focusing on the debate in science between those who believe that science is above criticism and those who do not.

Science Wars

Science Wars PDF Author: Andrew Ross
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822318712
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Analyzing the antidemocratic tendencies within science and its institutions, they insist on a more accountable relationship between scientists and the communities and environments affected by their research.

Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars

Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars PDF Author: Ethan Pollock
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691124674
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Introduction: Stalin, science, and politics after the Second World War -- "A Marxist should not write like that": the crisis on the "philosophical front" -- "The future belongs to Michurin": the agricultural academy session of 1948 -- "We can always shoot them later": physics, politics, and the atomic bomb -- "Battles of opinions and open criticism": Stalin intervenes in linguistics -- "Attack the detractors with certainty of total success": the Pavlov session of 1950 -- "Everyone is waiting": Stalin and the economic problems of communism -- Conclusion: science and the fate of the Stalinist system.

Cogent Science in Context

Cogent Science in Context PDF Author: William Rehg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262264463
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
A proposal for an interdisciplinary, context-sensitive framework for assessing the strength of scientific arguments that melds Jürgen Habermas's discourse theory and sociological contextualism. Recent years have seen a series of intense, increasingly acrimonious debates over the status and legitimacy of the natural sciences. These “science wars” take place in the public arena—with current battles over evolution and global warming—and in academia, where assumptions about scientific objectivity have been called into question. Given these hostilities, what makes a scientific claim merit our consideration? In Cogent Science in Context, William Rehg examines what makes scientific arguments cogent—that is, strong and convincing—and how we should assess that cogency. Drawing on the tools of argumentation theory, Rehg proposes a multidimensional, context-sensitive framework both for understanding the cogency of scientific arguments and for conducting cooperative interdisciplinary assessments of the cogency of actual scientific arguments. Rehg closely examines Jürgen Habermas's argumentation theory and its implications for understanding cogency, applying it to a case from high-energy physics. A series of problems, however, beset Habermas's approach. In response, Rehg outlines his own “critical contextualist” approach, which uses argumentation-theory categories in a new and more context-sensitive way inspired by ethnography of science.

Higher Superstition

Higher Superstition PDF Author: Paul R. Gross
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421404877
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The widely acclaimed response to the postmodernists attacks on science, with a new afterword. With the emergence of "cultural studies" and the blurring of once-clear academic boundaries, scholars are turning to subjects far outside their traditional disciplines and areas of expertise. In Higher Superstition scientists Paul Gross and Norman Levitt raise serious questions about the growing criticism of science by humanists and social scientists on the "academic left." This edition of Higher Superstition includes a new afterword by the authors.