Science under Fire

Science under Fire PDF Author: Andrew Jewett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674987918
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Americans have long been suspicious of experts and elites. This new history explains why so many have believed that science has the power to corrupt American culture. Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that “tenured radicals” have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science’s celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions—and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers. Science under Fire reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation’s bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s. Looking at today’s battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the naïve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists’ claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.

Science under Fire

Science under Fire PDF Author: Andrew Jewett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674987918
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
Americans have long been suspicious of experts and elites. This new history explains why so many have believed that science has the power to corrupt American culture. Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that “tenured radicals” have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science’s celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions—and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers. Science under Fire reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation’s bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s. Looking at today’s battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the naïve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists’ claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.

Agents Under Fire

Agents Under Fire PDF Author: Angus J. L. Menuge
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742534049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In Agents Under Fire, Menuge defends a robust notion of agency and intentionaility against eliminative and naturalistic alternatives, showing the interconnections between the philosophy of mind, theology, and Intelligent Design.

Forensics Under Fire

Forensics Under Fire PDF Author: Jim Fisher
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813544246
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Television shows like CSI, Forensic Files, and The New Detectives make it look so easy. A crime-scene photographer snaps photographs, a fingerprint technician examines a gun, uniformed officers seal off a house while detectives gather hair and blood samples, placing them carefully into separate evidence containers. In a crime laboratory, a suspect's hands are meticulously examined for gunshot residue. An autopsy is performed in order to determine range and angle of the gunshot and time-of-death evidence. Dozens of tests and analyses are performed and cross-referenced. A conviction is made. Another crime is solved. The credits roll. The American public has become captivated by success stories like this one with their satisfyingly definitive conclusions, all made possible because of the wonders of forensic science. Unfortunately, however, popular television dramas do not represent the way most homicide cases in the United States are actually handled. Crime scenes are not always protected from contamination; physical evidence is often packaged improperly, lost, or left unaccounted for; forensic experts are not always consulted; and mistakes and omissions on the autopsy table frequently cut investigations short or send detectives down the wrong investigative path. In Forensics Under Fire, Jim Fisher makes a compelling case that these and other problems in the practice of forensic science allow offenders to escape justice and can also lead to the imprisonment of innocent people. Bringing together examples from a host of high-profile criminal cases and familiar figures, such as the JonBenet Ramsey case and Dr. Henry Lee who presented physical evidence in the O. J. Simpson trial, along with many lesser known but fascinating stories, Fisher presents daunting evidence that forensic science has a long way to go before it lives up to its potential and the public's expectations.

Earth Under Fire

Earth Under Fire PDF Author: Gary Braasch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520260252
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Presents an illustrated guide to the effects of climate change and how to lessen the effects of the dependence on fossil fuels.

Earth Under Fire

Earth Under Fire PDF Author: Paul A. LaViolette
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co
ISBN: 9781591430520
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
In "Earth Under Fire, " Paul LaViolette investigates the connection between ancient world catastrophe myths and modern scientific evidence of a galactic destruction cycle, demonstrating how past civilizations accurately recorded the causes of these cataclysmic events, knowledge of which may be crucial for the human race to survive the next catastrophic superwave cycle.

Science, Democracy, and the American University

Science, Democracy, and the American University PDF Author: Andrew Jewett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107027268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
A reinterpretation of the secularization of American culture, focusing on the political views of natural and social scientists from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Why Trust Science?

Why Trust Science? PDF Author: Naomi Oreskes
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212260
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Why the social character of scientific knowledge makes it trustworthy Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don't? Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength—and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, this timely and provocative book features a new preface by Oreskes and critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo.

Signature in the Cell

Signature in the Cell PDF Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0061472786
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
"This book attempts to make a comprehensive, interdisciplinary case for a new view of the origin of life"--Prologue.

Rational Fog

Rational Fog PDF Author: M. Susan Lindee
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674919181
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
A thought-provoking examination of the intersections of knowledge and violence, and the quandaries and costs of modern, technoscientific warfare. Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the twentieth century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war. Science is, at its foundation, an international endeavor oriented toward advancing human welfare. At the same time, it has been nationalistic and militaristic in times of crisis and conflict. As our weapons have become more powerful, scientists have struggled to reconcile these tensions, engaging in heated debates over the problems inherent in exploiting science for military purposes. M. Susan Lindee examines this interplay between science and state violence and takes stock of researchers’ efforts to respond. Many scientists who wanted to distance their work from killing have found it difficult and have succumbed to the exigencies of war. Indeed, Lindee notes that scientists who otherwise oppose violence have sometimes been swept up in the spirit of militarism when war breaks out. From the first uses of the gun to the mass production of DDT and the twenty-first-century battlefield of the mind, the science of war has achieved remarkable things at great human cost. Rational Fog reminds us that, for scientists and for us all, moral costs sometimes mount alongside technological and scientific advances.

Science and Moral Imagination

Science and Moral Imagination PDF Author: Matthew J. Brown
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987678
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed “the ideal of moral imagination,” emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science.