Cultural Science

Cultural Science PDF Author: John Hartley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849666040
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or 'demes' (organised and productive subpopulation; 'demos'). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams's 'culture is ordinary' approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: -Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist ('linked brains') perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; -Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; -The clash of systems - including demes - is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; -Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; -The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled 'demic concentration' of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary 'consilience', linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation.

Cultural Science

Cultural Science PDF Author: John Hartley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849666040
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or 'demes' (organised and productive subpopulation; 'demos'). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams's 'culture is ordinary' approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: -Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist ('linked brains') perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; -Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; -The clash of systems - including demes - is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; -Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; -The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled 'demic concentration' of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary 'consilience', linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation.

Science in Print

Science in Print PDF Author: Rima D. Apple
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299286134
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Ever since the threads of seventeenth-century natural philosophy began to coalesce into an understanding of the natural world, printed artifacts such as laboratory notebooks, research journals, college textbooks, and popular paperbacks have been instrumental to the development of what we think of today as “science.” But just as the history of science involves more than recording discoveries, so too does the study of print culture extend beyond the mere cataloguing of books. In both disciplines, researchers attempt to comprehend how social structures of power, reputation, and meaning permeate both the written record and the intellectual scaffolding through which scientific debate takes place. Science in Print brings together scholars from the fields of print culture, environmental history, science and technology studies, medical history, and library and information studies. This ambitious volume paints a rich picture of those tools and techniques of printing, publishing, and reading that shaped the ideas and practices that grew into modern science, from the days of the Royal Society of London in the late 1600s to the beginning of the modern U.S. environmental movement in the early 1960s.

Visual Cultures of Science

Visual Cultures of Science PDF Author: Luc Pauwels
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584655121
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A new collection explores the complex role of visual representation in science.

Innocent Experiments

Innocent Experiments PDF Author: Rebecca Onion
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469629488
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
From the 1950s to the digital age, Americans have pushed their children to live science-minded lives, cementing scientific discovery and youthful curiosity as inseparable ideals. In this multifaceted work, historian Rebecca Onion examines the rise of informal children’s science education in the twentieth century, from the proliferation of home chemistry sets after World War I to the century-long boom in child-centered science museums. Onion looks at how the United States has increasingly focused its energies over the last century into producing young scientists outside of the classroom. She shows that although Americans profess to believe that success in the sciences is synonymous with good citizenship, this idea is deeply complicated in an era when scientific data is hotly contested and many Americans have a conflicted view of science itself. These contradictions, Onion explains, can be understood by examining the histories of popular science and the development of ideas about American childhood. She shows how the idealized concept of “science” has moved through the public consciousness and how the drive to make child scientists has deeply influenced American culture.

Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media

Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media PDF Author: Louise Henson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351946846
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.

Studies on Ottoman Science and Culture

Studies on Ottoman Science and Culture PDF Author: Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000329453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Studies on Ottoman Science and Culture brings together eleven articles by distinguished historian Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu. The book addresses multiple issues related to the histories of science and culture during the Ottoman era. Most of the articles contained in this volume were the first contributions to their respective topics, and they continue to provoke discussion and debate amongst academics to this day. The first volume of the author’s collected papers that appeared in the Variorum Collected Studies (2004) dispelled the negative opinions towards Ottoman science asserted by scholars of the previous generation. In this new volume, the author continues to explore and develop the paradigm of scientific activities and cultural interactions both within and beyond the Ottoman Empire. One of the topics examined is the attitude of Islamic scholars towards revolutionary notions in Western science, including Copernican heliocentrism and Darwin’s theory of evolution. This book will appeal to scholars and students of Ottoman history, as well as those interested in the history of science and cultural history. (CS1098).

The Science of Culture

The Science of Culture PDF Author: Leslie A. White
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780975273821
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Leslie White was one of the most important and controversial figures in American anthropology. This classic work, initially published in 1949, contains White's definitive statement on what he termed "culturology." In his new prologue to this reprint of the second edition, Robert Carneiro outlines the key events in White's life and career, especially his championing of cultural evolutionism and cultural materialism. Praise from readers "Republishing these pioneer articles now makes White's fundamental exposition easily available to a new generation of social scientists." Richard N. Adams, University of Texas "One of the best works ever produced by an anthropologist. White was a remarkable thinker and his writings were filled with 'intellectual content.'" Lewis R. Binford, Southern Methodist University "The enduring foundation of a science of culture is made supremely accessible thanks to the lucidity of White's writing." Robert Bates Graber, Truman State University "Written with a straightforward crispness. A welcome treat in an age when obscurity is often confused with profundity." David Kaplan, Brandeis University

Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation

Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation PDF Author: Patrick Carroll
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520247531
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Publisher description

Borneo Studies in History, Society and Culture

Borneo Studies in History, Society and Culture PDF Author: Victor T. King
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811006725
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 619

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Book Description
This edited book is the first major review of what has been achieved in Borneo Studies to date. Chapters in this book situate research on Borneo within the general disciplinary fields of the social sciences, with the weight of attention devoted to anthropological research and related fields such as development studies, gender studies, environmental studies, social policy studies and cultural studies. Some of the chapters in this book are extended versions of presentations at the Borneo Research Council’s international conference hosted by Universiti Brunei Darussalam in June 2012 and a Borneo Studies workshop organised in Brunei in 2012. The volume examines some of the major debates and controversies in Borneo Studies, including those which have served to connect post-war research on Borneo to wider scholarship. It also assesses some of the more recent contributions and interests of locally based researchers in universities and other institutions in Borneo itself. The major strength of the book is the inclusion of a substantial amount of research undertaken by scholars working and teaching within the Southeast Asian region. In particular there is an examination of research materials published in the vernacular, notably the outpouring of work published in Indonesian by the Institut Dayakologi in Pontianak. In doing so, the book also addresses the urgent matters which have not received the attention they deserve, specifically subjects, themes and issues that have already been covered but require further contemplation, elaboration and research, and the scope for disciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration in Borneo Studies. The book is a valuable resource and reference work for students and researchers interested in social science scholarship on Borneo, and for those with wider interests in Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the Southeast Asian region.

Circulation of Knowledge

Circulation of Knowledge PDF Author: Anna Nilsson Hammar
Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
ISBN: 9188661296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Historians have long been interested in knowledge - its nature and origin, and the circumstances under which it was created - but it has only been in recent decades that the history of knowledge has emerged as an academic field in its own right. In Circulation of Knowledge, a group of Nordic researchers address the burning issue of the day: the circulation of knowledge in social or scientific circles, and what happens to it when it is in motion.