The Scientific Imagination in South Africa PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Scientific Imagination in South Africa PDF full book. Access full book title The Scientific Imagination in South Africa by William Beinart. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: William Beinart
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108837085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Get Book Here
Book Description
An innovative three hundred year exploration of the social and political contexts of science and the scientific imagination in South Africa.
Author: William Beinart
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108837085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Get Book Here
Book Description
An innovative three hundred year exploration of the social and political contexts of science and the scientific imagination in South Africa.
Author: Saul Dubow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Get Book Here
Book Description
A study of the history of intellectual and scientific racism in modern South Africa.
Author: Mazibuko, Zamanzima
Publisher: MISTRA
ISBN: 0639923801
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Get Book Here
Book Description
Nanotechnology is sweeping the world. This science of very small particles, which includes genetic modification and the reconfiguring of the arrangement of atoms, presents possibilities beyond imagination. It also has huge implications for all South Africans, especially at home. How exactly is this new technology playing out in South Africa? In countries like India, nanotechnology is being supported as a source of income and innovation. It has the potential to improve both the human condition and a country’s productivity and competitiveness. Is South Africa doing what it should and could to foster nanotechnology and biotechnology, and to advance bioeconomies within the country? And what does the new technology mean for us as consumers? How many of us know that this technology is already being employed in substances like suntan cream and lipstick, with potential health implications for users? The application of nanotechnology poses risks as well as huge benefits, so we need to be particularly vigilant of the ethics and dangers of it. This book provokes discussion around these important topics and relays eyeopening information to those of us who thought all of this was sci-fi.
Author: Paul S. Gray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139467026
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Get Book Here
Book Description
The idea that science is a blueprint for research, and imagination gives research its life and purpose inspired this comprehensive explanation of research methodology. The authors' decades of experience have revealed that research is a craft requiring judgment and creativity, not simply memorization and application of the rules of science. Whether one is conducting an intimate one-on-one interview or a large-scale examination of an entire society, human imagination and scientific principles of inquiry go hand in hand. To that end, this book emphasizes scientific method, but also acknowledges its critics. It covers a wide variety of data-collection techniques, but presents them as reinforcing rather than competing with one another, thus striking a balance between qualitative and quantitative methods. It is designed for students and instructors who want a comprehensive treatment of a variety of research techniques with special emphasis on qualitative approaches.
Author: Weingart, Peter
Publisher: African Minds
ISBN: 1928502032
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why do we need to communicate science? Is science, with its highly specialised language and its arcane methods, too distant to be understood by the public? Is it really possible for citizens to participate meaningfully in scientific research projects and debate? Should scientists be mandated to engage with the public to facilitate better understanding of science? How can they best communicate their special knowledge to be intelligible? These and a plethora of related questions are being raised by researchers and politicians alike as they have become convinced that science and society need to draw nearer to one another. Once the persuasion took hold that science should open up to the public and these questions were raised, it became clear that coming up with satisfactory answers would be a complex challenge. The inaccessibility of scientific language and methods, due to ever increasing specialisation, is at the base of its very success. Thus, translating specialised knowledge to become understandable, interesting and relevant to various publics creates particular perils. This is exacerbated by the ongoing disruption of the public discourse through the digitisation of communication platforms. For example, the availability of medical knowledge on the internet and the immense opportunities to inform oneself about health risks via social media are undermined by the manipulable nature of this technology that does not allow its users to distinguish between credible content and misinformation. In countries around the world, scientists, policy-makers and the public have high hopes for science communication: that it may elevate its populations educationally, that it may raise the level of sound decision-making for people in their daily lives, and that it may contribute to innovation and economic well-being. This collection of current reflections gives an insight into the issues that have to be addressed by research to reach these noble goals, for South Africa and by South Africans in particular.
Author: Gerald Holton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674877481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514
Get Book Here
Book Description
The highly acclaimed first edition of this major work convincingly established Gerald Holton’s analysis of the ways scientific ideas evolve. His concept of “themata,” induced from case studies with special attention to the work of Einstein, has become one of the chief tools for understanding scientific progress. It is now one of the main approaches in the study of the initiation and acceptance of individual scientific insights. Three principal consequences of this perspective extend beyond the study of the history of science itself. It provides philosophers of science with the kind of raw material on which some of the best work in their field is based. It helps intellectual historians to redefine the place of modern science in contemporary culture by identifying influences on the scientific imagination. And it prompts educators to reexamine the conventional concepts of education in science. In this new edition, Holton has masterfully reshaped the contents and widened the coverage. Significant new material has been added, including a penetrating account of the advent of quantum physics in the United States, and a broad consideration of the integrity of science, as exemplified in the work of Niels Bohr. In addition, a revised introduction and a new postscript provide an updated perspective on the role of themata. The result of this thoroughgoing revision is an indispensable volume for scholars and students of scientific thought and intellectual history.
Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022627666X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Get Book Here
Book Description
Dreamscapes of Modernity offers the first book-length treatment of sociotechnical imaginaries, a concept originated by Sheila Jasanoff and developed in close collaboration with Sang-Hyun Kim to describe how visions of scientific and technological progress carry with them implicit ideas about public purposes, collective futures, and the common good. The book presents a mix of case studies—including nuclear power in Austria, Chinese rice biotechnology, Korean stem cell research, the Indonesian Internet, US bioethics, global health, and more—to illustrate how the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries can lead to more sophisticated understandings of the national and transnational politics of science and technology. A theoretical introduction sets the stage for the contributors’ wide-ranging analyses, and a conclusion gathers and synthesizes their collective findings. The book marks a major theoretical advance for a concept that has been rapidly taken up across the social sciences and promises to become central to scholarship in science and technology studies.
Author: Gerald James Holton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674792982
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Get Book Here
Book Description
What is good science? What goal--if any--is the proper end of scientific activity? Is there a legitimating authority that scientists mayclaim? Howserious athreat are the anti-science movements? These questions have long been debated but, as Gerald Holton points out, every era must offer its own responses. This book examines these questions not in the abstract but shows their historic roots and the answers emerging from the scientific and political controversies of this century. Employing the case-study method and the concept of scientific thematathat he has pioneered, Holton displays the broad scope of his insight into the workings of science: from the influence of Ernst Mach on twentiethcentury physicists, biologists, psychologists, and other thinkers to the rhetorical strategies used in the work of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and others; from the bickering between Thomas Jefferson and the U.S. Congress over the proper form of federal sponsorship of scientific research to philosophical debates since Oswald Spengier over whether our scientific knowledge will ever be "complete." In a masterful final chapter, Holton scrutinizes the "anti-science phenomenon," the increasingly common opposition to science as practiced today. He approaches this contentious issue by examining the world views and political ambitions of the proponents of science as well as those of its opponents-the critics of "establishment science" (including even those who fear that science threatens to overwhelm the individual in the postmodern world) and the adherents of "alternative science" (Creationists, New Age "healers," astrologers). Through it all runs the thread of the author's deep historical knowledge and his humanistic understanding of science in modern culture. Science and Anti-Science will be of great interest not only to scientists and scholars in the field of science studies but also to educators, policymalcers, and all those who wish to gain a fuller understanding of challenges to and doubts about the role of science in our lives today.
Author: Annie E. Coombes
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300068900
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Get Book Here
Book Description
Between 1890 and 1918, British colonial expansion in Africa led to the removal of many African artifacts that were subsequently brought to Britain and displayed. Annie Coombes argues that this activity had profound repercussions for the construction of a national identity within Britain itself--the effects of which are still with us today. Through a series of detailed case studies, Coombes analyzes the popular and scientific knowledge of Africa which shaped a diverse public's perception of that continent: the looting and display of the Benin "bronzes" from Nigeria; ethnographic museums; the mass spectacle of large-scale international and missionary exhibitions and colonial exhibitions such as the "Stanley and African" of 1890; together with the critical reaction to such events in British national newspapers, the radical and humanitarian press and the West African press. Coombes argues that although endlessly reiterated racial stereotypes were disseminated through popular images of all things "African," this was no simple reproduction of imperial ideology. There were a number of different and sometimes conflicting representations of Africa and of what it was to be African--representations that varied according to political, institutional, and disciplinary pressures. The professionalization of anthropology over this period played a crucial role in the popularization of contradictory ideas about African culture to a mass public. Pioneering in its research, this book offers valuable insights for art and design historians, historians of imperialism and anthropology, anthropologists, and museologists.
Author: Martin Mahony
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987554
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Get Book Here
Book Description
As global temperatures rise under the forcing hand of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, new questions are being asked of how societies make sense of their weather, of the cultural values, which are afforded to climate, and of how environmental futures are imagined, feared, predicted, and remade. Weather, Climate, and Geographical Imagination contributes to this conversation by bringing together a range of voices from history of science, historical geography, and environmental history, each speaking to a set of questions about the role of space and place in the production, circulation, reception, and application of knowledges about weather and climate. The volume develops the concept of “geographical imagination” to address the intersecting forces of scientific knowledge, cultural politics, bodily experience, and spatial imaginaries, which shape the history of knowledges about climate.
