Never Pure
Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority
Published on 27. July 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
568 pages
978-0-8018-9421-3 (ISBN)
Description
Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits. Put simply, science has never been pure. To be human is to err, and we understand science better when we recognize it as the laborious achievement of fallible, imperfect, and historically situated human beings. Shapin's essays collected here include reflections on the historical relationships between science and common sense, between science and modernity, and between science and the moral order. They explore the relevance of physical and social settings in the making of scientific knowledge, the methods appropriate to understanding science historically, dietetics as a compelling site for historical inquiry, the identity of those who have made scientific knowledge, and the means by which science has acquired credibility and authority. This wide-ranging and intensely interdisciplinary collection by one of the most distinguished historians and sociologists of science represents some of the leading edges of change in the scholarly understanding of science over the past several decades.
Reviews / Votes
What makes his essays so enjoyable and alive... is their leaping range of reference, always running one step ahead and urging us to catch up. -- Jenny Uglow New York Review of Books 2010 Professor Shapin has a sense of humor, a good eye for an anecdote and the ability to turn a phrase. -- Katherine Bouton New York Times 2010 While it might not be for novices, anyone who is interested in how and why science enjoys a privileged position as a source of knowledge should read Shapin's take on the authority given to it vis-a-vis religion and morality, why it is compliment to be both a gentleman and a scholar, and why it matters whether Newton ate chicken or Darwin farted. Seed Magazine 2010 An impressive work and one that scientists will benefit from reading. Shapin reminds us that... neither scientists nor science itself can be separated from the context of peoples' minds, bodies, cultures, societies. Expectations based on any other understanding are simply unrealistic. -- Sam Lemonick Chemical and Engineering News 2010 He is a graceful and engaging essayist, and the ample selection of essays in Never Pure ... affords an excellent basis for reflecting on what he has had to say about the life of science. -- Robert E. Kohler Science 2010 Never Pure will enrich the bookshelf of any historian of science. -- Katy Barrett Endeavour 2010More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
1 s/w Zeichnung
1 Line drawings, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
952 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-9421-3 (9780801894213)
DOI
10.56021/9780801894206
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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Steven Shapin
Never Pure
Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority
Book
07/2010
Johns Hopkins University Press
€79.00
Article not available for order
Steven Shapin
Never Pure
Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority
E-Book
07/2010
Johns Hopkins University Press
€26.49
Available for download
Person
Steven Shapin is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, and his books include Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (with Simon Schaffer), A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, and The Scientific Revolution. He has written for the New Yorker and writes regularly for the London Review of Books.
Content
Preface
1. Lowering the Tone in the History of Science: A Noble Calling
Part I: Methods and Maxims
2. Cordelia's Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Science
3. How to Be Antiscientific
4. Science and Prejudice in Historical Perspective
Part II: Places and Practices
5. The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-century England
6. Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology
Part III: The Scientific Person
7. "The Mind Is Its Own Place": Science and Solitude in Seventeenth-century England
8. "A Scholar and a Gentleman": The Problematic Identity of the Scientific Practitioner in Seventeenth-century England
9. Who Was Robert Hooke?
10. Who Is the Industrial Scientist? Commentary from Academic Sociology and from the Shop Floor in the United States, ca. 1900-ca. 1970
Part IV: The Body of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Body
11. The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge
12. How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England
Part V: The World of Science and the World of Common Sense
13. Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-century Dietetic Medicine
14. Proverbial Economies: How an Understanding of Some Linguistic and Social Features of Common Sense Can Throw Light on More Prestigious Bodies of Knowledge, Science for Example
15. Descartes the Doctor: Rationalism and Its Therapies
Part VI: Science and Modernity
16. Science and the Modern World
Notes
Index
1. Lowering the Tone in the History of Science: A Noble Calling
Part I: Methods and Maxims
2. Cordelia's Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Science
3. How to Be Antiscientific
4. Science and Prejudice in Historical Perspective
Part II: Places and Practices
5. The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-century England
6. Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology
Part III: The Scientific Person
7. "The Mind Is Its Own Place": Science and Solitude in Seventeenth-century England
8. "A Scholar and a Gentleman": The Problematic Identity of the Scientific Practitioner in Seventeenth-century England
9. Who Was Robert Hooke?
10. Who Is the Industrial Scientist? Commentary from Academic Sociology and from the Shop Floor in the United States, ca. 1900-ca. 1970
Part IV: The Body of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Body
11. The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge
12. How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England
Part V: The World of Science and the World of Common Sense
13. Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-century Dietetic Medicine
14. Proverbial Economies: How an Understanding of Some Linguistic and Social Features of Common Sense Can Throw Light on More Prestigious Bodies of Knowledge, Science for Example
15. Descartes the Doctor: Rationalism and Its Therapies
Part VI: Science and Modernity
16. Science and the Modern World
Notes
Index