Scandalous Knowledge
Science, Truth and the Human
Published on 5. January 2006
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-7486-2023-4 (ISBN)
Description
This book explores the radical reconceptions of knowledge and science emerging from constructivist epistemology, social studies of science, and contemporary cognitive science. Smith reviews the key issues involved in the twentieth-century critiques of traditional views of human knowledge and scientific truth and gives an extensively informed explanation of the alternative accounts developed by Fleck, Kuhn, Foucault, Latour, and others. She also addresses the various anxieties (e.g., over 'relativism') and 'wars' occasioned by these developments, placing them in their historical contexts and arguing that they are largely misplaced or spurious. Smith then examines the currently perplexed relations between the natural and human sciences, the grandiose claims and dubious methods of evolutionary psychology, and the complex play of naturalist, humanist, and posthumanist ideologies in contemporary views of the relation between humans and animals.
Reviews / Votes
Scandalously unimpressed by the charges, countercharges, and 'prudent' middle paths found in current disputes over science and truth, Barbara Herrnstein Smith deploys her ferocious intelligence, wicked wit, and broad understanding to provide us with a tonic mixture of empathy and resources for taking positions that are both informed and responsible. She does not flinch before the barrage of outrages; neither, this book in hand, need we. -- Susan Oyama, author of Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide Professor Herrnstein Smith's work is known for its rigor, clarity, and cogency. The chief contribution of this book is to present a more historical, complex, and nuanced discussion of the epistemological issues at stake in the "science wars" than has hitherto been the norm. -- N. Katherine Hayles, John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature, English Department, University of California, Los Angeles Scandalously unimpressed by the charges, countercharges, and 'prudent' middle paths found in current disputes over science and truth, Barbara Herrnstein Smith deploys her ferocious intelligence, wicked wit, and broad understanding to provide us with a tonic mixture of empathy and resources for taking positions that are both informed and responsible. She does not flinch before the barrage of outrages; neither, this book in hand, need we. Professor Herrnstein Smith's work is known for its rigor, clarity, and cogency. The chief contribution of this book is to present a more historical, complex, and nuanced discussion of the epistemological issues at stake in the "science wars" than has hitherto been the norm.More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7486-2023-4 (9780748620234)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2006
Duke University Press
€113.99
Available for download
Person
Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University and director of its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, and Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University. Her publications include Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (1988) and Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (1997). Smith is an honorary fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Content
Contents; 1. Introduction: Scandals of Knowledge; 2. Pre-Post-Modern Relativism; 3. Netting Truth: Ludwik Fleck's Constructivist Genealogy; 4. Cutting-Edge Equivocation: Conceptual Moves and Rhetorical Strategies in Contemporary Anti-Epistemology; 5. Disciplinary Cultures and Tribal Warfare: The Sciences and the; Humanities Today; 6. Super Natural Science: The Claims of Evolutionary Psychology; 7. Animal Relatives, Difficult Relations; Works Cited; Index.