Science

Fuller, Steve

ISBN 10: 0816631255 / ISBN 13: 9780816631254

Verlag: University of Minnesota Press, 1998

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers G0816631255I4N00

Inhaltsangabe:

What qualifies such seemingly disparate disciplines as paleontology, high-energy physics, industrial chemistry and genetic engineering as "sciences," and hence worthy of sustained public interest and support? In this innovative and controversial introduction to the social character of scientific knowledge, Steve Fuller argues that if these disciplines share anything at all, it is more likely to be the way they strategically misinterpret their own history than any privileged access to the nature of reality. The book features a report written in the persons of a Martian anthropologist who systematically compares religious and scientific institutions on earth, only to find that science does not necessarily live up to its own ideals of rationality. In addition, Fuller highlights science's multicultural nature through a discussion of episodes in which the West's own understanding of science has been decisively affected by its encounters with Islam and Japan. An important theme of the book is that science's most attractive feature - its openness to criticism - is threatened by the role it increasingly plays in the maintenance of social and economic order.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor: Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Durham.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Science
Verlag: University of Minnesota Press
Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
Einband: Paperback
Zustand: Very Good
Zustand des Schutzumschlags: No Jacket