Science Deified & Science Defied

Science Deified & Science Defied
Author: Richard Olson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1982
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520201675

Richard Olson's magisterial two-volume work, Science Deified and Science Defied asks how, why, to what extent, and with what consequences scientific ideas have influenced Western culture. In Volume 2, Olson turns to Cartesianism and the extension of mathematical and mechanical philosophies that branched into every aspect of seventeenth-century thought.

The Borderlands of Science

The Borderlands of Science
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2002
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0195157982

The editor-in-chief of "Skeptic" magazine and author of the bestselling "Why People Believe Weird Things" takes readers to the place where real science (such as the big bang theory), borderland science (superstring theory), and just plain nonsense (Big Foot) collide with one another. 20 halftones. 36 line illustrations.

Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-century Europe

Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-century Europe
Author: Richard Olson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2008
Genre: Europe
ISBN: 0252074335

The 19th century produced scientific and cultural revolutions that forever transformed modern European life. Richard Olson provides an integrated account of the history of science and its impact on intellectual and social trends of the day.

Never Pure

Never Pure
Author: Steven Shapin
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 565
Release: 2010-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801894204

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.

Current Catalog

Current Catalog
Author: National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1956
Release:
Genre: Medicine
ISBN:

Defining Science

Defining Science
Author: Charles Alan Taylor
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1996
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780299150341

The author (speech communication, Indiana U.) divides the subject into six chapters on the rhetorical ecology of science; philosophical perspectives--of propositions, procedures and politics; historical and social studies of science; demarcating science rhetorically; science and creation science; and cold fusion. In his discussion of cold fusion, he describes it not as a case study in how "nonscientific behavior sullied the public ethos of real science," but rather as a case that serves to "alert us to the inescapably human dimensions of real science so that we might appreciate its strengths without wishing away its imperfections." The bibliography is extensive. For scholars in the field. Paper edition (unseen), $22.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Understanding the Language of Science

Understanding the Language of Science
Author: Steven Darian
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2003-08-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780292716186

From astronomy to zoology, the practice of science proceeds from scientific ways of thinking. These patterns of thought, such as defining and classifying, hypothesizing and experimenting, form the building blocks of all scientific endeavor. Understanding how they work is therefore an essential foundation for everyone involved in scientific study or teaching, from elementary school students to classroom teachers and professional scientists. In this book, Steven Darian examines the language of science in order to analyze the patterns of thinking that underlie scientific endeavor. He draws examples from university science textbooks in a variety of disciplines, since these offer a common, even canonical, language for scientific expression. Darian identifies and focuses in depth on nine patterns—defining, classifying, using figurative language, determining cause and effect, hypothesizing, experimenting, visualizing, quantifying, and comparing—and shows how they interact in practice. He also traces how these thought modes developed historically from Pythagoras through Newton.