One of my colleagues send me a link to a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio series about How to Think About Science. You can download podcasts of all 10 episodes.
If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it?A "new field of study"? I didn't know that.
Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study.
I recognize the names of some of the people who were interviewed and I'm more than a little skeptical. What do you think? Are these the leading lights of a new way of looking at epistemology? Or, is this just a subtle version of new-age psychobabble?
Episode 1 - November 14 - Simon Schaffer
Episode 2 - November 21 - Lorraine Daston
Episode 3 - November 28 - Margaret Lock
Episode 4 - December 5 - Ian Hacking and Andrew Pickering
Episode 5 - December 12 - Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour
Episode 6 - January 2 - James Lovelock
Episode 7 - January 9 - Arthur Zajonc
Episode 8 - January 16 - Wendell Berry
Episode 9 - January 23 - Rupert Sheldrake
Episode 10 - January 30 - Brian Wynne
I've actually listened to all of these (I love having my mp3 player at work)... I was familiar with work by Schaffer and Daston from books I read/perused last semester, and enjoyed the clarifications of their ideas. All the rest were equally interesting, despite my not really having anything to say about them...
ReplyDeleteWell, Sheldrake is certainly a woomeister of the first water. He's the guy who believes dogs and parrots are psychic, and can't put together a controlled experiment to save his life.
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for all of them, but Schaffer, Daston, Hacking, Pickering and Latour are all important figures in "science studies", which is at least a new discipline in the institutional sense, if not a new field of study per se.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the science studies perspective, of looking at science as a social and cultural phenomenon (in addition to an intellectual, technical and empirical one), is completely new--the more self-reflexive scientists and natural philosophers have always considered those dimensions of science--but the project of demythologizing science and placing it within the spectrum of human activities that are varying parts rational and irrational, empirical and non-empirical, objective and subjective, is a pretty recent one.
The only names I recognize are Sheldrake, who as Martin says is a woomeister (though Sam Harris evidently thinks otherwise). Wendell Berry IIRC is a liberal Catholic -- I have no idea what he's likely to say about science, though I suspect it's not good. But ICBW.
ReplyDeleteRather amusing to see some of the leading and oh-so-self-impressed lights of Science Studies
ReplyDeletesharing the spotlight (and thereby implicitly equated) with well-known woo-meisters like Lovelock and Sheldrake (not to mention the neo-medievalist Berry). Methinks somebody involved with putting this series together has a sense of humor.
philosophy, history, and sociology of science is of course not new. seems like a rebranding of continental minded thinkers.
ReplyDeletehistory and philosophy of science is one of my favorite topics but the presentation here is boring and lacking focus in my opinion. would learn much more in the first weeks of a properly organized philosophy of science course.
by the way, Hacking is a talented writer and it's completely lost here.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteEspecially as there IS one genuine scientist (at least) on the list: James Lovelock.