This classic and controversial book examines the roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in modern life, and proposes a path for its recovery.

Science as Practice and Culture explores one of the newest and most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field of science studies: the move toward studying scientific practice--the work of doing science--and the associated move toward studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources that practice operates in and on. Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and biological sciences and mathematics, (...) and are divided into two parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge, social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography. (shrink)

The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state.--The concept of essence.--The affirmative character of culture.--Philosophy and critical theory.--On hedonism.--Industrialization and capitalism in the work of Max Weber.--Love mystified; a critique of Norman O. Brown and a reply to Herbert Marcuse by Norman O. Brown.--Aggressiveness in advanced industrial society.

This book argues that we are not equipped to understand the workings of conciousness, despite its objective naturalness.

Two of the most important political movements of the late twentieth century are those of environmentalism and feminism. In this book, Val Plumwood argues that feminist theory has an important opportunity to make a major contribution to the debates in political ecology and environmental philosophy. _Feminism and the Mastery of Nature_ explains the relation between ecofeminism, or ecological feminism, and other feminist theories including radical green theories such as deep ecology. Val Plumwood provides a philosophically informed account of the relation (...) of women and nature, and shows how relating male domination to the domination of nature is important and yet remains a dilemma for women. (shrink)

This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. 'Representing' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. 'Intervening' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about (...) realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology. (shrink)

Since the seventeenth century, Western society has had a turbulent relationship with Reason. Descartes set out to reorganize all his opinions in the light of Reason, allowing, as Pascal bitterly reproached him, nothing else. In the course of the centuries which followed, the relationship with Reason became the object of a vigorous, often passionate debate. David Hume declared Reason to be impotent; Immanuel Kant observed that men suffered from "misology" as the result of their disappointed expectations of Reason; G. W. (...) F. Hegel declared that the main insight of philosophy consisted of the realization that reason masterminded and guided all history. The debate has not remained restricted to philosophy. Max Weber, the most influential modern sociologist, was obsessed with the distinctive role of Reason in Western society, and the part it played in engendering industrialism. Social anthropologists have been preoccupied both with the universality and the diversity of conceptual thought. Emile Durkheim taught them to ask why all men were rational, whilst Max Weber taught sociologists to ask why some men were more rational than others. This book brings together the philosophical, historical and sociological discussions of rationality and strives to make clear the underlying issues and the continuity of the debate under the various idioms. (shrink)

Universities must transmit technically exploitable knowledge. That is, they must meet an industrial society's need for qualified new generations and at the same time be concerned with the expanded reproduction of education itself. In addition, universities must not only transmit technically exploitable knowledge, but also produce it. This includes both information flowing from research into the channels of industrial utilization, armament, and social welfare, and advisory knowledge that enters into strategies of administration, government, and other decision-making powers, such as private (...) enterprises. Thus, through instruction and research the university is immediately connected with functions of the economic process. (shrink)

Reveals how the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changed our view of the earth and argues that the advance of science set back the cause of women.

An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

Argues that the tradition of critical theory has had significant problems dealing with the concept of nature and that their solutions require taking seriously the idea of nature as socially constructed.

The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters' with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals change from being 'legislators' (...) to 'interpreters' with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. (shrink)

Passmore argues that there is urgent need to change our attitude to the environment, and that humans cannot continue unconstrained exploitation of the biosphere.

To what extent and in what sense is the being of a person a historical way of being? To what extent? Comprehensively and fundamentally. To be a person is to be a history. In what respect? In two respects, opposed but related. On the one hand, being a person is an achievement of a living individual belonging to a natural kind whose genetic endowment and possible behaviors provide the necessary conditions for that achievement. On the other hand, a human being (...) becomes the person he is within, and as one expression of, a complex network of artifacts—language, ritual, social institutions, styles of art and architecture, cosmologies and myths—that constitute a culture. A culture, of course, is itself a sedimentation of the actions of past persons; but it is, nevertheless, preexistent with respect to the development of any particular person. Great innovators may change their societies, but they have to be born into, and grow up in, some society, however radically they may come to alter, perhaps even to destroy it. Admittedly, the distinction between nature and culture is a commonplace; I am trying to introduce it here, however, not as a simple dichotomy, but as an internal relation essential in its integrity to the being of human beings. Helmuth Plessner has spoken of the natural artificiality of man: a human being is an individual member of the species homo sapiens, to whose development, even as a living thing, inherence in an artifactual medium is necessary. It is our nature to need the artificial; we come to ourselves not only as users of, but as dwellers within, a tightly woven net of artifacts. Even for his physiological development, for the achievement of reproduction, sustenance, rest, and so on, a human being needs, in general, a roof over his head, a language, theories of some kind about the way things are, at least minimal apprenticeship in a trade or calling, etc. Thus human nature, being dependent on culture, is itself historical. For a culture is an historical artifact interiorized in the life history of each of its participants, and to be one of those participants consists precisely in that process of interiorization. That is the chief lesson, for example, of Adolf Portmann’s study of the first year of life, or, as he calls it, the year of the social uterus. Our young, like those of other higher mammals, are born with their senses wide awake, yet, like the lower mammals, and unlike other higher forms, they have to hug the nest, lying recumbent, in order to assimilate, in their dependency, the structure of their immediate human community. Only in the second year of life, when they have learned to walk and to speak, will they enter on a course of what will eventually be responsible actions. In its natural as well as cultural aspect, humanity is something to be achieved, and the person is the history of that achievement. It is in this dual, yet single, sense that the being of the person is historical. (shrink)

With the arrival of European explorers and settlers during the seventeenth century, Native American ways of life and the environment itself underwent radical alterations as human relationships to the land and ways of thinking about nature all changed. This colonial ecological revolution held sway until the nineteenth century, when New England's industrial production brought on a capitalist revolution that again remade the ecology, economy, and conceptions of nature in the region. In Ecological Revolutions, Carolyn Merchant analyzes these two major transformations (...) in the New England environment between 1600 and 1860. In a preface to the second edition, Merchant introduces new ideas about narrating environmental change based on gender and the dialectics of transformation, while the revised epilogue situates New England in the context of twenty-first-century globalization and climate change. Merchant argues that past ways of relating to the land could become an inspiration for renewing resources and achieving sustainability in the future. (shrink)

This study analyzes the manner in which the perception of human difference has changed from the time of the Renaissance to the 20th century. Building on the insights of Foucault and Garfinkel, it charts how humanity has become contained within the anthropological concept of the "Other.".

An original and innovative study of the pre-eminently social character of human ecological relations.

Like the latter, it unites into one and the same function the possibility of giving things a sign, of representing one thing by another, and the possibility of causing a sign to shift in relation to what it designates. The four functions that define the ...

In the first edition of Radical Ecology --the now classic examination major philosophical, ethical, scientific, and economic roots of environmental problems--Carolyn Merchant responded to the profound awareness of environmental crisis which prevailed in the closing decade of the twentieth century. In this provocative and readable study, Merchant examined the ways that radical ecologists can transform science and society in order to sustain life on this planet. Now in this second edition, Merchant continues to emphasize how laws, regulations and scientific research (...) alone cannot reverse the spread of pollution or restore our dwindling resources. Merchant argues that in order to maintain a livable world, we must formulate new social, economic, scientific, and spiritual approaches that will fundamentally transform human relationships with nature. She analyzes the revolutionary ideas of visionary ecologists for a new economy, society, science, and religion, and examines their efforts to bring environmental problems to the attention of the public. This new edition features a new Introduction from the author, a thorough updating of chapters, and two entirely new chapters on recent global movements and globalization and the environment. It is a timely update that will give students everything they need to know on the most recent philosophical positions and social movements that characterize the radical ecology spectrum. (shrink)

In Part One Leiss traces the idea of the domination of nature from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.

"Philosophical anthropology on the grandest scale....Gellner has produced a sharp challenge to his colleagues and a thrilling book for the non-specialist. Deductive history on this scale cannot be proved right or wrong, but this is Gellner writing, incisive, iconoclastic, witty and expert. His scenario compels our attention."—Adam Kuper, _New Statesman_ "A thoughtful and lively meditation upon probably the greatest transformation in human history, upon the difficult problems it poses and the scant resources it has left us to solve them."—Charles Larmore, (...) _New Republic_. (shrink)

The book seeks unities among things often thought to be different from one another; but it also insists on the differences among things often squashed into unities.