Misunderstanding Science? offers a challenging new perspective on the public understanding of science. In so doing, it also challenges existing ideas of the nature of science and its relationships with society. Its analysis and case presentation are highly relevant to current concerns over the uptake, authority, and effectiveness of science as expressed, for example, in areas such as education, medical/health practice, risk and the environment, technological innovation. Based on several in-depth case-studies, and informed theoretically by the sociology of scientific knowledge, (...) the book shows how the public understanding of science questions raises issues of the epistemic commitments and institutional structures which constitute modern science. It suggests that many of the inadequacies in the social integration and uptake of science might be overcome if modern scientific institutions were more reflexive and open about the implicit normative commitments embedded in scientific cultures. (shrink)

The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified "facts." What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our (...) standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that borders on dissociation from reality. And as long as we lack the ability to make our situation intelligible, all of the "data" in the world will make no difference.;From the Introduction. (shrink)

The Folk Classification of Ceramics: A Study of Cognitive Prototypes provides a general understanding of folk classification that compares cognitive structures across cultures through anthropological field studies. The topic of this book, the structure and use of folk categories, is relevant to all cognitive sciences and is distinctly anthropological in examining variation among subcultural groups and change through time. The study of variation and change illuminates aspects of category structure that would not be envisioned from experiment or introspection. This text (...) concentrates on the study of folk classification of artifacts on ceramic vessels, focusing on gross social groupings such as "potters” or "traditional villages”. Some topics discussed include the exploring interview techniques; structure of vessel categories; subcultural variation; and semantic change. This publication is a good reference to students studying folk classification and other disciplines such as cognitive psychology, linguistic semantics, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Particle physicists constitute a community of sophisticated mythmakers—explicators of the nature of matter who forever alter our views of space and time. But who are these people? What is their world really like? Traweek, a bold observer of culture, opens the door to this unusual domain and offers us a glimpse into the inner sanctum.