A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)

In this book Gerald Holton takes an opposing view, illuminating the ways in which the imagination of the scientist functions early in the formation of a new ...

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

Dialogue has become a central theoretical concept in human and social sciences as well as in professions such as education, health, and psychotherapy. This 'dialogical turn' emphasises the importance of social relations and interaction to our behaviour and how we make sense of the world; hence the dialogical mind is the mind in interaction with others - with individuals, groups, institutions, and cultures in historical perspectives. Through a combination of rigorous theoretical work and empirical investigation, Marková presents an ethics of (...) dialogicality as an alternative to the narrow perspective of individualism and cognitivism that has traditionally dominated the field of social psychology. The dialogical perspective, which focuses on interdependencies among the Self and Others, offers a powerful theoretical basis to comprehend, analyse, and discuss complex social issues. Marková considers the implications of dialogical epistemology both in daily life and in professional practices involving problems of communication, care, and therapy. (shrink)

In a Different Voice is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond.

The distinction between the reified universe of science and the consensual universe of common sense introduced by Serge Moscovici in the Psychoanalysis and reiterated in further texts always gave rise to debate and puzzled interrogations.In the present text it is argued that for Serge Moscovici there is both a discontinuity and continuity between the two fields of science and common sense although at different levels of analysis.They would be discontinuous at the operative theoretical level corresponding to the logic of verification (...) in the sense of Popper. Truth and truthfulness are not the same. But there would be continuity at the metatheoretical thematic level, where either scientists or lay people seem to follow the same non conscious insightful processes enabling them to look beyond the empirical observables as well as beyond the traditional beliefs and common places. (shrink)