Why does an object or phenomenon become the subject of scientific inquiry? Why do some of these objects remain provocative, while others fade from center stage? And why do objects sometimes return as the focus of research long after they were once abandoned? Addressing such questions, _Biographies of Scientific Objects_ is about how whole domains of phenomena—dreams, atoms, monsters, culture, society, mortality, centers of gravity, value, cytoplasmic particles, the self, tuberculosis—come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific (...) study. With examples drawn from both the natural and social sciences, and ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical. Whether discovered or invented, these objects of inquiry broaden and deepen in meaning—growing more "real"—as they become entangled in webs of cultural significance, material practices, and theoretical derivations. Thus their biographies will matter to anyone concerned with the formation of scientific knowledge. Contributors are Jed Z. Buchwald, Lorraine Daston, Rivka Feldhay, Jan Goldstein, Gerard Jorland, Doris Kauffman, Bruno Latour, Theodore M. Porter, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Marshall Sahlins, and Peter Wagner. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking new text, Patrick Baert analyses the central perspectives in the philosophy of social science, critically investigating the work of Durkheim, Weber, Popper, critical realism, critical theory, and Rorty's neo pragmatism. Places key writers in their social and political contexts, helping to make their ideas meaningful to students. Shows how these authors’ views have practical uses in empirical research. Lively approach that makes complex ideas understandable to upper-level students, as well as having scholarly appeal.

The paper compares John Dewey's pragmatism and cultural-historical activity theory as epistemologies and theories of transformative material activity. For both of the theories, the concept of activity, the prototype of which is work, constitutes a basis for understanding the nature of knowledge and reality. This concept also implies for both theories a methodological approach of studying human behavior in which social experimentation and intervention play a central role. They also suggest that reflection and thought, mediated by language and semiotic artifacts, (...) serve the reorientation of activity and is vital in the development of new, alternative ways of action. That is why Dewyan pragmatism and activity theory supply means of understanding organizational behavior and change in human activities better than the concepts of practice based on rule following, routines or embodied skills. (shrink)

"The lectures that follow were delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston in November and December, 1906, and in January, 1907, at Columbia University, in New York."-Preface, pg. 3.

This ambitious book by one of the most original and provocative thinkers in science studies offers a sophisticated new understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical, and engineering practice and the production of scientific knowledge. Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number of factors—social, technological, conceptual, and natural—that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined (...) practices, and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another—"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time, and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice—the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of machines and social organization. (shrink)

In this powerful work of conceptual and analytical originality, the author argues for the primacy of the material arrangements of the laboratory in the dynamics of modern molecular biology. In a post-Kuhnian move away from the hegemony of theory, he develops a new epistemology of experimentation in which research is treated as a process for producing epistemic things. A central concern of the book is the basic question of how novelty is generated in the empirical sciences. In addressing this question, (...) the author brings French poststructuralist thinking—notably Jacques Derrida’s concepts of “différance” and “historiality”—to bear on the construction of epistemic things. Historiographical perspective shifts from the actors’ minds to their objects of manipulation. These epistemological and historical issues are illuminated in a detailed case study of a particular laboratory, that of the oncologist and biochemist Paul C. Zamecnik and his colleagues, located in a specific setting—the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston. The author traces how, between 1945 and 1965, this group developed an experimental system for synthesizing proteins in the test tube that put Zamecnik’s research team at the forefront of those who led biochemistry into the era of molecular biology. (shrink)

Hans Joas is one of the foremost social theorists in Germany today. Based on Joas’s celebrated study of George Herbert Mead, this work reevaluates the contribution of American pragmatism and European philosophical anthropology to theories of action in the social sciences. Joas also establishes direct ties between Mead’s work and approaches drawn from German traditions of philosophical anthropology. Joas argues for adding a third model of action to the two predominant models of rational and normative action—one that emphasizes the creative (...) character of human action. This model encompasses the other two, allowing for a more comprehensive theory of action. Joas elaborates some implications of his model for theories of social movements and social change and for the status of action theory in sociology in the face of competition from theories advanced by Luhmann and Habermas. The problem of action is of crucial importance in both sociology and philosophy, and this book—already widely debated in Germany—will add fresh impetus to the lively discussions current in the English-speaking world. (shrink)

This book is Dewey's most fully developed treatment of logic as the theory of Inquiry. It is a later work which reflects, in part, Dewey's readings of C.S. Peirce during the 1930's. -/- Reprinted in Series: The collected works of John Dewey / ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, 3,12.; The later works, 1925 - 1953, Vol. 12.

This book traces the development of Dialectical Logic within the history of modern western philosophy, culminating in Marx s materialist dialectics. It brings out the essential contours of Logic through a detailed exposition of the ontological and epistem.

Although Richard Rorty has done much to renew interest in the philosophy of John Dewey, he nonetheless rejects two of the most important components of Dewey's philosophy, that is, his metaphysics and epistemology. Following George Santayana, Rorty accuses Dewey of trying to serve Locke and Hegel, an impossibility as Rorty rightly sees it. Rorty (1982) says that Dewey should have been Hegelian all the way (p. 85). By reconstructing a bit of Hegel's early philosophy of work, and comparing it to (...) Dewey's metaphysics and epistemology we can see that Dewey was indeed Hegelian all the way and that Rorty has constructed a false dilemma. We also gain some interesting insight into Dewey's philosophy by viewing it in terms of labor, tools and language. (shrink)

In The Public and Its Problems, a classic of social and political philosophy, John Dewey exhibits his strong faith in the potential of human intelligence to solve the public's problems. In his characteristic provocative style, Dewey clarifies the meaning and implications of such concepts as "the public," "the state," "government," and "political democracy." He distinguishes his a posterior reasoning from a priori reasoning, which, he argues permeates less meaningful discussion of basic concepts. Dewey repeatedly demonstrates the interrelationships between fact and (...) theory. (shrink)

HOW WE THINK PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING THOUGHT CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS THOUGHT? § i. Varied Senses of the Term No words are oftener on our lips than ...

Dewey's book on Democracy and Education established his credentials in the field of education and once counted as his most important book. It has been re-published in many editions and continuously in print ever since the original publication in 1916.

From the Introduction: This inquiry is concerned with the themes of praxis and action in four philosophic movements: Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy. It is rare that these four movements are considered in a single inquiry, for there are profound differences of emphasis, focus, terminology, and approach represented by these styles of thought. Many philosophers believe that similarities among these movements are superficial and that a close examination of them will reveal only hopelessly unbridgeable cleavages. While respecting the genuine (...) fundamental differences of these movements, this inquiry is undertaken in the spirit of showing that there are important common themes and motifs in what first appears to be a chaotic babble of voices. I intend to show that the concern with man as an agent has been a primary focal point of each of these movements and further that each contributes something permanent and important to our understanding of the nature and context of human activity. (shrink)

Dialectical logic is the science of the most general laws of development of nature, society, and human thought. These laws are reflected in the form of special concepts called the categories of logic. Therefore d. 1. may also be defined as the science of dialectical categories. Comprising a system of dialectical categories, it investigates their mutual relationship, sequence, and the transitions from one category to another.

The influence of Darwinism on philosophy.--Nature and its good: a conversation.--Intelligence and morals.--The experimental theory of knowledge.--The intellectualist criterion for truth.--A short catechism concerning truth.--Beliefs and existences.--Experience and objective idealism.--The postulate of immediate empiricism.--"Consciousness" and experience.--The significance of the problem of knowledge.

A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and ...

Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition.

"I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context. III John Dewey "... philosophers do not grow like mushrooms, out of the earth; they are the outgrowth of their period, their nation, whose most subtle, delicate and invisible juices abound in the philosophical ideas.,,2 Karl Marx Few issues are more heatedly debated in contemporary philosophy circles than that of con textual ism vs. foundationalism. The genesis for the debate was the (...) publication in 1979 of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which announ~ed the death of traditional philosophy. By "traditional" here is meant the quest for a certain or apodictic bedrock upon which an overall general theory or schema might be erected. This approach, for Rorty, characterized most previous philosophy, but especially the era from Descartes to Kant. Further, the three major philosophic thinkers of the 20th century, Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, each initially tried to construct a foundational philosophy but each of the three, in his later work, broke free of the Kantian conception of philosophy as foundational, and spent his time warning us against those very temptations to which he himself had once succumbed. Thus their later work is therapeutic rather than constructive, edifying rather than systematic, designed to make the reader question his own motives for philosophizing rather than to 3 supply him with a new philosophical program. (shrink)

Why does an object or phenomenon become the subject of scientific inquiry? Why do some of these objects remain provocative, while others fade from center stage? And why do objects sometimes return as the focus of research long after they were once abandoned? Addressing such questions, _Biographies of Scientific Objects_ is about how whole domains of phenomena—dreams, atoms, monsters, culture, society, mortality, centers of gravity, value, cytoplasmic particles, the self, tuberculosis—come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific (...) study. With examples drawn from both the natural and social sciences, and ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical. Whether discovered or invented, these objects of inquiry broaden and deepen in meaning—growing more "real"—as they become entangled in webs of cultural significance, material practices, and theoretical derivations. Thus their biographies will matter to anyone concerned with the formation of scientific knowledge. Contributors are Jed Z. Buchwald, Lorraine Daston, Rivka Feldhay, Jan Goldstein, Gerard Jorland, Doris Kauffman, Bruno Latour, Theodore M. Porter, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Marshall Sahlins, and Peter Wagner. (shrink)

In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and ...

John Dewey is celebrated for his work in the philosophy of education and acknowledged as a leading proponent of American pragmatism. His philosophy of logic, on the other hand, is largely unheard of. In Dewey's New Logic, Burke analyzes portions of the debate between Dewey and Bertrand Russell that followed the 1938 publication of Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Burke shows how Russell failed to understand Dewey, and how Dewey's philosophy of logic is centrally relevant to contemporary developments in (...) philosophy and cognitive science. Burke demonstrates that Russell misunderstood crucial aspects of Dewey's theory and contends that logic today, having progressed well beyond Russell's early views, is approaching Dewey's broader perspective. -/- "[This] book should be of substantial interest not only to Dewey scholars and other historians of twentieth-century philosophy, but also to devotees of situation theory, formal semantics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and Artificial Intelligence."--Georges Dicker, Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society "No scholar, thus far, has offered such a sophisticated and detailed version of central themes and contentions in Dewey's Logic . This is a pathbreaking study."--John J. McDermott, editor of The Philosophy of John Dewey. (shrink)