Bruno Latour was once asked : "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question.

Author Max Black argues that language should conform to the discovered regularities of experience it is radically mistaken to assume that the conception of language is a mirror of reality.

Although epidemiology as a scientific study of disease in populations claimed an independent disciplinary status already in the mid–nineteenth century, its history in the twentieth century can be seen as a continuous and often contentious attempt to define the field’s social and intellectual boundaries vis-à-vis a variety of neighboring scientific fields and public health practices. In a period dominated by laboratory biomedical sciences, epidemiologists repeatedly tried to spell out how their discipline met the requirements of scientificity despite its focus on (...) disease as a collective phenomenon and its reliance on nonlaboratory methods. This article asks about the relationship between the changing institutional and intellectual contexts of British epidemiological practice and the epidemiologists’attempts to define both science in general and epidemiology in particular. An examination of the epidemiologists’boundary-making endeavors is also used to reflect on the circumstances in which scientists engage in the discourse of disciplinary demarcations. (shrink)

How does science work? _Making Truth: Metaphor in Science_ argues that most laypeople, and many scientists, do not have a clear understanding of how metaphor relates to scientific thinking. With stunning clarity, and bridging the worlds of scientists and nonscientists, Theodore L. Brown demonstrates the presence and the power of metaphorical thought. He presents a series of studies of scientific systems, ranging from the atom to current topics in chemistry and biology such as protein folding, chaperone proteins, and global warming. (...) These case studies provide the basis for far-reaching conclusions about science as an intellectual and social practice and about the nature of scientific truth. (shrink)

This book opens up a new route to the study of knowledge dynamics and the sociology of knowledge. The focus is on the role of metaphors as powerful catalysts and the book dissects their role in the construction of theories of knowledge and will therefore be of vital interest to social and cognitive scientists alike.