Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, _Thing Knowledge _demands that we (...) take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more. (shrink)

How was the hypothetical character of theories of experience thought about throughout the history of science? The essays cover periods from the middle ages to the 19th and 20th centuries. It is fascinating to see how natural scientists and philosophers were increasingly forced to realize that a natural science without hypotheses is not possible.

The anthropological approach is the central focus of this study. Laboratories are looked upon with the innocent eye of the traveller in exotic lands, and the societies found in these places are observed with the objective yet compassionate eye of the visitor from a quite other cultural milieu. There are many surprises that await us if we enter a laboratory in this frame of mind... This study is a realistic enterprise, an attempt to truly represent the social order of life (...) in laboratories and institutes of research, just as they are. By bringing the philosophical issues to the surface as matters not of prejudgement but as matters of concern, Karin Knorr-Cetina has developed the first really positive challenge to the philosophy of science since the days of paradigms and internal definitions of meanings. (shrink)

This new edition provides an excellent overview of the field of epistemology. Revised sections on justification and knowledge and the Gettier Problem, and new sections on skepticism and naturalized epistemology, present the most important foundational and recent work in the theory of knowledge. Organized specifically with courses in mind, Empirical Knowledge is accessible to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students.

This discussion paper proposes that a meaningful distinction between science and technoscience can be found at the level of the objects of research. Both notions intermingle in the attitudes, intentions, programs and projects of researchers and research institutions—that is, on the side of the subjects of research. But the difference between science and technoscience becomes more explicit when research results are presented in particular settings and when the objects of research are exhibited for the specific interest they hold. When an (...) experiment is presented as scientific evidence which confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, this agrees with traditional conceptions of science. When organic molecules are presented for their capacity to serve individually as electric wires that carry surprisingly large currents, this would be a hallmark of technoscience. Accordingly, we propose research on the ontology of research objects. The focus on the character and significance of research objects makes this a specifically philosophical project. (shrink)

Discusses the philosophy of science and the process of scientific discovery, and looks at ethical issues such as genetic engineering, prolonging life through technology, and the role of the physician.

In this 1974 book a practising scientist and gifted expositor sets forth an exciting point of view on the nature of science and how it works.

Technoscientific research, a kind of scientific research conducted within the decontextualized approach (DA), uses advanced technology to produce instruments, experimental objects, and new objects and structures, that enable us to gain knowledge of states of affairs of novel domains, especially knowledge about new possibilities of what we can do and make, with the horizons of practical, industrial, medical or military innovation, and economic growth and competition, never far removed from view. The legitimacy of technoscientific innovations can be appraised only in (...) the course of considering fully what sorts of objects technoscientific objects are: objects that embody scientific knowledge confirmed within DA; physical/chemical/biological objects, realizations of possibilities discovered in research conducted within DA, brought to realization by means of technical/experimental/instrumental interventions; and components of social/ecological systems, objects that embody the values of technological progress and (most of them) values of capital and the market. What technoscientific objects are - their powers, tendencies, sources of their being, effects on human beings and social/economic systems, how they differ from non technoscientific objects - cannot be grasped from technoscientific inquiry alone; scientific inquiry that is not reducible to that conducted within DA is also needed. The knowledge that underlies and explains the efficacy of technoscientific objects is never sufficient to grasp what sorts of object they are and could become. Science cannot be reduced to technoscience. (shrink)