Creativity is fundamental to human experience. In _On Creativity_ David Bohm, the world-renowned scientist, investigates the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery. This is a remarkable and life-affirming book by one of the most far-sighted thinkers of modern times.

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)

In Human Nature and Conduct, first published in 1922, Dewey brings the rigor of natural sciences to the quest for a better moral system.

The sociological dimension of science is studied using the discovery of the Wasserman reaction and its accidental application as a test for syphilis as a basis, ...

Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern ...

This book is the most comprehensive and rigourous critique of the ways disciplinary boundaries still inhibit knowledge-production and integration.

Acknowledgments THROUGHOUT this book I cite the many people who have provided information on individual programs and activities. ...

Examines the processes of scientific creativity and discovery, and proposes a model of scientific development.

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

The notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual life, is characterised by a split between two cultures – the arts or humanities on one hand and the sciences on the other – has a long history. But it was C. P. Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This fiftieth anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A Second (...) Look features an introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed. (shrink)

A lecture before the Harvard Natural History Society; published in the Atlantic Monthly; and later republished in James (1897)The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.

Self-organized complexity in the physical, biological, and social sciences Donald L Turcotte*f and John B. Rundle* *Department of Earth and Atmospheric ...

The frequently-encountered wholesale dismissal of either interdisciplinary knowledge or research reflects a profound misunderstanding of their vital contributions to scholarship, society, and individuals. This paper presents the only self-contained, comprehensive defense of interdisciplinary knowledge and research, arguing that they are important because: 1. Creativity often requires interdisciplinary knowledge. 2. Immigrants often make important contributions to their new field. 3. Disciplinarians often commit errors which can be best detected by people familiar with two or more disciplines. 4. Some worthwhile topics of (...) research fall in the interstices among the traditional disciplines. 5. Many intellectual, social, and practical problems require interdisciplinary approaches. 6. Interdisciplinary knowledge and research serve to remind us of the unity-of-knowledge ideal. 7. Interdisciplinarians enjoy greater flexibility in their research. 8. More so than narrow disciplinarians, interdisciplinarians often treat themselves to the intellectual equivalent of traveling in new lands. 9. Interdisciplinarians may help breach communication gaps in the modern academy, thereby helping to mobilize its enormous intellectual resources in the cause of greater social rationality and justice. 10. By bridging fragmented disciplines, interdisciplinarians might play a role in the defense of academic freedom. The case against interdisciplinary knowledge and research is made up of many intrinsic drawbacks and practical barriers. Taken together, these rewards, drawbacks, and barriers suggest a mild shift in the contemporary world of learning towards interdisciplinary knowledge and research. (shrink)