Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human (Science and Cultural Theory) - Hardcover

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822338106 ISBN 13: 9780822338109

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2006

Synopsis

Throughout the recent culture and science “wars,” the radically new conceptions of knowledge and science emerging from such fields as the history and sociology of science have been denounced by various journalists, scientists, and academics as irresponsible attacks on science, absurd denials of objective reality, or a cynical abandonment of truth itself. In Scandalous Knowledge, Barbara Herrnstein Smith explores and illuminates the intellectual contexts of these crude denunciations. A preeminent scholar, theorist, and analyst of intellectual history, Smith begins by looking closely at the epistemological developments at issue. She presents a clear, historically informed, and philosophically sophisticated overview of important twentieth-century critiques of traditional—rationalist, realist, positivist—accounts of human knowledge and scientific truth, and discusses in detail the alternative accounts produced by Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, and others.

With keen wit, Smith demonstrates that the familiar charges involved in these scandals—including the recurrent invocation of “postmodern relativism”—protect intellectual orthodoxy by falsely associating important intellectual developments with logically absurd and morally or politically disabling positions. She goes on to offer bold, original, and insightful perspectives on the currently strained relations between the natural sciences and the humanities; on the grandiose but dubious claims of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior, cognition, and culture; and on contemporary controversies over the psychology, biology, and ethics of animal-human relations. Scandalous Knowledge is a provocative and compelling intervention into controversies that continue to roil through journalism, pulpits, laboratories, and classrooms throughout the United States and Europe.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University and Director of its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, and Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University. Among her books are Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy and Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Smith is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

From the Back Cover

"Elegantly written and constructed, amusing and energetic, "Scandalous Knowledge" continues Barbara Herrnstein Smith's edgy and distinctly partial commentary on the science wars between realists and constructivists. Constructivists will be intrigued by the novel, and sometimes critical, avenues the book explores. Realists will be, well, scandalized."--Andrew Pickering, author of "The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science"

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0822338106
• ISBN 13: 9780822338109
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208