Beyond the Science Wars : The Missing Discourse About Science and Society

Contextualizes the "Science Wars" from interdisciplinary sociological, historical, scientific, political, and cultural perspectives.

Beyond the Science Wars offers a broad contextualization of the "Science Wars"-an ongoing debate between scientists and social scientists over the nature and meaning of science-from interdisciplinary sociological, historical, scientific, political, and cultural perspectives. Beyond providing an understanding of the conflict itself, this book presents the comments of two science and technology studies' (STS) "founding fathers" (Bernard Barber and John Ziman), a scientist's protest that STS has abandoned its original mission, a historian's view of the fluctuating social support for science, and a sociologist's analysis of the motives of "anti-antiscience warriors." In addition, an STS statesman discusses ongoing structural changes in science, a sociologist sorts out different views of objectivity, and an STS veteran from the Science Wars brings us tales from the front and evaluates the meaning of recent events.

Contributors include Bernard Barber, Henry H. Bauer, Valery Cholakov, Stephan Fuchs, Steve Fuller, Ullica Segerstrale, and John Ziman.

Ullica Segerstrale is Professor of Sociology at Illinois Institute of Technology and the author of Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond.