Failing Beautifully in Science: Academic Life Through a Neopragmatist Lens

When science directs its theoretical and empirical tools toward itself, metatheoretical reflections or sociological studies of science emerge. It examines the function of science for society and explores its relationship to politics. This book does all of this (to some extent). In a different way. Ironically and satirically. It is largely based on the phenomenological, everyday experience of this 'system' and its peculiarities. This experience, captured in caricatures, is in turn linked back to theoretical considerations, particularly neopragmatism with its constitutive ideas of contingency, the importance of language, and irony as a tool for coping with the world. And, of course, its contribution to problem-solving. The book is aimed at people involved with university life—directly or indirectly. But it is particularly aimed at people who are just approaching university life, who react with alienation to customs and incomprehension to certain rituals. It's also aimed at people who are irritated by the demands made by and of universities, on the one hand, and by what they find there, on the other. And those who want to smile about that—and perhaps even at themselves as part of this network.

Dr. Dr. Olaf Kühne is Professor of Urban and Regional Development in the Department of Geography and the Institute of Political Science at the University of Tübingen. His extensive involvement with neopragmatism has taught him an ironic approach to university life.