Narratives and Comparisons: Adversaries or Allies in Understanding Science?

As a powerful tool in the production of knowledge, comparing plays a crucial part in the sciences and the humanities. This volume explores the relationship between comparing and narrating in epistemic practices and clarifies the ways in which narratives enable or impede practices of comparing. It takes into account related activities, such as measuring and classifying, modeling, establishing norms and categories, as well as organizing and popularizing knowledge, to analyze the ambivalent relationship between narratives, scientific explanation, and understanding. The contributions bring out the epistemic role of narratives, and elucidate how narratives are connected to comparisons and scientific explanations.

Martin Carrier (Prof. Dr. phil.) lehrt Wissenschaftsphilosophie an der Universität Bielefeld. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Theorienwandel und Methodenlehre der Naturwissenschaften, insbesondere Methodologie der angewandten Forschung.

Rebecca Mertens is a postdoctoral researcher in the collaborative research center 1288 »Practices of Comparing«. Her research interests cover the role of analogies, models and forms of comparison in the history of the life sciences.

Carsten Reinhardt (Prof. Dr.) ist seit 2007 Professor für Historische Wissenschaftsforschung an der Universität Bielefeld. Seine Forschungsgebiete sind Geschichte der Chemie, Industrieforschung, wissenschaftlicher Instrumente und des Expertenwissens.