The Scientific Life

Download or Read eBook The Scientific Life PDF written by Steven Shapin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
The Scientific Life
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 488
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226750170
ISBN-13 : 0226750175
Rating : 4/5 (70 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Scientific Life by : Steven Shapin

Book excerpt: Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? They are experts—indeed, highly respected experts—authorized to describe and interpret the natural world and widely trusted to help transform knowledge into power and profit. But are they morally different from other people? The Scientific Life is historian Steven Shapin’s story about who scientists are, who we think they are, and why our sensibilities about such things matter. Conventional wisdom has long held that scientists are neither better nor worse than anyone else, that personal virtue does not necessarily accompany technical expertise, and that scientific practice is profoundly impersonal. Shapin, however, here shows how the uncertainties attending scientific research make the virtues of individual researchers intrinsic to scientific work. From the early twentieth-century origins of corporate research laboratories to the high-flying scientific entrepreneurship of the present, Shapin argues that the radical uncertainties of much contemporary science have made personal virtues more central to its practice than ever before, and he also reveals how radically novel aspects of late modern science have unexpectedly deep historical roots. His elegantly conceived history of the scientific career and character ultimately encourages us to reconsider the very nature of the technical and moral worlds in which we now live. Building on the insights of Shapin’s last three influential books, featuring an utterly fascinating cast of characters, and brimming with bold and original claims, The Scientific Life is essential reading for anyone wanting to reflect on late modern American culture and how it has been shaped.


The Scientific Life Related Books

The Scientific Life
Language: en
Pages: 488
Authors: Steven Shapin
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-08-01 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? They are experts—indee
The Scientific Revolution
Language: en
Pages: 255
Authors: Steven Shapin
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-11-05 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This scholarly and accessible study presents “a provocative new reading” of the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advances in scientific inquiry (Kirk
A Social History of Truth
Language: en
Pages: 516
Authors: Steven Shapin
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-11-18 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do we come to trust our knowledge of the world? What are the means by which we distinguish true from false accounts? Why do we credit one observational stat
Leviathan and the Air-Pump
Language: en
Pages: 446
Authors: Steven Shapin
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-08-15 - Publisher: Princeton University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Ho
Science Incarnate
Language: en
Pages: 360
Authors: Christopher Lawrence
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 1998-04-11 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Does truth have anything to do with the belly? What difference does it make to the pursuit of knowledge whether Einstein rode a bicycle, Russell was randy, or D