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A proposal for a new framework for fostering collaborations across disciplines, addressing both theory and practical applications.Cross-disciplinary collaboration increasingly characterizes today's science and engineering research. The problems and opportunities facing society do not come neatly sorted by discipline. Difficulties arise when researchers from disciplines as different as engineering and the humanities work together and find that they speak largely different languages. This book explores a new framework for fostering collaborations among existing disciplines and expertise communities. The framework unites two ideas to emerge from recent work in STS: trading zones, in which scientific subcultures, each with its own language, develop the equivalents of pidgin and creole; and interactional expertise, in which experts learn to use the language of another research community in ways that are indistinguishable from expert practitioners of that community. A trading zone can gradually become a new area of expertise, facilitated by interactional expertise and involving negotiations over boundary objects (objects represented in different ways by different participants). The volume describes applications of the framework to service science, business strategy, environmental management, education, and practical ethics. One detailed case study focuses on attempts to create trading zones that would help prevent marine bycatch; another investigates trading zones formed to market the female condom to women in Africa; another describes how humanists embedded in a nanotechnology laboratory gained interactional expertise, resulting in improved research results for both humanists and nanoscientists.ContributorsBrad Allenby, Donna T. Chen, Harry Collins, Robert Evans, Erik Fisher, Peter Galison, Michael E. Gorman, Lynn Isabella, Lekelia D. Jenkins, Mary Ann Leeper, Roop L. Mahajan, Matthew M. Mehalik, Ann E. Mills, Bolko von Oetinger, Elizabeth Powell, Mary V. Rorty, Jeff Shrager, Jim Spohrer, Patricia H. Werhane

“What do we want? Evidence-based science! When do we want it? After peer review!” We have come to think of peer review as the stamp of quality that separates real results from mere conjecture, but a look under the hood reveals that the participants inside of peer review are far from objective. This book reclaims subjectivity and affirms a social mode of objectivity, which prevents peer review from overpromising and underdelivering in its vital role in knowledge production.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of technology assessment (TA) practices, theories, methods and cultures across the globe. Highlighting the significant influence of rapidly changing technology on human life and development, it examines diverse perspectives on how TA can be developed to better meet the challenges of the future.Covering both theory and methodology, expert contributors analyse the deep changes caused by technological advances at the individual, collective and global level. They identify approaches and methods that can lead to informed, considered decisions on technology and responsible handling of their consequences. Chapters explore a wide range of TA applications across different cultural contexts as well as in various fields including AI, climate engineering, healthcare and work.Drawing on extensive practical experiences from a global movement, this Handbook is an invaluable resource for scholars and practitioners of technology assessment. It is also an important guide for students of science and technology studies, the ethics of technology, risk assessment, and responsible research and innovation.

This volume explores how understanding relates to conscious experience. In doing so, it builds bridges between different philosophical disciplines and provides a metaphysically robust characterization of understanding, both in and beyond science.The past two decades have witnessed growing interest from epistemologists, philosophers of science, philosophers of mind and ethicists in the nature and value of intellectual understanding. This volume features original essays on understanding and the phenomenal experiences that underlie it. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. Part 1 provides theoretical characterizations of understanding, including Henk de Regt's defense of a contextual theory of scientific understanding and a debate on whether scientific inference and explanatory power are necessary or central features of understanding. Part 2 explores how conscious experience and understanding are related. The chapters articulate a phenomenal theory of understanding and address themes that are connected to understanding, including awareness, transformative experiences and exemplification. Finally, Part 3 is devoted to domain-specific inquiries about understanding, such as logical proofs, particle physics and moral understanding.Understanding and Conscious Experience will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and phenomenology.

This book explores how and why exchanges across civilizations have come to enrich science today. The dialogical dimension of the history of science has long been marginalized by an excessive concern on why modern science emerged in Europe, but not in any of the advanced civilizations of the East. This focus upon what has been called Joseph Needham's'Grand Comparative Question'ignores his other project, focused on showing how dialogues between civilizations have nurtured science. Needham's'Grand Dialogical Question'– if we may call it that by parity – has directly or indirectly inspired a vast body of literature showing how interconnections of civilizations over the last three thousand years, and exchanges of cosmological, mathematical, geographical, physical, biological and medical technologies, techniques, practices and knowledge, have been woven together to produce current science. Bringing together scholars whose research range across multiple civilizations and disciplines, this book investigates the scope and limits of Needham's dialogical vision for science.

What role do science and technology play in society? What is the nature of expert knowledge? What is science's relation to democracy? This introduction to science, technology, and society answers these questions, and more, by exploring contemporary research on topics such as expertise, activism, science policy, and innovation. It offers a comprehensive resource for considering the place that science and technology have in contemporary societies, and the roles that they can and should play. Accessible to a non-specialist audience, it draws on a rich range of cases and examples, from nuclear activism in India to content moderation in Kenya. Framing science as always social, and society as always shaped by science and technology, it asks: what worlds do we want science and technology to bring into being?

Ever since climate change has been identified as one of the most significant challenges of humanity, climate change deniers have repeatedly tried to discredit the work of scientists. To show how these processes work, Maria M. Sojka examines three ideals about how science should operate. These ideals concern the understanding of uncertainties, the relationship between models and data, and the role of values in science. Their widespread presence in the public understanding of science makes it easy for political and industrial stakeholders to undermine inconvenient research. To address this issue, Sojka analyses the importance of tacit knowledge in scientific practice and the question of what defines an expert.

This is an open access book. This book, the first edited collection of its kind, explores the recent emergence of philosophical research in astrophysics. It assembles a variety of original essays from scholars who are currently shaping this field, and it combines insightful overviews of the current state of play with novel, significant contributions. It therefore provides an ideal source for understanding the current debates in philosophy of astrophysics, and it offers new ideas for future cutting-edge research. The selection of essays offered in this book addresses methodological and metaphysical questions that target a wide range of topics, including dark matter, black holes, astrophysical observations and modelling.The book serves as the first standard resource in philosophy of astrophysics for all scholars who work in the field and want to expand or deepen their knowledge, but it also provides anaccessible guide for all those philosophers and scientists who are interested in getting a first, basic understanding of the main issues in philosophy of astrophysics.

Interdisciplinarity is a hallmark of contemporary knowledge production. This book introduces a Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity at the intersection of science, society and sustainability. In light of the ambivalence of the technosciences and the challenge of sustainable development in the Anthropocene, this engaged philosophy provides a novel critical perspective on interdisciplinarity in science policy and research practice. It draws upon the original spirit of interdisciplinarity as an environmentalist concept and advocates an essential change in human-nature relations. The author utilizes the rich tradition of philosophy for case study analysis and develops a framework to disentangle the various forms of inter- and transdisciplinarity. Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity offers a foundation for a critical-reflexive program of interdisciplinarity conducive to a sustainable future for our knowledge society and contributes to fields such as sustainability sciences, social ecology, environmental ethics, technology assessment, complex systems, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of science. It injects a fresh way of thinking on interdisciplinarity – and supports researchers as well as science policy makers, university managers, and academic administrators in critical-reflexive knowledge production for sustainable development.

There is a deep distrust of experts in America today. Influenced by populist politics, many question or downright ignore the recommendations of scientists, scholars, and others with specialized training. It appears that expertise, a critical component of democratic life, no longer appeals to wide swaths of the body politic. On Expertise is a robust defense of the expert class. Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher examines modern and ancient theories of expertise through the lens of rhetoric and interviews some forty professionals, revealing how they understand their own expertise and how they came to be known as “experts.” She shows that expertise requires not only knowledge and skill but also, crucially, an acknowledgment by others—both specialists and laypeople—that one is a credible authority. At its heart, expertise is a rhetorical construct, and to be persuasive, experts must have the ability to apply their knowledge and skills rightly—in the right way, at the right time, to achieve the right end. Ultimately, Mehlenbacher argues that experts apply their technical knowledge effectively and win others'trust through acting prudently and cultivating goodwill. Timely, practical, and sophisticated, On Expertise provides vital scaffolding for our understanding of expertise and its real-world application. This book is essential for beginning the work of rehabilitating the expert class amid a politics of extreme populism and anti-intellectualism.

This book presents a critical examination of conversations between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities asking whether their conversations have come of age. These conversations are important because ultimately their outcome have real world consequences in engineering education and practice, and for the social and material world we inhabit. Taken together the 21 chapters provide scholarly-argued responses to the following questions.Why are these conversations important for engineering, for social sciences, and for the humanities?Are there key places in practice, in the curriculum, and in institutions where these conversations can develop best?What are the barriers to successful conversations?What proposals can be made for deepening these conversations for the future?How would we know that the conversations have come of age, and who gets to decide?The book appeals toscholarly audiences that come together through their work in engineering education and practice. The chapters of the book probes and access the meetings and conversations, and they explore new avenues for strengthening dialogues that transcend narrow disciplinary confines and divisions.“The volume offers a rich collection of descriptive resources and theoretical tools that will be useful for researchers of engineering practices, and for those aiming to reshape the engineering lifeworld through new policies. The book depicts the current state of the art of the most visible SSH contributions to shaping engineering practices, as well as a map of research gaps and policy problems that still need to be explored.” - Dr. Ir. Lavinia Marin, TU Delft, Electrical Engineering and Philosophy

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods.In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian's case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well.

This open access edited book provides new thinking on scientific identity formation. It thoroughly interrogates the concepts of community and identity, including both historical and contemporaneous analyses of several scientific fields. Chapters examine whether, and how, today's scientific identities and communities are subject to fundamental changes, reacting to tangible shifts in research funding as well as more intangible transformations in our society's understanding and expectations of technoscience. In so doing, this book reinvigorates the concept of scientific community. Readers will discover empirical analyses of newly emerging fields such as synthetic biology, systems biology and nanotechnology, and accounts of the evolution of theoretical conceptions of scientific identity and community. With inspiring examples of technoscientific identity work and community constellations, along with thought-provoking hypotheses and discussion, the work has a broad appeal. Those involved in science governance will benefit particularly from this book, and it has much to offer those in scholarly fields including sociology of science, science studies, philosophy of science and history of science, as well as teachers of science and scientists themselves.

The public has voiced concern over the adverse effects of vaccines from the moment Dr. Edward Jenner introduced the first smallpox vaccine in 1796. The controversy over childhood immunization intensified in 1998, when Dr. Andrew Wakefield linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Although Wakefield's findings were later discredited and retracted, and medical and scientific evidence suggests routine immunizations have significantly reduced life-threatening conditions like measles, whooping cough, and polio, vaccine refusal and vaccine-preventable outbreaks are on the rise. This book explores vaccine hesitancy and refusal among parents in the industrialized North. Although biomedical, public health, and popular science literature has focused on a scientifically ignorant public, the real problem, Maya J. Goldenberg argues, lies not in misunderstanding, but in mistrust. Public confidence in scientific institutions and government bodies has been shaken by fraud, research scandals, and misconduct. Her book reveals how vaccine studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, compelling rhetorics from the anti-vaccine movement, and the spread of populist knowledge on social media have all contributed to a public mistrust of the scientific consensus. Importantly, it also emphasizes how historical and current discrimination in health care against marginalized communities continues to shape public perception of institutional trustworthiness. Goldenberg ultimately reframes vaccine hesitancy as a crisis of public trust rather than a war on science, arguing that having good scientific support of vaccine efficacy and safety is not enough. In a fraught communications landscape, Vaccine Hesitancy advocates for trust-building measures that focus on relationships, transparency, and justice.

​This cognitive ethnography examines how scientists create meaning about biological phenomena through experimental practices in the laboratory, offering a frontline perspective on how new insights come to life. An exercise in the anthropology of knowledge, this story follows a community of biologists in Western Norway in their quest to build a novel experimental system for research on Lepeoptheirus salmonis, a parasite that has become a major pest in salmon aquaculture. The book offers a window on the making of this material culture of science, and how biological phenomena and their representations are skillfully transformed and made meaningful within a rich cognitive ecology. Conventional accounts of experiments see their purpose as mainly auxiliary, as handmaidens to theory. By looking closely at experimental activities and their materiality, this book shows how experimentation contributes to knowledge production through a broader set of epistemic actions.In drawing on a combination of approaches from anthropology and cognitive science, it offers a unique contribution to the fields of cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, science and technology studies and the philosophy of science.

An investigation of the work and workers in fossil preparation labs reveals the often unacknowledged creativity and problem-solving on which scientists rely.Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers.Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials.The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.

This book presents cutting-edge concepts on the question of trust. Written by leading experts, it investigates a paradoxical feature of contemporary society: while information and communication technologies, on the one hand, and scientific discourses, on the other, can promote more informed participation in public and democratic life, they have also led to a dramatic decline in our communicative and cooperative skills. The book analyzes the notion of trust from an interdisciplinary perspective by combining the normative (continental) and empirical (Anglo-American) approaches and by considering the political, epistemological, and historical transformations in the interpersonal relationships sparked by new technologies. Using trust as a model, it then investigates and clarifies the new types of participation that are made possible by scientific and technological advances.

Spätestens seit den 1980er Jahren hat sich rund um die Frage, wie Wissen hergestellt, zirkuliert und vermittelt wird, eine vielfältige, interdisziplinäre und internationale Forschungslandschaft herausgebildet. Das 2005 eröffnete Zürcher Zentrum »Geschichte des Wissens« hat diese Diskussionen maßgeblich mitgeprägt. Fünfzehn Jahre später werfen wir (Rück-)Blicke auf das Wissensparadigma aus verschiedenen disziplinären Perspektiven. Dieser letzte Band des Zürcher Jahrbuchs für Wissensgeschichte diskutiert unterschiedliche Genealogien, die für die Karriere von »Wissen« herangezogen werden können, wie etwa den Aufstieg der »Wissensgesellschaft«, die Abgrenzung zur Wissenschaftsforschung, die Etablierung der Kulturwissenschaften. Was waren und sind die Großwetterlagen, Dringlichkeiten, Motivatoren? Aber auch: Was waren und sind die blind spots in der Begeisterung für »Wissen«? Und wo wird die Wissensgeschichte verabschiedet? Und jetzt? Feierabend? Die Beiträge in diesem Band evaluieren Wissensforschung nicht nur kritisch und rückblickend, sondern fragen mit Blick auf Gegenwarten und mögliche Zukünfte, wie sich unser Verständnis von »Wissen« verändert und welche Forschungsfragen und -zugriffe sich eröffnen oder (neuerlich) aufdrängen – in Zeiten von post-truth und fake news, der Allgegenwart des Digitalen sowie aktueller wissenschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Herausforderungen etwa durch Klimawandel oder Migration. Mit Beiträgen von Sandra Bärnreuther, Sabine Baier, Maria Böhmer, Cornelius Borck, Flurin Condrau, Monika Dommann, Anna Echterhölter, Kijan Espahangizi, Mareile Flitsch, Michael Hagner, Caspar Hirschi, Andreas Isler, Thomas Kaiser, Andreas B. Kilcher, Alexis Malefakis, Susanne Michl, Nicolas Pethes, Maike Powroznik, Philipp Sarasin, Max Stadler, Marianne Sommer, Rebekka Sutter, Jakob Tanner, Martina Wernsdörfer, Christa Wirth, Sophie Witt, Monika Wulz.

This is an international and interdisciplinary volume that provides a new look at the general background of the social sciences from a philosophical perspective and provides directions for methodology. It seeks to overcome the limitations of the traditional treatises of a philosophy of science rooted in the physical sciences, as well as extend the coverage of basic science to intentional and socially normative features of the social sciences. The discussions included in this book are divided into four thematic sections: Social and cognitive roots for reflexivity upon the research process Philosophies of explanation in the social sciences Social normativity in social sciences Social processes in particular sciences Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences will find an interested audience in students of the philosophy of science and social sciences. It is also relevant for researchers and students in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, education, and political science.

This book gathers essays that introduce the ideological advances in the philosophy of engineering and technology in contemporary China. It particularly focuses on China's distinctive concepts and methods, revealing different views and academic debates to offer readers a comprehensive overview of this important field.The contributors present unique perspectives based on practical problems and traditional philosophy, examining such issues and concepts as axiology and theories of process, the difference between engineering activities and technology activities, and the core of the relationship between “Dao” and “Technique.”Other essays cover the ethics of technology, practical wisdom (phronesis) and practical reasoning, as well as creative concepts and methods concerning the philosophical problems in high technology, architectural technology, and technological innovation. The authors also consider more general issues in the field.This book compiles the relevant research achievements of Chinese scholars in various time periods. Some authors have revised and translated into English papers published in Chinese, while others present their research in English specifically for this study. An annotated bibliography of the major publications in the field completes this collection.

The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed “the ideal of moral imagination,” emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science.

This book argues that the traditional image of Feyerabend is erroneous and that, contrary to common belief, he was a great admirer of science. It shows how Feyerabend presented a vision of science that represented how science really works. Besides giving a theoretical framework based on Feyerabend´s philosophy of science, the book offers criteria that can help readers to evaluate and understand research reported in important international science education journals, with respect to Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism. The book includes an evaluation of general chemistry and physics textbooks. Most science curricula and textbooks provide the following advice to students: Do not allow theories in contradiction with observations, and all scientific theories must be formulated inductively based on experimental facts. Feyerabend questioned this widely prevalent premise of science education in most parts of the world, and in contrast gave the following advice: Scientistscan accept a hypothesis despite experimental evidence to the contrary and scientific theories are not always consistent with all the experimental data. No wonder Feyerabend became a controversial philosopher and was considered to be against rationalism and anti-science. Recent research in philosophy of science, however, has shown that most of Feyerabend´s philosophical ideas are in agreement with recent trends in the 21st century. Of the 120 articles from science education journals, evaluated in this book only 9% recognized that Feyerabend was presenting a plurality of perspectives based on how science really works. Furthermore, it has been shown that Feyerabend could even be considered as a perspectival realist. Among other aspects, Feyerabend emphasized that in order to look for breakthroughs in science one does not have to be complacent about the truth of the theories but rather has to look for opportunities to “break rules” or “violate categories.” Mansoor Niaz carefully analyses references to Feyerabend in the literature and displays the importance of Feyerabend's philosophy in analyzing, historical episodes. Niaz shows through this remarkable book a deep understanding to the essence of science. - Calvin Kalman, Concordia University, Canada In this book Mansoor Niaz explores the antecedents, context and features of Feyerabend's work and offers a more-nuanced understanding, then reviews and considers its reception in the science education and philosophy of science literature. This is a valuable contribution to scholarship about Feyerabend, with the potential to inform further research as well as science education practice.- David Geelan, Griffith University, Australia

An illustrated examination of laboratory architecture and the work that it does to engage the public, recruit scientists, and attract funding.The laboratory building is as significant to the twenty-first century as the cathedral was to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The contemporary science laboratory is built at the grand scales of cathedrals and constitutes as significant an architectural statement. The laboratory is a serious investment in architectural expression in an attempt to persuade us of the value of the science that goes on inside. In this lavishly illustrated book, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady and Chris L. Smith explore the architecture of modern life science laboratories, and the work that it does to engage the public, recruit scientists, and attract funding.Looking at the varied designs of eleven important laboratories in North America, Europe, and Australia, all built between 2005 and 2019, Kaji-O'Grady and Smith examine the relationship between the design of contemporary laboratory buildings and the ideas and ideologies of science. Observing that every laboratory architect and client declares the same three aspirations—to eliminate boundaries, to communicate the benefits of its research programs, and to foster collaboration—Kaji-O'Grady and Smith organize their account according to the themes of boundaries, expression, and socialization. For instance, they point to the South Australian Health and Medical Institute's translucent envelope as the material equivalent of institutional accountability; the insistent animal imagery of the NavarraBioMed laboratory in Spain; and the Hillside Research Campus's mimicry of the picturesque fishing village that once occupied its site. Through these and their other examples, Kaji-O'Grady and Smith show how the architecture of the laboratory shapes the science that takes place within it.

This book presents a novel approach to the analysis of interdisciplinary science based on the contemporary philosophical literature on scientific representation. The basic motivation for developing this approach is that epistemic issues are insufficiently dealt with in the existing literature on interdisciplinarity. This means that when interdisciplinary science is praised (as it often is), it is far from clear to what extent this praise is merited – at least if one cares about various more or less standardised measures of scientific quality. To develop a more adequate way of capturing what is going on in interdisciplinary science, the author draws inspiration from the rich philosophical literature on modelling, idealisation, perspectivism, and scientific pluralism. The discussion hereof reveals a number of critical pitfalls related to transferring mathematical and conceptual tools between scientific contexts, which should be relevant and interesting for anyone actively engaged in funding, evaluating, or carrying out interdisciplinary science.

This volume explores the interplay between mathematical and physical research and the interactions of twentieth-century scientists within their academic communities. Beginning with Einstein's general theory of relativity, the authors investigate a series of dramatic discoveries and rival theories in physics that influenced the development of modern differential geometry. Other sections recount the numerous methods, like the resurgence of Weyl geometry, used by geometers to solve the problems revealed by those same innovations in space-time physics. The effect of general relativity on astronomy is also addressed, namely how astronomers worked through new theories like inflationary cosmology and Phoenix models.By including recent historical research and coupling this work with many disciplines'unique perspectives, this text provides a rich picture of general relativity and cosmology over the course of the twentieth century. The increased study on the documentation of Einstein's early scientific work has clarified the history of science for that time and profoundly altered the way scientists view their own work, as this interdisciplinary volume demonstrates.

This book presents contributions from an internal symposium organized to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Specola Vaticana, or Vatican Observatory, in the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo. The aim is to provide an overview of the scientific and cultural work being undertaken at the Observatory today and to describe the outcomes of important recent investigations. The contents cover interesting topics in a variety of areas, including planetary science and instrumentation, stellar evolution and stars, galaxies, cosmology, quantum gravity, the history of astronomy, and interactions between science, philosophy, and theology. On September 29, 1935, Pope Pius XI officially inaugurated the new headquarters of the Specola Vaticana at Castel Gandolfo. With new telescopes, a new astrophysical laboratory for spectrochemical analysis, and a young staff comprising Jesuit scientists, this inauguration marked the beginning of an intense period of scientific achievements at the Observatory. This anniversary book, featuring contributions from members of the current Observatory staff and adjunct scholars, will appeal to all with an interest in the history of the Specola Vaticana and its significance for astronomy.

This volume reviews examples and notions of robustness at several levels of biological organization. It tackles many philosophical and conceptual issues and casts an outlook on the future challenges of robustness studies in the context of a practice-oriented philosophy of science. The focus of discussion is on concrete case studies. These highlight the necessity of a level-dependent description of robust biological behaviors.Experts from the neurosciences, biochemistry, ecology, biology, and the history and the philosophy of life sciences provide a multiplex perspective on the topic. Contributions span from protein folding, to cell-level robustness, to organismal and developmental robustness, to sensorimotor systems, up to the robustness of ecological systems.Several chapters detail neurobiological case-studies. The brain, the poster child of plasticity in biology, offers multiple examples of robustness. Neurobiology explores the importance of temporal organization and multiscalarity in making this robustness-with-plasticity possible. The discussion also includes structures well beyond the brain, such as muscles and the complex feedback loops involved in the peculiar robustness of music perception. Overall, the volume grounds general reflections upon concrete case studies, opening to all the life sciences but also to non-biological and bio-inspired fields such as post-modern engineering. It will appeal to researchers, students, as well as non-expert readers.

Recent startling successes in machine intelligence using a technique called ‘deep learning'seem to blur the line between human and machine as never before. Are computers on the cusp of becoming so intelligent that they will render humans obsolete? Harry Collins argues we are getting ahead of ourselves, caught up in images of a fantastical future dreamt up in fictional portrayals. The greater present danger is that we lose sight of the very real limitations of artificial intelligence and readily enslave ourselves to stupid computers: the ‘Surrender'. By dissecting the intricacies of language use and meaning, Collins shows how far we have to go before we cannot distinguish between the social understanding of humans and computers. When the stakes are so high, we need to set the bar higher: to rethink ‘intelligence'and recognize its inherent social basis. Only if machine learning succeeds on this count can we congratulate ourselves on having produced artificial intelligence.

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate'4E'theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments.With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence

We live in times of increasing public distrust of the main institutions of modern society. Experts, including scientists, are suspected of working to hidden agendas or serving vested interests. The solution is usually seen as more public scrutiny and more control by democratic institutions – experts must be subservient to social and political life. In this book, Harry Collins and Robert Evans take a radically different view. They argue that, rather than democracies needing to be protected from science, democratic societies need to learn how to value science in this new age of uncertainty. By emphasizing that science is a moral enterprise, guided by values that should matter to all, they show how science can support democracy without destroying it and propose a new institution – The Owls – that can mediate between science and society and improve technological decision-making for the benefit of all.

The emergence of systems biology raises many fascinating questions: What does it mean to take a systems approach to problems in biology? To what extent is the use of mathematical and computational modelling changing the life sciences? How does the availability of big data influence research practices? What are the major challenges for biomedical research in the years to come? This book addresses such questions of relevance not only to philosophers and biologists but also to readers interested in the broader implications of systems biology for science and society.The book features reflections and original work by experts from across the disciplines including systems biologists, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scholars investigating the social and educational aspects of systems biology. In response to the same set of questions, the experts develop and defend their personal perspectives on the distinctive character of systems biology and the challenges that lie ahead. Readers are invited to engage with different views on the questions addressed, and may explore numerous themes relating to the philosophy of systems biology.This edited work will appeal to scholars and all levels, from undergraduates to researchers, and to those interested in a variety of scholarly approaches such as systems biology, mathematical and computational modelling, cell and molecular biology, genomics, systems theory, and of course, philosophy of biology.

Nanotechnology, clean technology, and geoengineering span the scale of human ingenuity, from the imperceptibly small to the unimaginably large. Yet they are united by a commonality of ethics that permeates how and why they are developed, and how the resulting consequences are managed. The articles in this volume provide a comprehensive account of current thinking around the ethics of development and use within each of the technological domains, and addresses challenges and opportunities that cut across all three. In particular, the collection provides unique insights into the ethics of'noumenal'technologies - technologies that are impossible to see or detect or conceive of with human senses or conventional tools. This collection will be of relevance to anyone who is actively involved with ensuring the responsible and sustainable development of nanotechnology, geoengineering or clean technology.

What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions, and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things – not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen scholars from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, social anthropology, cultural studies and ethics each explore a research object in its technological setting, ranging from carbon to cardboard, from arctic ice cores to nuclear waste, from wetlands to GMO seeds, from fuel cells to the great Pacific garbage patch. Together they offer fascinating stories and novel analytic concepts, all the while opening up a space for reflecting on the specific character of technoscientific objects. With their promise of sustainable innovation and a technologically transformed future, these objects are highly charged with values and design expectations. By clarifying their mode of existence, we are learning to come to terms more generally with the furniture of the technoscientific world – where, for example, the'dead matter'of classical physics is becoming the'smart material'of emerging and converging technologies.

The Structures of Practical Knowledge investigates the nature of practical knowledge – why, how, when and by whom it is codified, and once codified, how this knowledge is structured. The inquiry unfolds in a series of fifteen case studies, which range in focus from early modern Italy to eighteenth century China. At the heart of each study is a shared definition of practical knowledge, that is, knowledge needed to obtain a certain outcome, whether that be an artistic or mechanical artifact, a healing practice, or a mathematical result. While the content of practical knowledge is widely variable, this study shows that all practical knowledge is formally equivalent in following a defined workflow, as reflected in a construction procedure, a recipe, or an algorithm.As explored in the volume's fifteen contributions, there are three levels at which structures of practical knowledge may be understood and examined. At the most immediate level, there are the individual workflows that encompasses practical knowledge itself. Probing further, it is possible to examine the structure of practical knowledge as it is externalized and codified in texts, drawings, and artifacts such as models. Finally, practical knowledge is also related to social structures, which fundamentally determine its dissemination and evolution into new knowledge structures. The social structures of professionals and institutions represent the critical means by which practical knowledge takes form. These actors are the agents of codification, and by means of selection, appropriation, investment, and knowledge development, they determine the formation of new structures of practical knowledge. On a more abstract level, the creation of new knowledge structures is understood as constituting the basis for the further development of scientific knowledge. Rich in subject matter and incisive in the theory it lays out, this volume represents an important contribution to the history of science and epistemology. Individually, the fifteen case studies – encompassing the history of architecture, mining, brewing, glass production, printing, ballistics, mechanics, cartography, cosmology and astronomy – are replete with original research, and offer new insights into the history of science. Taken together, the contributions remodel historical epistemology as a whole, elucidating the underlining knowledge structures that transcend disciplinary boundaries, and that unite practitioners across time and space.

This volume collects reflections on the role of philosophy in case studies in the history of science. Case studies have played a prominent role in recent history and philosophy of science. They have been used to illustrate, question, explore, or explicate philosophical points of view. Even if not explicitly so, historical narratives are always guided by philosophical background assumptions. But what happens if different philosophies lead to different narratives of the same historical episodes? Can historical case studies decide between competing philosophical viewpoints? What are the criteria that a case study has to fulfill in order to be philosophically relevant? Bringing together leading practitioners in the fields of history and philosophy of the physical and the life sciences, this volume addresses this methodological problem and proposes ways of rendering explicit philosophical assumptions of historical work.

What roles do different kinds of knowledge play in medicine? What roles should they play? What standards (epistemic, ethical, practical) should be met before knowledge is used to develop policy or practice? Medical decision-making, whether in the clinic or at the policy level, can have serious and far-reaching consequences. It is therefore important to base decisions on the best available knowledge. Yet deciding what should count as the best available knowledge is not easy. This important book addresses philosophical questions about what kinds of knowledge should be taken into account, and how knowledge should inform practice and policy. The chapters in this volume examine the relationship between knowledge and action in medical research, practice, and policy. “Knowledge” is broadly construed to include knowledge from clinical, laboratory, or social science research, and from the clinical encounter, as well as broader background assumptions prevalent in society that inform both the kinds of knowledge that are taken to be relevant to medicine and how that knowledge is interpreted in decision-making. Such knowledge may be relevant not only to clinical decision-making with regard to the care of individual patients, but also to the practice of scientific research, the development of policy and practice guidelines, and decisions made by patients or by patient advocacy groups.

What is the role of science in social work? Ian Shaw considers social work inventions, evidence-based practice, the history of scientific claims in social work practice, technology, and social work research methodology to demonstrate the significant role that scientific language and practice play in the complex world of social work.By treating science as a social action marked by the interplay of choice, activity, and constraints, Shaw links scientific and social work knowledge through the core themes of the nature of evidence, critical learning and understanding, justice, and the skilled evaluation of the subject. He shows specifically how to connect science, research, and the practical and speaks to the novel topics this integration introduces into the discipline, including experience, expertise, faith, tacit knowledge, judgment, interests, scientific controversies, and understanding.

An exponentially growing industry, human robot interaction (HRI) research has drawn predominantly upon psychologists'descriptions of mechanisms of face-to-face dyadic interactions. This book considers how social robotics is beginning unwittingly to confront an impasse that has been a perennial dilemma for psychology, associated with the historical ‘science vs. art'debate. Raya Jones examines these paradigmatic tensions, and, in tandem, considers ways in which the technology-centred discourse both reflects and impacts upon understanding our relational nature. Chapters in the book explore not only how the technology-centred discourse constructs machines as us, but also how humans feature in this discourse. Focusing on how the social interaction is conceptualised when the human-robot interaction is discussed, this book addresses issues such as the long-term impact on persons and society, authenticity of relationships, and challenges to notions of personhood. By leaving aside terminological issues, Jones attempts to transcend ritual of pitching theories against each other in order to comprehensively analyse terms such as subjectivity, self and personhood and their fluid interplay in the world that we inhabit.Personhood and Social Robotics will be a key text for postgraduate students, researchers and scholars interested in the connection between technology and human psychology, including psychologists, science and technology studies scholars, media studies scholars and humanists. The book will also be of interest to roboticists and HRI researchers, as well as those studying or working in areas of artificial intelligence and interactive technologies more generally.

This book systematically addresses the issue of assessing the normative nature of visions of emerging technologies in an epistemologically robust way. In the context of democratic governance of emerging technologies, not only it is important to reflect on technologies'moral significance, but also to address their emerging and future oriented character. The book proposes an original approach to deal with the issue of “plausible” ethical evaluation of new technologies. Taking its start from current debates about Technology Assessment, the proposed solution emerges as a combination of theoretical and methodological insights from the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies and a normative justification based on pragmatist ethics. The book's main contribution is to engage a diverse and interdisciplinary audience (ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, technology assessment researchers and practitioners) in a reflection concerning the epistemological challenges that are associated to the endeavour of appraising the moral significance of emerging technologies in the attempt of democratically governing them. It brings together concepts and methodologies from different disciplines and shows their synergy in applying them to two specific case studies of emerging biomedical technologies.

This book investigates how collaborative scientific practice yields scientific knowledge. At a time when most of today's scientific knowledge is created in research groups, the author reconsiders the social character of science to address the question of whether collaboratively created knowledge should be considered as collective achievement, and if so, in which sense. Combining philosophical analysis with qualitative empirical inquiry, this book provides a comparative case study of mono- and interdisciplinary research groups, offering insight into the day-to-day practice of scientists. The book includes field observations and interviews with scientists to present an empirically-grounded perspective on much-debated questions concerning research groups'division of labor, relations of epistemic dependence and trust.

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents.Whether and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate is given comprehensive coverage – presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education.In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area.Using context as “bridge” this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe – both East and West – with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia.

This highly multidisciplinary collection discusses an increasingly important topic among scholars in science and technology studies: objectivity in science. It features eleven essays on scientific objectivity from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy of science, history of science, and feminist philosophy. Topics addressed in the book include the nature and value of scientific objectivity, the history of objectivity, and objectivity in scientific journals and communities. Taken individually, the essays supply new methodological tools for theorizing what is valuable in the pursuit of objective knowledge and for investigating its history. The essays offer many starting points, while suggesting new avenues of research. Taken collectively, the essays exemplify the very virtues of objectivity that they theorize—in reading them together, the reader can sense various anxieties about the dangerously subjective in our age and locate commonalities of concern as well as differences of approach. As a result, the volume offers an expansive vision of a research community seeking a communal understanding of its own methods and its own epistemic anxieties, struggling to enunciate the key problems of knowledge of our time and offer insight into how to overcome them.

Could all or part of our taken-as-established scientific conclusions, theories, experimental data, ontological commitments, and so forth have been significantly different? Science as It Could Have Been focuses on a crucial issue that contemporary science studies have often neglected: the issue of contingency within science. It considers a number of case studies, past and present, from a wide range of scientific disciplines—physics, biology, geology, mathematics, and psychology—to explore whether components of human science are inevitable, or if we could have developed an alternative successful science based on essentially different notions, conceptions, and results. Bringing together a group of distinguished contributors in philosophy, sociology, and history of science, this edited volume offers a comprehensive analysis of the contingency/inevitability problem and a lively and up-to-date portrait of current debates in science studies.

This volume is put together in honor of a distinguished historian of science, Kostas Gavroglu, whose work has won international acclaim, and has been pivotal in establishing the discipline of history of science in Greece, its consolidation in other countries of the European Periphery, and the constructive dialogue of these emerging communities with an extended community of international scholars.The papers in the volume reflect Gavroglu's broad range of intellectual interests and touch upon significant themes in recent history and philosophy of science. They include topics in the history of modern physical sciences, science and technology in the European periphery, integrated history and philosophy of science, historiographical considerations, and intersections with the history of mathematics, technology and contemporary issues. They are authored by eminent scholars whose academic and personal trajectories crossed with Gavroglu's. The book will interest historians andphilosophers of science and technology alike, as well as science studies scholars, and generally readers interested in the role of the sciences in the past in various geographical contexts.

In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges?This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn.

Das herkömmliche Verständnis der Konfiguration von disziplinären Wissenschaften wird in diesem Buch zur Diskussion gestellt. Peter Biniok begründet die Dynamik von Wissenschaftsstrukturen interaktiv und misst damit dem steten Fluss von Forschungsaktivitäten mehr Bedeutung zu. Ausgehend von der Theorie des Handelns von Anselm Strauss argumentiert er, dass die Schweizer Nanowissenschaften in einem kollektiven Konstruktionsprozess entstehen, der sich durch Bricolage als spezifische Handlungsform auszeichnet. Die besondere Erklärungskraft des Ansatzes liegt in der Bestimmbarkeit, wie Akteure interaktiv und situativ Strukturierung anstoßen und erhalten.

To ordinary people, science used to seem infallible. Scientists were heroes, selflessly pursuing knowledge for the common good. More recently, a series of scientific scandals, frauds and failures have led us to question science's pre-eminence. Revelations such as Climategate, or debates about the safety of the MMR vaccine, have dented our confidence in science. In this provocative new book Harry Collins seeks to redeem scientific expertise, and reasserts science's special status. Despite the messy realities of day-to-day scientific endeavor, he emphasizes the superior moral qualities of science, dismissing the dubious “default” expertise displayed by many of those outside the scientific community. Science, he argues, should serve as an example to ordinary citizens of how to think and act, and not the other way round.

This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years. Convergence in knowledge, technology, and society is the accelerating, transformative interaction among seemingly distinct scientific disciplines, technologies, and communities to achieve mutual compatibility, synergism, and integration, and through this process to create added value for societal benefit. It is a movement that is recognized by scientists and thought leaders around the world as having the potential to provide far-reaching solutions to many of today's complex knowledge, technology, and human development challenges. Four essential and interdependent convergence platforms of human activity are defined in the first part of this report: nanotechnology-biotechnology-information technology and cognitive science (“NBIC”) foundational tools; Earth-scale environmental systems; human-scale activities; and convergence methods for societal-scale activities. The report then presents the main implications of convergence for human physical potential, cognition and communication, productivity and societal outcomes, education and physical infrastructure, sustainability, and innovative and responsible governance. As a whole, the report presents a new model for convergence. To effectively take advantage of this potential, a proactive governance approach is suggested. The study identifies an international opportunity to develop and apply convergence for technological, economic, environmental, and societal benefits. The panel also suggests an opportunity in the United States for implementing a program aimed at focusing disparate R and D energies into a coherent activity - a'Societal Convergence Initiative”. This study received input from leading academic, industry, government, and NGO experts from the United States, LatinAmerica, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

'Highly recommended.'--Choice: Current Reviews for Academic LibrariesThis handbook is the definitive resource for scholars and students interested in how research and theory within each of the major domains of psychologyódevelopmental, cognitive, personality, and socialóhave been applied to understand the nature of scientific thought and behavior. Edited by two esteemed pioneers in the emerging discipline of the psychology of science, it is the first empirically based compendium of its time. The handbook provides a comprehensive examination of how scientific thinking is learned and evolves from infancy to adolescence and adulthood, and combines developmental and cognitive approaches to show the categorical similarities and differences in thinking between children, adolescents, adults, and scientists. Chapters highlight the breadth and depth of psychological perspectives in the studies of science, from creativity and genius, gender, and conflict and cooperation, to postmodernism and psychobiography. A section on applications offers findings and ideas that can be put to use by educators, policymakers, and science administrators. Contributors examine the importance of mental models in solving difficult technical problems, and the significance of leadership and organizational structure in successful innovation. The final section of the book is devoted to the future of this new field, focusing on how to continue to develop a healthy psychology of science.Key Features:Presents the only empirically based compendium of current knowledge about the psychology of scientific thought and behaviorEdited by two pioneers in the discipline of psychology of scienceDescribes how scientific thinking is learned and changes throughout the life spanAddresses creativity and genius, gender, conflict and cooperation, postmodernism, and psychobiographyCovers applications of the psychology of science that can be used by educators, policymakers, and science administrators

Despite the topic's urgency and centrality, this is the first edited volume to offer a comprehensive assessment of the varying approaches to early engagement with new technologies, including nanotechnology, synthetic biology, biotechnology and ICT. Covering five main approaches to early engagement—constructive technology assessment (CTA), value-sensitive design (VSD), midstream modulation (MM), the network approach for moral evaluation, and political technology assessment—the book will be a pivotal text in the rapidly developing research field of ELSI, which explores the ethical, legal, and social implications of new technologies.Featuring leading scholars who discuss each early engagement approach in turn, the chapters cover both theory and applications, and include evaluative assessments of specific instances of early adoption of technologies. Further contributions focus on theoretical issues relevant to all approaches, including interdisciplinary cooperation, normativity and intervention, and political and public relevance. The publication has added profile due to the requirement of multi-billion-dollar research programs in the US and Europe to engage in ELSI research alongside that of the technical development itself, even in the early stages. Its comprehensive scrutiny of the core factors in early engagement will ensure a readership of policy makers as well as scientists and engineers.