Product Description
Historical studies of the role of military agencies andconsiderations of military power in the promotion of science andtechnology have burgeoned since the early 1980s. Initially, suchstudies focused chiefly on the enormous expansion of physical researchin the United States in the two decades following the Second WorldWar. More recently it has become clear - and this collection ofessays contributes importantly to that recognition - that adecisive influence of military factors upon the development of scienceand technology is by no means limited to the United States or to thatone period. The great strength of this collection - apart fromthe quality and originality of the contributions - is the rangeof the national military and scientific cultures considered:Argentina, Britain, France, USA, and, especially, Germany and Spain. ... Read more

Product Description
Hardbound. Volume 13 of Knowledge and Society documents the various ways in which knowledge and technology transfer happen in practice. In reporting on the travel of thoughts and things, the authors in the volume undermine commonly held ideas about technology transfer. Their story shows how the process of transfer transforms and reshapes the object that travels. More importantly, they show how the travel of knowledge and technology results in new socio-technical arrangements, as well as in new socio-technical objects.

These stories also relate how the authors themselves take part in achieving such processes of transfer and transformation. As anthropologists, consultants, and science studies researchers we do not stand outside the transfers that we describe. The volume is, therefore, a commentary not only on the practice of knowledge and technology transfer, but also on the practice of observation and intervention. ... Read more

Product Description
This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work.

Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections into several sections. Part 1, from 1786-1850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 1870-1899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics.

The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 1910-1927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality.

Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. ... Read more

Product Description
Analyzing the role of journalists in science communication, this book presents a perspective on how this is going to evolve in the twenty-first century. The book takes three distinct perspectives on this interesting subject. Firstly, science journalists reflect on their 'operating rules' (science news values and news making routines). Secondly, a brief history of science journalism puts things into context, characterising the changing output of science writing in newspapers over time. Finally, the book invites several international journalists or communication scholars to comment on these observations thereby opening the global perspective. This unique project will interest a range of readers including science communication students, media studies scholars, professionals working in science communication and journalists. ... Read more

Product Description
Although social scientists generally agree that technology plays a major role in the economy, economics and technology have yet to be brought together in a coherent framework that is both analytically interesting and empirically oriented. This book draws on the tools of science and technology studies and economic sociology to reconceptualize the intersection of economy and technology, suggesting materiality—the idea that social existence involves not only actors and social relations but also objects—as the theoretical point of convergence.

The contributors take up general concerns (including individual agency in a network economy and the materiality of the household in economic history) and specific financial technologies (the stock ticker, the trading room, the telephone). Forms of infrastructure—accounting, global configurations of trading and information technologies, patent law—are examined. Case studies of the effect of the Internet and information technology on consumption (e-commerce), the reputation economy (the rise of online reviews of products), and organizational settings (outsourcing of an IT system) complete this collection of essays.

Contributors: Elizabeth Popp Berman, Daniel Beunza, Michel Callon, Karin Knorr Cetina, Shay David, Thomas F. Gieryn, Barbara Grimpe, David Hatherly, David Leung, Christian Licoppe, Donald MacKenzie, Philip Mirowski, Fabian Muniesa, Edward Nik-Khah, Trevor Pinch, Alex Preda, Nicholas J. Rowland, David Stark, Richard Swedberg. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting book..
The subject of the book is very interesting: linking the science and technology studies with economic sociology. Nevertheless few chapters give new ideas to strengthen these connections: materiality is the central concept - giving attention not only to actors and social relations but also to objects (the NH elements in ANT). It is an interesting book with some nice chapters, my favorites were the "Economic Markets and the Rise of Interactive Agencements: From Prosthetic Agencies to Habilitated Agencies" (M. Callon) and "Transfer Troubles: Outsourcing Information Technology in Higher Education" (N.J. Rowland and T.F. Gieryn).
If you are interested in the impacts of technology in society you must buy...
... Read more

Product Description

Feminist Cultural Studies of Science and Technology challenges the assumption that science is simply what scientists do, say, or write: it shows the multiple and dispersed makings of science and technology in everyday life and popular culture.

This first major guide and review of the new field of feminist cultural studies of science and technology provides readers with an accessible introduction to its theories and methods. Documenting and analyzing the recent explosion of research which has appeared under the rubric of 'cultural studies of science and technology' it examines the distinctive features of the 'cultural turn' in science studies and traces the contribution feminist scholarship has made to this development. Interrogating the theoretical and methodological features it evaluates the significance of this distinctive body of research in the context of concern about public attitudes to science and contentious debates about public understanding of and engagement with science.

Product Description
This volume brings together contributions that resemblespotlights thrown on the past twenty-five years of science andtechnology studies. The contributions cover a broad range: history ofscience; science and politics; science and contemporary democracy;science and the public; science and the constitution; science andmetaphors; and science and modernity. The contributors provide acritical overview of how the field of science and technology studieshas emerged and developed. While assessing major achievements andpotential, they also cast a critical view on deficiencies; provide adiagnosis of where we stand at present and articulate thoughtfulconcerns about where to go from here. The 2002 Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook provides ideal teachingmaterial for discussion in class. Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking Back, Ahead isfor practising professionals and students in social studies of scienceand technology. It is also relevant to social scientists who realizethe importance of science and technology in contemporary society andto natural scientists who want to find out what this field has tooffer. ... Read more

Product Description
Part of a two volume work which explores the relationship between changes in social history - such as work patterns, domestic life, mobility, leisure and health - and scientific and technological developments, this should be of interest to undergraduates following courses in social history, science studies and sociology. It is an Open University reader for course A282. This volume is a collection of secondary source materials. ... Read more

Product Description
Quantitative studies of science and technology represent the research field of utilization of mathematical, statistical, and data-analytical methods and techniques for gathering, handling, interpreting, and predicting a variety of features of the science and technology enterprise, such as performance, development, and dynamics. The field has both strongly developed applied research as well as basic research characteristics. The principal purpose of this handbook is to present this wide range of topics in sufficient depth to give readers a reasonably systematic understanding of the domain of contemporary quantitative studies of science and technology, a domain which incorporates theory, methods and techniques, and applications. In addressing this domain, the handbook aims at different groups of readers: those conducting research in the field of science and technology, including (graduate) students, and those who are to use results of the work presented in this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Massive geopolitical shifts and dramatic developments in computerization and biotechnology are heralding the transformation from the modern to the postmodern age. We are confronted with altered modes of work, communication, and entertainment; new postindustrial and political networks; novel approaches to warfare; genetic engineering; and even cloning. This compelling book explores the challenges to theory, politics, and human identity that we face on the threshold of the third millennium. It follows on the success of Best and Kellner s two previous books: Postmodern Theory, acclaimed as the best critical introduction to the field, and The Postmodern Turn, which provides a powerful mapping of postmodern developments in the arts, politics, science, and theory. In The Postmodern Adventure, Best and Kellner analyze a broad array of literary, cultural, and political phenomena--from fiction, film, science, and the Internet, to globalization and the rise of a transnational image culture. They use the best of modern and postmodern perspectives to illuminate contemporary life and to strive for a just and viable future.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great and Necessary reading
This book shows us what is the world we are living in, and where it is going, Do we want to live in a world full of new transgenetic and cloned amazing creatures, "brothers" of man, and not only that. Written in a very responsible and comprehensive way this study appears as a leading and necessary text.

Excellent Book
Best and Kellner present their ideas in a very compelling and informative fashion. In doing so, they provide a much needed wake up call for those of us who have been caught up in the spectacles of modern capitalism. They advocate a reconciliation of both modern and postmodern ideas to create a new scientific paradigm that will make the best of both positions, and, consequently, create a restructing of world order for the benefit of all humanity. A must read!!!

ForeWord's Gold Medal 2001 Book of the Year in Philosophy
Simply put: this book is an award winner from the two guys who have published the classic survey text Postmodern Theory, and who then followed up with the book that pretty much inaugurated the field of Critical Postmodernism in America, The Postmodern Turn, in which they mapped the emerging intersections of critical theory, art and aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, and the quantum changes in the sciences. That book won the Michael Harrington Award for the Best Book of 1998, New Political Science Section.

I can honestly say that The Postmodern Adventure is twice the book that the last in the series was (and that book was clearly no slouch!). Best & Kellner clearly (but sophisticatedly) chart the complex novelties of our present moment -- illuminating the relationships between such diverse phenomena as Virtuality and the Internet-work, American war and terrorism, Cosmology, Animal Rights, and Biotechnology and Cloning. All of this is seen through the guiding lens of Thomas Pynchon's multiplicitous vision of the Rocket in Gravity's Rainbow.

At the end, Best & Kellner point thinkers and scholars alike toward a future which is fast emerging everywhere at the extremes of Utopia/Dystopia. It is our Adventure to fight creatively and constructively for the former, while critically analyzing the latter, to make of theory a space of practice, and to open our narrow frameworks for living up and out toward the cosmic whole in the name of social justice.

Yes, if you are looking for salon-swinging Frenchmen, their cigarettes held dramatically aloft as they speak incomprehensible oaths to the end of metaphysics, then this is not the Postmodernism for you. This is Critical Postmodernism -- an analysis and a synthesis, a great college text and an interesting read after work, a political statement and a theoretical foundation for others to make their own. Think Deep Ecology meets Cyberpunk meets the Fight for Democracy and you may begin to appreciate just what's going on here...do you think that's a Frankenstein's monster? Good -- that's in there too: go ahead and read!

We live in a revolutionary time -- this book awakens the Postmodernisms afoot in both American soil and abroad to the grander narrative of this amazing moment: counselling the age-old wisdom that "Philosophy begins in wonder," but to this we must add the Postmodern element of flow, of "wander." Adding wonder to wander, Best & Kellner arrive at "Adventure" -- the Postmodern Adventure.

A cross-section of disciplines is revealed
This college-level survey of science, technology and cultural studies provides challenges to theory, politics and issues which we face in modern times. A cross-section of disciplines is revealed in a title which is billed as philosophy but which includes a strong examination of science and culture. Students within many scientific disciplines will find its discussions intriguing - and scholarly.

All the Trendy Horses
Part of the fun of reading postmodern criticism is itsoutlandishness,its attacks on conventional modern modes of thought.Best and Kellner, well-versed in the theories of Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillard, Bordieu and the other wild beasts of France and their worldwide acolytes, manage to take much of the fun right out them.In a style that is pendantic, dull, but full of insight, they trace the interpenetration of the modern with the postmodern and talk reasonably about the irreasonable.Good content, bad style. ... Read more

Product Description
The Space Telescope, launched into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle late in 1989, promised to be the most powerful optical telescope ever built, yielding new insights into the past, present, and future of the universe. The authors trace the Telescope's history and detail the astonishingly complex interactions that took place between the scientific community, government, and private industry in the course of its development. The Telescope is thus much more than a new astronomical instrument but instead must be seen as the product of a great range of forces: scientific, technical, political, social, institutional, and economic. The history of the Space Telescope is set in the context of post-World War II science and 'Big Science' - large scale scientific projects that require massive federal funding and are as much political and managerial efforts as they are scientific and technical ones. The Space Telescope is an example of a Big Science program of the very largest kind, and the book thus reveals the many complex factors and new institutions and strategies that are involved in funding and carrying out large scale scientific projects in the late twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What a big project got to go through
If you thought they just build the Hubble Space Telescope and launched it, you're wrong. This book let you see what all such projects got to go through from the first bright idea and to the actual launch of an earth orbiting space vehicle. Sander Elvik, aerospace engineering student ... Read more

Product Description

Global Public Health Vigilance is the first sociological book to investigate recent changes in how global public health authorities imagine and respond to international threats to human health.

This book explores a remarkable period of conceptual innovation during which infectious disease, historically the focus of international disease control, was displaced by "international public health emergencies," a concept that brought new responsibilities to public health authorities, helping to shape a new project of global public health security.

Drawing on research conducted at the World Health Organization, this book analyzes the formation of a new social apparatus, global public health vigilance, for detecting, responding to and containing international public health emergencies. Between 1995 and 2005 a new form of global health surveillance was invented, international communicable disease control was securitized, and international health law was fundamentally revised.

This timely volume raises critical questions about the institutional effects of the concept of emerging infectious diseases, the role of the news media in global health surveillance, the impact of changes in international health law on public health reasoning and practice, and the reconstitution of the World Health Organization as a power beyond national sovereignty and global governance. It initiates a new research agenda for social science research on public health.

Product Description

What is a popular image of science and where does it come from? Little is known about the formation of science images and their transformation into popular images of science. In this anthology, contributions from two areas of expertise: image theory and history and the sociology of the sciences, explore techniques of constructing science images and transforming them into highly ambivalent images that represent the sciences. The essays, most of them with illustrations, present evidence that popular images of the sciences are based upon abstract theories rather than facts, and, equally, images of scientists are stimulated by imagination rather than historical knowledge.

Product Description
This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on contemporary biomedicine as a cultural practice. It brings together leading scholars from cultural anthropology, sociology, history, and science studies to conduct a critical dialogue on the culture(s) of biomedical practice, discussing its epistemic, material, and social implications. The essays look at the ways new biomedical knowledge is constructed within hospitals and academic settings and at how this knowledge changes perceptions, material arrangements, and social relations, not only within clinics and scientific communities, but especially once it is diffused into a broader cultural context. ... Read more

Product Description
Joanna Swabe's timely work looks at human-animal relations from antiquity to BSE and cloning, contending that veterinary knowledge and practice has played a crucial role in human history. ... Read more

Product Description
More than 90 percent of all scientific history has been made during the last half century. So far, however, only a fraction of historical scholarship has dealt with this period. Merely a decade ago, most scientific historians considered recent science -- the scientific culture created, lived and remembered by contemporary scientists -- an area of study best left to the historical actors themselves.
Today, an increasing number of historians are turning to the study of contemporary science. When doing so, they are confronted with new and unfamiliar methodological and theoretical problems. How to handle the huge amounts of published and unpublished source materials? What level of scientific training is necessary to understand contemporary science? Does the lack of historical perspective prevent good scholarship? Can (and will) historians of recent science share the turf with other professional groups, such as active scientists, scholars of science and technology studies, and science journalists? Thi ... Read more