What do you think?
Rate this book
Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction
The first comprehensive survey of the nascent field of "science studies"
Thrust into the public eye by the contentious "Science Wars"―played out most recently by physicist Alan Sokal's hoax―the nascent field of science studies takes on the political, historical, and cultural dimensions of technology and the sciences.
Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, David J. Hess realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.
By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.
Thrust into the public eye by the contentious "Science Wars"―played out most recently by physicist Alan Sokal's hoax―the nascent field of science studies takes on the political, historical, and cultural dimensions of technology and the sciences.
Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, David J. Hess realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.
By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.
- GenresSociology
206 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1997
3 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 10, 2017
Hess wrote this book at the closing of the Science Wars, a fraught period when physicist-philosophers tried to book post-modernist jackdaw studiers of science out of the academy entirely. He realized, with some alarm, that despite decades of work STS lacked a single graduate level overview of the field, and so wrote a short advanced introduction.
Despite being twenty years old, this book remains a treasure. The major chapters cover philosophy of science through the lens of theory choice, how should scientists distinguish between alternative theories; institutional sociology examining stratification and organization of scientists, the sociology of scientific knowledge, which pries open the black box to examine how scientists actually do their work; and closes with feminist and Foucauldian critiques of science. Hess has a careful sense of the graduations of the phrases "constructivist" and "relativist", and carefully teases out a productive areas for "realist" studies of science, which empower factual evidence of the real world, while still leaving space for change and the weird, for example his own anthropological work on spiritist cults in Brazil.
While some of the terms of the debate have changed, and Hess is not the final authority on every author or idea presented, this is a sweeping and comprehensives literature review. It never hurts to return to the fundamentals.
Despite being twenty years old, this book remains a treasure. The major chapters cover philosophy of science through the lens of theory choice, how should scientists distinguish between alternative theories; institutional sociology examining stratification and organization of scientists, the sociology of scientific knowledge, which pries open the black box to examine how scientists actually do their work; and closes with feminist and Foucauldian critiques of science. Hess has a careful sense of the graduations of the phrases "constructivist" and "relativist", and carefully teases out a productive areas for "realist" studies of science, which empower factual evidence of the real world, while still leaving space for change and the weird, for example his own anthropological work on spiritist cults in Brazil.
While some of the terms of the debate have changed, and Hess is not the final authority on every author or idea presented, this is a sweeping and comprehensives literature review. It never hurts to return to the fundamentals.
July 17, 2017
As one new to the field, this book was overwhelmingly comprehensive for me. I ended up gravitating toward the chapter on Critical and Cultural Studies of Science and Technology, which bookended by the introduction and conclusion proved to be both a manageable and meaningful first pass of Hess' work. I would absolutely recommend this text to anyone seeking an introduction to the discourse of science studies. I intend to refer back to it as I become more familiar with the field.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews