Author: Steve Fuller
Publisher: Orient Longman
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 472
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8125028137
Description
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the best-known and most influential books of the twentieth century. But were Kuhn’s ideas as revolutionary as the conventional wisdom holds? Steve fuller argues that Kuhn advocated what was actually a profoundly conservative view of science and how one ought to study its history-a view Fuller charges helped usher in the Science Wars and stifle much innovative research.
REVIEWS
A brilliant analysis deserving as wide a readership as the acclaimed book it critiques.
-Booklist, Starred Review
Fuller marshals an astonishingly detailed grasp of recent intellectual history to argue that science as we know it has outlived its usefulness. It would behoove scientists to pay close attention to his sprawling, brawling, and gloriously provocative book.
-Chet Raymo, Scientific American
Fuller takes Kuhn apart, together with his shifting paradigms, explains his thesis, and shows in detail what made it tick. But Mr Fuller also had the brilliant idea of turning his critique into an introductory intellectual history of the most important trends in Western social thought in the entire second half the 20th Century.
-William R Everdell, Washington Times
Reading Steve Fuller is like reading Umberto Eco on speed.
-Jeff Hughes, University of Manchester
Kuhn is undoubtedly important for intellectuals, and his influence on them is largely to be deplored. This is the main message in Fuller’s painstaking reappraisal of Structure, its author, his milieu, and the reception, and later widespread appropriation, of his most famous book, Structure will never look quite the same again after Fuller.
-Jon Turney, Times Higher Education Supplement
Contents
PREFACE-BEMING THERE WITH THOMAS KUHN
INTRODUCTION TO THIS EDITION
INTRODUCTION
The Pilgrimage From Plato To NATO
The Last Time Scientists Struggled for the Soul of Science
The Politics of the Scientific Image in the Age of Conant
>From Conant’s Education Strategy to Kuhn’s Research Strategy
How Kuhn Unwittingly Saved Social Science From A Radical Future
The World Not Well Lost
Kuhnification as Ritualized Political Impotence
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
INDEX