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Objectivity in Science

New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies

  • Book
  • © 2015

Overview

Editors:
  1. Flavia Padovani

    1. Department of English & Philosophy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA

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  2. Alan Richardson

    1. Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

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  3. Jonathan Y. Tsou

    1. Department of Philosophy and Religious, Iowa State University, Ames, USA

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  • Is the first Science and Technology Studies collection entirely devoted to this topic
  • Contains original essays on objectivity by Peter Galison, Sandra Harding, Ian Hacking and Alison Wylie
  • Offers a variety of highly relevant scientific and historical case studies

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 310)

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vi
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  2. Introduction: Objectivity in Science

    • Jonathan Y. Tsou, Alan Richardson, Flavia Padovani
    Pages 1-15

  3. Positions on Objectivity in Contemporary Science and Technology Studies

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17
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    2. Let’s Not Talk About Objectivity

      • Ian Hacking
      Pages 19-33

    3. Objectivity for Sciences from Below

      • Sandra Harding
      Pages 35-55

    4. The Journalist, the Scientist, and Objectivity

      • Peter Galison
      Pages 57-75

  4. Objectivity as a Topic in Historical Epistemology

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 77-77
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    2. The Ethos of Critique in German Idealism

      • Joan Steigerwald
      Pages 79-99

    3. The Physiology of the Sense Organs and Early Neo-Kantian Conceptions of Objectivity: Helmholtz, Lange, Liebmann

      • Scott Edgar
      Pages 101-122

    4. Seeing and Hearing: Charcot, Freud and the Objectivity of Hysteria

      • Paolo Savoia
      Pages 123-144

    5. Objectivities in Print

      • Alex Csiszar
      Pages 145-169

  5. Securing Objectivity in Scientific Communities

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 171-171
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    2. Objectivity, Intellectual Virtue, and Community

      • Moira Howes
      Pages 173-188

    3. A Plurality of Pluralisms: Collaborative Practice in Archaeology

      • Alison Wylie
      Pages 189-210

    4. The View from Here and There: Objectivity and the Rhetoric of Breast Cancer

      • Judy Z. Segal
      Pages 211-226
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Keywords

About this book

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.  

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of English & Philosophy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA

    Flavia Padovani

  • Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Alan Richardson

  • Department of Philosophy and Religious, Iowa State University, Ames, USA

    Jonathan Y. Tsou

About the editors

Flavia Padovani is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Drexel University, Philadelphia. Her research addresses issues in both history and philosophy of science (mainly in the early twentieth century) and general philosophy of science. She is author of articles in journals and collections, and has co-edited several volumes in HPS, including Collected Works of Charles François Sturm (Birkhäuser 2008), Pour comprendre le XIXe: histoire et philosophie des sciences à la fin du siècle (Olschki 2007), and Louis Rougier: vie et œuvre d’un philosophe engagé, 2 vols. (Éditions Kimé 2006-2007).

Alan Richardson is Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia.  A Past President of the International Society for the History of the Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), he works mainly on the history of philosophy of science in the twentieth century.  He is author of Carnap’s Construction of the World (Cambridge UP, 1997) and has co-edited several volumes, including Origins of Logical Empiricism (U Minnesota P, 2003), Logical Empiricism in North America (U Minnesota P, 2007), and The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism (Cambridge UP, 2010).

Jonathan Y. Tsou is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. In 2008, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science (CHSS); in 2008-2009, he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in Science and Technology Studies in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He has a broad range of research interests in philosophy of science, including philosophy of psychiatry and history of twentieth century philosophy of science. His research has addressed topics such as natural kinds in psychiatry, the social feedback effects of humanscience classifications, a priori principles in science, and the nature of scientific change. His articles have appeared in journals such as Synthese, Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Perspectives on Science, and International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Objectivity in Science

  • Book Subtitle: New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies

  • Editors: Flavia Padovani, Alan Richardson, Jonathan Y. Tsou

  • Series Title: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14349-1

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-14348-4Published: 01 April 2015

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-38293-7Published: 09 October 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-14349-1Published: 23 March 2015

  • Series ISSN: 0068-0346

  • Series E-ISSN: 2214-7942

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VI, 226

  • Number of Illustrations: 10 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Philosophy of Science, History of Science

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