Science in Context 33 (4):363-384 (2020)
Abstract |
ArgumentThis article highlights the epistemic concerns that have permeated the historical discourse around charlatanism. In it, I study the term “charlatan” as a multivalent actor’s category without a stable referent. Instead of defining or identifying “the charlatan,” I analyze how the concept of the charlatan was used to make epistemic interventions about what constituted credible knowledge in two interconnected controversies. Focusing on these controversies allows me to thematize how the concept of “the charlatan” expanded beyond medical contexts and to bring a history of knowledge perspective to the history of medicine.The title of the article, “Charlatan Epistemology,” indicates a historical epistemological approach to charlatanism as well as the existence of a charlatan’s embodied epistemology. On the one hand, I historicize the epistemic characteristics of charlatanism, focusing on virtues as well as vices, knowledge as well as ignorance, by addressing the historical and contextual specificities of two case studies and the larger epistemic concerns at play. On the other hand, I show how references to charlatanism implied the existence of specific embodied knowledges, special skills and techniques to manipulate either natural secrets or the human psyche, and I explore the similarities and differences between charlatan epistemology and artisanal epistemology.
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DOI | 10.1017/s0269889721000193 |
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References found in this work BETA
De-Centring the ‘Big Picture’: The Origins of Modern Science and the Modern Origins of Science.Andrew Cunningham & Perry Williams - 1993 - British Journal for the History of Science 26 (4):407-432.
Health for Sale. Quackery in England 1660-1850.Roy Porter & Ragnhild Munch - 1994 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 16 (1):155-182.
The 'Physical Prophet' and the Powers of the Imagination. Part II: A Case-Study on Dowsing and the Naturalisation of the Moral, 1685–1710.Koen Vermeir - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (1):1-24.
The Dustbin of the Republic of Letters: Pierre Bayle's “Dictionaire” as an Encyclopedic Palimpsest of Errors.Koen Vermeir - 2012 - Journal of Early Modern Studies 1 (1):109-149.
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