In A Social History of Truth, Shapin engages these universal questions through an elegant recreation of a crucial period in the history of early modern science: ...

ArgumentThis article offers a social history of the “Galois Affair,” which arose in 1831 when the French Academy of Sciences decided to reject a paper presented by an aspiring mathematician, Évariste Galois. In order to historicize the meaning of Galois's work at the time he tried to earn recognition for his research on the algebraic solution of equations, this paper explores two interrelated questions. First, it analyzes scholarly algebraic practices and the way mathematicians were trained in the nineteenth (...) century to reconstruct the scientific meaning of Galois's research. By emphasizing the historically contingent nature of scientific debates, the paper argues that to historicize the work of a mathematician, we must historicize the scientific world as well. The second part of this article goes further to seek a fresh perspective on Galois's short career by analyzing the cultural, social, and institutional dynamics that governed how the mathematical community came to recognize an aspiring mathematician as one of its own. (shrink)

In The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896, Yvan Lamonde traces the province's political and intellectual development from the British Conquest to the election of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. From the individuals who formulated them, to the networks in which they circulated, to their reception, Yvan Lamonde focuses on ideas at work and their role in shaping Quebec history. The mapping of a complete intellectual circuit allows Lamonde to follow the strains of ideological debates - monarchism, (...) liberalism, republicanism, democracy, revolution, ultramontanism, nationalism - over more than a century. His work is informed by an encyclopaedic reading of the print culture of the period and the book conveys a profound and nuanced knowledge of the social context and cultural channels - educational institutions, newspapers, the book trade - in which intellectual debate occurred. Lamonde argues that while these ideas concerned politics, they went beyond the political: they were a fundamental and everyday element of civic society that was expressed in the public sphere through pamphlets, the popular press, and sermons. Lamonde's scrutiny of public opinion in Quebec allows him to place such currents of thought in the colony's international context: that of France, England, Rome, the United States, and their respective metropolises. The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896 covers a volatile time in the province's history - from the end of the French Regime through the American invasion, the War of 1812, and the Rebellions in Lower Canada - capturing the cultural ascension of a society and the foundations of Quebec identity. (shrink)

The book is divided into 3 parts. The first argues that activities which appear to be timeless - gathering knowledge, analysing, disseminating and employing it - are in fact time-bound and take different forms in different periods and places. The second part tries to counter the tendency to write a triumphalist history of the 'growth' of knowledge by discussing losses of knowledge and the price of specialization. The third part offers geographical, sociological and chronological overviews, contrasting the experience of (...) centres and peripheries and arguing that each of the main trends of the period - professionalization, secularization, nationalization, democratization, etc, coexisted and interacted with its opposite."--Publisher. (shrink)

In The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896, Yvan Lamonde traces the province's political and intellectual development from the British Conquest to the election of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. From the individuals who formulated them, to the networks in which they circulated, to their reception, Yvan Lamonde focuses on ideas at work and their role in shaping Quebec history. The mapping of a complete intellectual circuit allows Lamonde to follow the strains of ideological debates - monarchism, (...) liberalism, republicanism, democracy, revolution, ultramontanism, nationalism - over more than a century. His work is informed by an encyclopaedic reading of the print culture of the period and the book conveys a profound and nuanced knowledge of the social context and cultural channels - educational institutions, newspapers, the book trade - in which intellectual debate occurred. Lamonde argues that while these ideas concerned politics, they went beyond the political: they were a fundamental and everyday element of civic society that was expressed in the public sphere through pamphlets, the popular press, and sermons. Lamonde's scrutiny of public opinion in Quebec allows him to place such currents of thought in the colony's international context: that of France, England, Rome, the United States, and their respective metropolises. The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896 covers a volatile time in the province's history - from the end of the French Regime through the American invasion, the War of 1812, and the Rebellions in Lower Canada - capturing the cultural ascension of a society and the foundations of Quebec identity. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients of (...) dominant classes, was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations. In this new edition, incorporating both volumes, the book takes us from classical antiquity to the age of enlightenement. In the first volume, Wood traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history--a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods. In the second volume, Wood moves on to explore the formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. In her focus on canonical thinkers through the ages, Wood illuminates a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary reappraisal of Lynn White, Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” reopens several issues, including the suggestion by Peter Harrison that White’s thesis was historical and that it is a mistake to regard it as theological. It also facilitates a comparison between “Roots” and White’s earlier book Medieval Technology and Social Change. In “Roots,” White discarded or de-emphasized numerous qualifications and nuances present in his earlier work so as to heighten the effect of certain rhetorical aphorisms (...) and to generalize their scope and bearing well beyond what the evidence could bear. The meaning of Genesis and other biblical books proves to be just as important in White’s thesis as their historical reception. In “Roots,” White presents, alongside other contentions, the claims that Christian doctrines have all along been both anthropocentric and despotic, especially in the West, and that this is where the real roots of the problems are to be found. These claims, however, conflict with most of the relevant evidence. An adequate reappraisal of White’s work needs to recognize that there is a cultural determinism parallel to the technological determinisms alleged by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, to endorse Elspeth Whitney’s “single-cause” critique of links between religion and technological change in the Middle Ages, and to treat sympathetically Whitney’s claim that White and some of his eco-theological critics (despite their disagreements) have in common both their valorizing of individual beliefs and values and their neglect of economic and institutional factors. Nevertheless, our ecological problems need to be understood through explanations turning on beliefs and values as well as on economics and institutions. (shrink)

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, population geneticists sought computational solutions to integrate greater numbers of genetic traits into their debates about the ancestral relationships of human groups. At the same time, geneticists’ longstanding assumptions about Jewish communities, especially Ashkenazim, were challenged by a series of social, political, and intellectual developments. In Israel, the entrenched cultural and political dominance of Ashkenazi Jews faced major social upheaval. Meanwhile, to counteract lingering anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States, Arthur (...) Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe and Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai Wing’s The Myth of the Jewish Race argued that Jewish identity was not connected to biological ancestry from the ancient Israelites. Drawing on scientific publications and archived correspondence, this article reconstructs a transnational social history showing how geneticists responded to these shifting claims about Ashkenazi identity and ancestry. Many argued that these claims could be tested using new statistical models, which provided allegedly more “objective” estimates of ancestral gene frequencies and histories of population admixture. However, they simultaneously engaged in heated debates over the relative superiority of competing statistical approaches. These debates reveal how the transnational reverberations of Israeli ethnic politics and Euro-American anti-Semitism affected the development of new calculations for genetic admixture, permanently shifting the assumptions of population genetic research on Jewish populations as well as other human groups. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have assumed that psychological knowledge is knowledge about, and held by, the individual mind. _Psychological Knowledge_ challenges these views. It argues that bodies of psychological knowledge are social institutions like money or the monarchy, and that mental states are social artefacts like coins or crowns. Martin Kusch takes on arguments of alternative proposals, shows what is wrong with them, and demonstrates how his own social-philosophical approach constitutes an advance. We see that exists a substantial (...) natural amount of philosophical theorising, a body of work that tries to determine the nature and structure of folk psychology. An introduction to the workings of constuctivism, _Psychological Knowledge_ is an insightful introduction to the history of psychology and the recent philosophy of mind. (shrink)

A. W. Carus champions Rudolf Carnap’s ideal of explication as a model for liberal political deliberation. Constructing a linguistic framework for discussing social problems, he argues, promotes the resolution of our disputes. To flesh out and assess this proposal, I examine debate about the social institutions of marriage and adoption. Against Carus, I argue that not all citizens would accept the pragmatic principles underlying Carnap’s ideal. Nevertheless, explication may facilitate inquiry in the social sciences and be used (...) to create models that help us to understand past disputes. This latter application reveals explication’s potential for refining the social histories that inform contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEWS 145 intuition. And, Moreau insists, unlike the TIE, where experience seems to fade away after it has done its propadeutic work, in the Ethics its principles continue to inform our relationship with the world, albeit under the guidance of reason. This is a long and very rich book, and I cannot, in a short review, do justice to the complexity of its theses and the scholarly depth of its argumentation. The unity of its themes and the force and (...) originality of Moreau's claims make for compelling reading. He does at times seem to be pushing some of his claims a bit far, perhaps claiming for the place of experience in the Ethics more than some scholars will be willing to concede. But that, of course, is a matter for future debate. Moreau's book will certainly be much discussed among those interested in Spinoza's philosophy, and should be read by anyone interested in the nature of rationalism. STEVEN NADLER University of Wisconsin, Madison.. (shrink)

Originally published in 1973,this book describes the medieval origins of the British education system, and the transformations successive historical events – such as the Reformation, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution – have wrought on it. It examines the effect on the educational pattern of such major cultural upheavals as the Renaissance; it looks at the different parts played by church and state, and the influence of new social and educational philosophies.

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears (...) to have its own aims and methodology. (shrink)

The respective philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno share a concern with articulating a critique of Husserlian phenomenology which would do justice to the materiality of the subject. With this commonality in mind, it is argued that Levinas reifies this materiality by endowing it with a metaphysical priority expressive of ethical universality. In contrast, Adorno eschews the philosophical obsession with the assertion of metaphysical priority, insisting on the complexly historical nature of material life. In place of the Levinasian concern (...) with the subject’s forgetting of her or his ethical responsibilities to ‘the Other’, Adorno’s notion of the primacy of the object helps to articulate the ways in which the subject is always already materially bound by singular social histories which are essentially exclusionary. Amelioration of our suffering would thus depend on a concrete break in material social life, rather than on an abstractly conceived revelation of transcendence. (shrink)

There are plausible academic as well as social indicators that qualitative research has become an indispensable part of the methodological repertoire of the social sciences. Relying upon the tenets of the qualitative approach which require a priority of subject matter over method and a necessary socio-historical contextualization, I reconstruct some aspects of a social history that have shaped the quantitative—qualitative dichotomy and the quantitative imperative; these include modern individualism, monological rationality, manufacture operating on the grounds of (...) common human labour, mechanics as the first science, quantification as a technology of distanced objectivity and a search for certainty realized at the expense of qualitative attributes. The so-called renaissance of the qualitative approach starting in 1960s, understood as a kind of a return of repressed qualities, is also socio-culturally contextualized. Both anthropogenetic and sociogenetic reconstructions as well as a microgenetic analysis of the research process demonstrate that choices of subject matter and of methodology are socially and culturally embedded and necessarily linked to broader interests and beliefs. (shrink)

The formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment have all been attributed to the “early modern” period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political (...) discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day. (shrink)

A social history of Andalusi exact sciences should deal with scientific schools, teaching, travels to the East, patronage and scientific professions. I claim that such a social history of Andalusi science is almost impossible because of the lack of sources.

Book review, feminist history of technology.