Science

Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997. A near Fine unmarked copy in laminated boards (Fine apart from a mark left from removal of a label to lower spine and very small indentation to front side. viii + 159 pages. What qualifies such seemingly disparate disciplines as paleontology, high energy physics, industrial chemistry and genetic engineering as 'sciences', and hence worthy of sustained public interest and support? In this innovative and controversial introduction to the social character of scientific knowledge, Professor Steve Fuller argues that if these disciplines share anything at all, it is more likely to be the way they strategically misinterpret their own history than any privileged access to the nature of reality. The book features a report written in the persona of a Martian anthropologist who systematically compares religious and scientific institutions on earth, only to find that science does not necessarily live up to its own ideals of rationality. Fuller highlights science's multicultural nature through a discussion of episodes in which the West's own understanding of science has been decisively affected by its encounters with Islam and Japan. C3C. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.