Science Transformed? : Debating Claims of an Epochal Break.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (233 pages)
Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Science after the End of Science? An Introduction to the "Epochal Break Thesis" - Alfred Nordmann, Hans Radder, and Gregor Schiemann -- Part I -- 2. The Age of Technoscience - Alfred Nordmann -- 3. We Are Not Witnesses to a New Scientific Revolution - Gregor Schiemann -- 4. "Knowledge Is Power," or How to Capture the Relationship between Science and Technoscience - Martin Carrier -- 5. Climbing the Hill: Seeing (and Not Seeing) Epochal Breaks from Multiple Vantage Points - Cyrus C. M. Mody -- 6. Breaking Up with the Epochal Break: The Case of Engineering Sciences - Mieke Boon and Tarja Knuuttila -- 7. Science and Its Recent History: From an Epochal Break to Novel, Nonlocal Patterns - Hans Radder -- 8. Knowledge Making in Transition: On the Changing Contexts of Science and Technology - Andrew Jamison -- 9. Alliances between Styles: A New Model for the Interaction between Science and Technology - Chunglin Kwa -- Part II -- 10. Experimenting with the Concept of Experiment: Probing the Epochal Break - Astrid Schwarz and Wolfgang Krohn -- 11. Intensification, Not Transformation: Digital Media's Effects on Scientific Practice - Valerie Hanson -- 12. Technologies of Viewing: Aspects of Imaging in Natural Sciences - Angela Krewani -- 13. Technoscience as Popular Culture: On Pleasure, Consumer Technologies, and the Economy of Attention - Jutta Weber -- 14. The Good Old Days: Medical Research Then and Now - James Robert Brown -- 15. Toward a New Culture of Prediction: Computational Modeling in the Era of Desktop Computing - Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard -- 16. Epilogue: The Sticking Points of the Epochal Break Thesis - Hans Radder -- Contributors -- Index.
Advancements in computing, instrumentation, robotics, digital imaging, and simulation modeling have changed science into a technology-driven institution. Government, industry, and society increasingly exert their influence over science, raising questions of values and objectivity. These and other profound changes have led many to speculate that we are in the midst of an epochal break in scientific history. This edited volume presents an in-depth examination of these issues from philosophical, historical, social, and cultural perspectives. It offers arguments both for and against the epochal break thesis.