A surprising examination of our understanding of science."Science is a swashbuckling book. Fuller's formidable scholarship takes no prisoners". NatureWhat 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, Steve Fuller argues that if these disciplines share anything at all, it is more likely the way they strategically misinterpret their own history rather than any privileged access to the nature of reality.Science 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 perception of science has been decisively affected by its encounters with islam and Japan. Through this analysis we come to understand that science's most attractive feature -- its openness to criticism -- is threatened by the role it increasingly plays in the maintenance of social and economic order.

Product Description: The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, is often regarded as a dry topic that bears little relation to actual knowledge practices. Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History addresses this perception by showing the roots, developments and prospects of modern epistemology from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day...read more

In Media and the Power of Knowledge, Fuller traces the evolution of how the media has transformed global and social knowledge. The book draws a line from the printing press to the rise of electrical and electronic communication, and analyses how the emergence of our public sphere has developed. Fuller points to the spread of publishing and the rise of technology such as telegraphy that allowed researchers to connect, and allowed the first forms of collective intelligence to flourish. With the invention of the internet, globally accessible information has become possible and has fundamentally altered how we form public opinion. Media and the Power of Knowledge also looks at the role of media moguls and the function of the critic, pundit and broadcaster, and investigates how the balance of power has shifted in recent years. Clearly structured and presenting provocative arguments, this book considers the likely future developments of the media and its far-reaching implications for the human condition.

Product Description: Developing directly from Fuller's recent book Humanity 2.0 , this is the first book to seriously consider what a 'post-' or 'trans'-' human state of being might mean for who we think we are, how we live, what we believe and what we aim to be.

Product Description: Social thinkers in all fields are faced with one unavoidable question: What does it mean to be human in the 21st century? This ambitious and groundbreaking book provides the first synthesis of historical, philosophical and sociological insights needed to address this question in a thoughtful and creative manner...read more

If nothing else, the twelve papers assembled in this volume should lay to rest the idea that the interesting debates about the nature of science are still being conducted by "internalists" vs. "externalists,"" rationalists" vs. "arationalists, n or even "normative epistemologists" vs. "empirical sociologists of knowledge. " Although these distinctions continue to haunt much of the theoretical discussion in philosophy and sociology of science, our authors have managed to elude their strictures by finally getting beyond the post-positivist preoccupation of defending a certain division of labor among the science studies disciplines. But this is hardly to claim that our historians, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have brought about an "end of ideology," or even an "era of good feelings," to their debates. Rather, they have drawn new lines of battle which center more squarely than ever on practical matters of evaluating and selecting methods for studying science. To get a vivid sense of the new terrain that was staked out at the Yearbook conference, let us start by meditating on a picture. The front cover of a recent collection of sociological studies edited by one of us (Woolgar 1988) bears a stylized picture of a series of lined up open books presented in a typical perspective fashion. The global shape comes close to a trapezium, and is composed of smaller trapeziums gradually decreasing in size and piled upon each other so as to suggest a line receding in depth. The perspective is stylized too.

This book outlines a social theory of knowledge for the 21st century. With characteristic subtlety and verve, Steve Fuller deals directly with a world in which it is no longer taken for granted that universities and academics are the best places and people to embody the life of the mind. While Fuller defends academic privilege, he takes very seriously the historic divergences between academics and intellectuals, attending especially to the different features of knowledge production that they value.

Product Description: Steve Fuller has a reputation for setting the terms of debate within science and technology studies. In his latest book, New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies he charts the debates likely to be of relevance in the coming years...read more

Product Description: For centuries, science and religion have been portrayed as diametrically opposed. In this provocative new book, Steve Fuller examines the apparent clash between science and religion by focusing on the heated debates about evolution and intelligent design theory...read more

The Knowledge Book is a unique interdisciplinary reference work for students and researchers concerned with the nature of knowledge. It is the first work of its kind to be organized on the assumption that whatever else knowledge might be, it is intrinsically social. The book consists of 42 alphabetically arranged entries on key concepts at the intersection of philosophy and sociology - what used to be called sociology of knowledge but is now increasingly called social epistemology. The entries include concepts common to disciplines that in recent years have devoted more of their attention to knowledge: cultural studies, communication studies, information science, education, policy studies and business studies. Special attention is given to concepts from the emerging field of science and technology studies.

Product Description: C. Wright Mills' classic The Sociological Imagination has inspired generations of students to study Sociology. However, the book is nearly half a century old. What would a book address, aiming to attract and inform students in the 21st century? This is the task that Steve Fuller sets himself in this major new invitation to study Sociology...read more

Product Description: Johnny Tractor, also known as JT, shows all the wonderful things he can do on a farm. From mowing the grass and plowing the field, to bringing feed to the animals at the barn, JT keeps busy all day long! Age Range: 18 months to 4 years

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Product Description: The first book to provide an in-depth examination of Steve Fuller's politically oriented social epistemology, Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge compares Fuller's social epistemology with both interest-oriented sociologies of knowledge and truth-oriented analytic social epistemologies...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

This text helped launch the research program of social epistemology, which has fuelled imaginations and provoked debates across many disciplines around the world. Its opening question remains as pressing as ever: How should knowledge production be organised. The second edition contains a substantial new introduction, in which Fuller reflects on social epistemology's place in the history of analytic and continental epistemology and discusses the inspiration he has drawn from a wide variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences. It also includes a spirited attack on alternative philosophical groundings for social epistemology and a detailed response to the standard criticism that social epistemology has received from realist philosophers and natural scientists during the Science Wars. In this volume Fuller seeks to reconcile normative philosophy of science and empirical sociology of knowledge. He reinterprets key problems in the philosophy of science, such as realism, the nature of objectivity, the demarcation of science from other disciplines, and the nature of our knowledge of other times and places. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the best known and most influential books of the twentieth century. Whether they adore or revile him, critics and fans alike have tended to agree on one thing: Kuhn's ideas were revolutionary...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

This text offers a fresh perspective on the governance of science from the standpoint of social and political theory. Science has often been seen as the only institution that embodies the elusive democratic ideal of the "open society". Yet, science remains an elite activity that commands much more public trust than understanding, even through science has become increasingly entangled with larger political and economic issues. Fuller proceeds by rejecting liberal and communitarian ideologies of science, in favour of a "republican" approach centred on "the right to the wrong". He shows how the recent scaling up of scientific activity has undermine the republican ideal. The centrepiece of the book, a social history of the struggle to render the university a "republic of science" focuses on the potential challenges posed by multiculturalism and capitalism. Finally, drawing on the science policy of the US New Deal, Fuller proposes nothing short of a new social contract for "secularizing" science". (view table of contents)

Product Description: This eye-opening book describes how modern technologies--such as computers, automobiles, machine tools, hybrid crops, nuclear reactors, and others--contribute to vexing social problems ranging from the continued subordination of women and workers to widespread political disengagement...read more

Product Description: The social psychology of science is a compelling new area of study whose shape is still emerging. This erudite and innovative book outlines a theoretical and methodological agenda for this new field, and bridges the gap between the individually focused aspects of psychology and the sociological elements of science studies...read more

Product Description: Book by Brante, Thomas, Fuller, Steve