Editorial Postscript

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 29, Issue 5, 1999, Pages 790-799

  Edge, David ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84992784724     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631299029005007     Document Type: Editorial

References (22)

1. Donald MacKenzie, ‘The Zero-Sum Assumption: Reply to Sullivan’, Social Studies of Science. Vol 29, No. 2 (April 1999), 223–34, at 231.
2. The Letter by David Bloor and myself that has been quoted and cited in exchanges in these pages is: D. Bloor and D. Edge, ‘Knowing Reality Through Society’, Physics World (March 1998), 23.
3. Readers looking for further discussion of the zero-sum assumption can consult this exchange: David Bloor, ‘Anti-Latour’, Bruno Latour, ‘For David Bloor … and beyond’, and Bloor, ‘Reply to Bruno Latour’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1999), 81–112, 113–30, 131–36
4. Noretta Koertge (ed.), A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
5. the exchanges are in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 1999), 199–259, 287–94
6. N. Koertge, ‘The Zero-Sum Assumption and the Symmetry Thesis’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 5 (October 1999), 597–604.
7. D. MacKenzie, ‘The Science Wars and the Past's Quiet Voices’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 1999), 199–213, at 209.
8. Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 87–88.
9. For this reason alone, many would argue that the reality/description distinction is meaningless, and should be abandoned. I suspect that some such thoughts informed Jonathan Rée's review of House: J. Rée, ‘Crude Weapons of Science's “Friends” ’, Nature, Vol. 396 (5 November 1998), 31–33, at 32
10. A case in point is the suggestion, first published by Ronald Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss in July 1954, that ‘post-detector correlation interferometer’ techniques in radio astronomy could be extended to optical wavelengths. The story of this (ultimately successful) proposal is recounted in Bernard Lovell, Out of the Zenith: JodrellBank 1957–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), Chapter 3, ‘The Optical Interferometer’, 14–17
11. and is alluded to in David Edge and Michael Mulkay, Astronomy Transformed (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1976), 440–41, note j
12. and by Jon Agar, Science and Spectacle (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1998), 37. Lovell (15–16) recalls
13. But it had unanticipated spin-offs. I always found Bohm's introductory textbook on quantum theory to be the most lucid and compelling exposition of its principles, and an immense help in grappling with problems in its domain: see David Bohm, Quantum Theory (New York: Prentice-Hall; London: Constable, 1951) esp. Part I
14. ‘Physical Formulation of the Quantum Theory’, 1–172. I once asked Bohm why he had published such a convincing explication of the theory, when his subsequent career was devoted to attacking it. He said, in effect, that he wrote as positive an introduction as he could, so that he could assure himself that the theory was wrong. Many of us were happy that his scepticism had such a fruitful outcome, even if we did not follow him thereafter.
15. Trevor Pinch, ‘Haifa House: A Response to McKinney’, Social Studies ofScience, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 1999), 235–240
16. Ralph E. Lapp, The New Priesthood (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 29; he goes on: ‘This scary picture of science and society may be overdrawn, but I think not’. Lapp is not, of course, advocating a simple scientist(s)-at-the-controls model for politics at large: earlier in his book, he says: ‘The danger is that a new priesthood of scientists may usurp the traditional rôles of democratic decision-making’ (3).
17. Paul Gross, ‘Introduction’, in Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis (eds), The Flight from Science and Reason, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 775 (24 June 1996), 1–7, at 6–7, note 4 quoting from a document on the Web summarizing the proceedings of an NEH Summer Institute on ‘Science as Cultural Practice’ (1991).
18. Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne, ‘Lessons at the Sharp End’, The Times Higher Education Supplement (London, 21 June 1996), 13.
19. Steven Shapin, ‘Foreword to the 1999 Edition’, in Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, rev. edn, 1999), xv–xxii, at xvii (my emphasis).
20. For a discussion of the importance of empiricism as a challenge and counterweight to the rationalist tradition, see Barry Barnes' Bernal Prize acceptance address: ‘Science Studies and the Empirical Understanding of Science’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Summer 1999), 376–383
21. Tom Gieryn has had a very promising first-at-bat on this topic in the Epilogue to his recent book: Thomas F. Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (Chicago, IL & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999)
22. ‘Home to Roost: “Science Wars” as Boundary-Work’, 336–62. Others should now come to the plate to help drive the runs home.