Here and Everywhere - Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is one of the profession's most marginal specialties, yet its objects of inquiry, its modes of inquiry, and certain of its findings have very substantial bearing upon the nature and scope of the sociological enterprise in general. While traditional sociology of knowledge asked how, and to what extent, ''social factors'' might influence the products of the mind, SSK sought to show that knowledge was constitutively social, and in so doing, it raised fundamental questions about taken-for-granted divisions between ''social versus cognitive, or natural, factors.'' This piece traces the historical development of the sociology of scientific knowledge and its relations with sociology and cultural inquiry as a whole. It identifies dominant ''localist'' sensibilities in SSK and the consequent problem it now confronts of how scientific knowledge travels. Finally, it describes several strands of criticism of SSK that have emerged from among its own practitioners, noting the ways in which some criticisms can be seen as a revival of old aspirations toward privileged meta-languages.History of Scienc

Property, Patronage, and the Politics of Science: The Founding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

History of Scienc

The Man of Science

History of Scienc

Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science

Over the past two decades broadly geographical sensibilities have become prominent in the academic study of science. An account is given of tensions in science studies between transcendentalist conceptions of truth and emerging localist perspectives on the making, meaning and evaluation of scientific knowledge. The efficient spread of scientific knowledge is not a phenomenon that argues against the applicability of geographical sensibilities towards science but actually calls for an even more vigorous project in the geography of knowledge.History of Scienc

Descartes the Doctor: Rationalism and Its Therapies

During the Scientific Revolution one important gauge of the duality of reformed natural philosophical knowledge was its ability to produce a more effective medical practice. Indeed, it was sometimes thought that philosophers who pretended to possess new and more potent philosophical knowledge might display that possession in personal health and longevity. Rene Descartes repeatedly wrote that a better medical practice was a major aim of his philosophical enterprise. He said that he had made important strides towards achieving that aim and, on that basis, he offered practical medical advice to others and advertised the expectation that, taking his own advice, he would live a very long time. This paper describes what Cartesian medicine looked like in practice and what that practice owed to the power of modernist Reason.History of Scienc

Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology

History of Scienc

Hyperprofessionalism and the Crisis of Readership in the History of Science

There is a crisis of readership for work in our field, as in many other academic disciplines. One of its causes is a pathological form of the professionalism that we so greatly value. "Hyperprofessionalism" is a disease whose symptoms include self-referentiality, self-absorption, and a narrowing of intellectual focus. This essay describes some features and consequences of hyperprofessionalism in the history of science and offers a modest suggestion for a possible cure.History of Scienc

Talking History: Reflections on Discourse Analysis

History of Scienc

The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England

History of Scienc