Throughout the recent culture and science "wars," the radically new
conceptions of knowledge and science emerging from such fields as
the history and sociology of science have been denounced by various
journalists, scientists, and academics as irresponsible attacks on
science, absurd denials of objective reality, or a cynical
abandonment of truth itself. In "Scandalous Knowledge," Barbara
Herrnstein Smith explores and illuminates the intellectual contexts
of these crude denunciations. A preeminent scholar, theorist, and
analyst of intellectual history, Smith begins by looking closely at
the epistemological developments at issue. She presents a clear,
historically informed, and philosophically sophisticated overview
of important twentieth-century critiques of
traditional--rationalist, realist, positivist--accounts of human
knowledge and scientific truth, and discusses in detail the
alternative accounts produced by Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel
Foucault, Bruno Latour, and others.
With keen wit, Smith demonstrates that the familiar charges
involved in these scandals--including the recurrent invocation of
"postmodern relativism"--protect intellectual orthodoxy by falsely
associating important intellectual developments with logically
absurd and morally or politically disabling positions. She goes on
to offer bold, original, and insightful perspectives on the
currently strained relations between the natural sciences and the
humanities; on the grandiose but dubious claims of evolutionary
psychology to explain human behavior, cognition, and culture; and
on contemporary controversies over the psychology, biology, and
ethics of animal-human relations. "Scandalous Knowledge "is a
provocative and compelling intervention into controversies that
continue to roil through journalism, pulpits, laboratories, and
classrooms throughout the United States and Europe.
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