The human sciences in the English-speaking world have been in a
state of crisis since the Second World War. The battle between
champions of hard-core scientific standards and supporters of a
more humanistic, interpretive approach has been fought to a
stalemate. Joel Isaac seeks to throw these contemporary disputes
into much-needed historical relief. In "Working Knowledge" he
explores how influential thinkers in the twentieth century's middle
decades understood the relations among science, knowledge, and the
empirical study of human affairs.
For a number of these thinkers, questions about what kinds of
knowledge the human sciences could produce did not rest on grand
ideological gestures toward "science" and "objectivity" but were
linked to the ways in which knowledge was created and taught in
laboratories and seminar rooms. Isaac places special emphasis on
the practical, local manifestations of their complex theoretical
ideas. In the case of Percy Williams Bridgman, Talcott Parsons, B.
F. Skinner, W. V. O. Quine, and Thomas Kuhn, the institutional
milieu in which they constructed their models of scientific
practice was Harvard University. Isaac delineates the role the
"Harvard complex" played in fostering connections between
epistemological discourse and the practice of science. Operating
alongside but apart from traditional departments were special
seminars, interfaculty discussion groups, and non-professionalized
societies and teaching programs that shaped thinking in sociology,
psychology, anthropology, philosophy, science studies, and
management science. In tracing this culture of inquiry in the human
sciences, Isaac offers intellectual history at its most
expansive.
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