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Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial
science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this
beguiling book, a much more lively and experimental strain of
cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present.
"The Cybernetic Brain" explores a largely forgotten group of
British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory
Bateson, R. D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their
singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry,
engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education,
tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come
into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact
on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to
the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this
fascinating history, Pickering contends, is a shared but
unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a
place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering
avers, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative
model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the
modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other.
This ambitious book by one of the most original and provocative
thinkers in science studies offers a sophisticated new
understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical, and
engineering practice and the production of scientific knowledge.
Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature
of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number
of factors--social, technological, conceptual, and natural--that
interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his
view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and
mathematical structures, disciplined practices, and human beings
are in constantly shifting relationships with one
another--"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped
by the contingencies of culture, time, and place.
Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural
context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of
the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer
understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering
examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle
physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the
quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of
computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these
examples to address the most basic elements of scientific
practice--the development of experimental apparatus, the production
of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of
machines and social organization.
Widely regarded as a classic in its field, "Constructing Quarks"
recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of
elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status
of scientific knowledge, Andrew Pickering suggests that scientists
are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they
are social beings as well as active constructors of natural
phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice.
"A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily
recommend."--Michael Riordan, "New Scientist"
"An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."--Hugh N.
Pendleton, "Physics Today"
It was not so long ago that the belief in witchcraft was shared by
members of all levels of society. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, diseases were feared by all, the infant mortality rate
was high, and around one in six harvests was likely to fail. In the
small rural communities in which most people lived, affection and
enmity could build over long periods. When misfortune befell a
family, they looked to their neighbours for support - and for the
cause. During the sixteenth century, Europe was subject to a
fevered and pious wave of witch hunts and trials. As the bodies of
accused women burnt right across the Continent, the flames of a
nationwide witch hunt were kindled in England. In 1612 nine women
were hanged in the Pendle witch trials, the prosecution of the
Chelmsford witches in 1645 resulted in the biggest mass execution
in England, and in the mid-1640s the Witch finder General
instigated a reign of terror in the Puritan counties of East
Anglia. Hundreds of women were accused and hanged. It wasn't until
the latter half of the seventeenth century that witch-hunting went
into decline.In this book, Andrew and David Pickering present a
comprehensive catalogue of witch hunts, arranged chronologically
within geographical regions. The tales of persecution within these
pages are testimony to the horror of witch-hunting that occurred
throughout England in the hundred years after the passing of the
Elizabethan Witchcraft Act of 1563.
In "The Mangle of Practice" (1995), the renowned sociologist of
science Andrew Pickering argued for a reconceptualization of
research practice as a "mangle," an open-ended, evolutionary, and
performative interplay of human and non-human agency. While
Pickering's ideas originated in science and technology studies,
this collection aims to extend the mangle's reach by exploring its
application across a wide range of fields including history,
philosophy, sociology, geography, environmental studies, literary
theory, biophysics, and software engineering.
"The Mangle in Practice" opens with a fresh introduction to the
mangle by Pickering. Several contributors then present empirical
studies that demonstrate the mangle's applicability to topics as
diverse as pig farming, Chinese medicine, economic theory, and
domestic-violence policing. Other contributors offer examples of
the mangle in action: real-world practices that implement a
self-consciously "mangle-ish" stance in environmental management
and software development. Further essays discuss the mangle as
philosophy and social theory. As Pickering argues in the preface,
the mangle points to a shift in interpretive sensibilities that
makes visible a world of de-centered becoming. This volume
demonstrates the viability, coherence, and promise of such a shift,
not only in science and technology studies, but in the social
sciences and humanities more generally.
"Contributors" Lisa Asplen, Dawn Coppin, Adrian Franklin, Keith
Guzik, Casper Bruun Jensen, Yiannis Koutalos, Brian Marick, Randi
Markussen, Andrew Pickering, Volker Scheid, Esther-Mirjam Sent,
Carol Steiner, Maxim Waldstein
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Secret Frome (Paperback)
Andrew Pickering, Gary Kearley
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R493
R401
Discovery Miles 4 010
Save R92 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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The town of Frome, in the ancient royal forest of Selwood that
straddles the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset, was once renowned
for its prosperous woollen cloth industry and is now noted as an
emerging provincial centre for the arts and crafts. The town and
its environs has a fascinating and little-known history. Here we
will discover stories of medieval kings and bishops, political
intrigue and judicial murder, religious dissent and rebellion,
battles and sieges, criminals and crime-fighters. Here too are
stories of eminent philosophers and authors, entrepreneurs and
artists. Stories of ghosts and witchcraft share space with
histories of personal triumphs and disasters in the lives of the
residents of Frome. The hidden histories of its archaeological
remains, extant surface structures and those deep underground
combine to further reveal the tale of the town and its Selwood
hundred. Fully illustrated throughout, Secret Frome investigates
many of the town's secrets and invites readers to discover the
lesser-known events and stories from its past.
"Science as Practice and Culture" explores one of the newest and
most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field
of science studies: the move toward studying scientific
practice--the work of doing science--and the associated move toward
studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources
that practice operates in and on.
Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers,
sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original
essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and
biological sciences and mathematics, and are divided into two
parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of
perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their
analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as
realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II
seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments
across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge,
social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography.
Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial
science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this
beguiling book, a much more lively and experimental strain of
cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present.
"The Cybernetic Brain" explores a largely forgotten group of
British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory
Bateson, R. D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their
singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry,
engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education,
tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come
into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact
on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to
the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this
fascinating history, Pickering contends, is a shared but
unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a
place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering
avers, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative
model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the
modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other.
An engaging range of period texts and theme books for AS and A
Level history. The Wars of the Roses and the struggle for the
throne between the Houses of York and Lancaster dominate the
history of England in the latter half of the fifteenth century. But
what were the causes of over forty years of sporadic civil war and
how was political stability at last restored? Andrew Pickering
addresses the issues critical to the study of this period and
analyses the historical debates surrounding the characters and
events. Topics covered include fifteenth-century kingship and the
reign of Henry VI, the end of the Yorkists, Henry VII and the
establishment of the Tudor dynasty, and social and economic change
in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The book also
contains a document study section on the Wars of the Roses.
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