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Webs of Belief or Practices: the Problem of Understanding*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2011

Stephen P. Turner
Stephen P. Turner*
Affiliation:
University of South Florida [turner@usf.edu]
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Extract

ObjectivityandThere is No Such Thingas a Social Science make an odd pair: one is a substantive historical discussion of a philosophical concept central to philosophy and to scientific practice and debate which provides an explanation of the history of the development and changes in the concept; the other is a defense of a philosophical position which in effect denies that any such explanation is possible, and attacks “the craving for explanation” as a philosophical disease whose major symptom is social science itself. Galison and Daston, the authors of Objectivity, are historians of science whose approach is connected to the “social study of science” without explicitly adopting any of its methodological theses. But in taking on the concept of objectivity they go to the philosophical heart of the scientific enterprise itself.

Type
Research Articles
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , December 2010 , pp. 403 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © A.E.S. 2010

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